Dr Radhakrishnan’s Works Get a New Repository - Ashoka Archives of Contemporary India
A new archive set up by Ashoka University just outside Delhi has the private papers of the late scholar President, Chipko leader Chandi Bhatt and conservationist MK Ranjitsinh, writes Anubhuti Vishnoi
While political controversies continue to surround one of the foremost repositories of historical records in India, the Nehru Memorial Museum & Library (NMML), a new archive has begun to rise on the horizon and has made a promising start: it made a major acquisition that was once eyed by NMML.
Just outside the capital, the fledgling new repository at Haryana-based Ashoka University has acquired the rich papers of the second President of India, Dr S Radhakrishnan. The former President’s family has decided to donate all his papers to the Ashoka Archives of Contemporary India.
About 15 years ago, after the death of Radhakrishnan’s historian son S Gopal, NMML is learnt to have approached the family, requesting to archive the documents and papers of the scholar politician whose appointment as President of India was strongly supported by the then Prime Minister, Jawahar Lal Nehru.
His was also a rather eventful Presidency — it saw India go to two wars with China and Pakistan, and the deaths of two Prime Ministers, Nehru and Lal Bahadur Shastri. The President’s papers, which capture 60 years of his public life, are bound to offer a deep insight into that phase of Indian history, which is why NMML was interested in those.
However, the family was undecided then and the matter rested there. An attempt was learnt to have been made later by the Sahitya Akademi as well, but the family chose to keep the papers home at Mylapore in Chennai.
Several years down the line, Indira Gopal, Radhakrishnan’s daughter-in-law and custodian of the papers with the Radhakrishnan Trust, decided it is time for the documentation to be housed and preserved at an archive of repute.
The family chose a new archive that was set up as recently as January 2017. The choice is interesting in itself and has as much to do with the personal bonds of the Radhakrishnan family as with what the new archive brings to the table.
Chancellor of Ashoka University, historian Rudrangshu Mukherjee, was a student of Radhakrishnan’s son.
“Many had asked for the papers earlier. We had preserved them at home but it was getting increasingly difficult to maintain and we did feel that they should be opened up to research. So, we decided to give the papers to Ashoka University archives,” Indira Gopal told ET over the phone. “We also know Dr Rudrangshu Mukherjee well, he was my husband’s student, and he informed us of the archival facility at the university. We gather it is quite good and it has the right ideas about how to catalogue and preserve papers of this nature. So, we decided that it was best that the former President’s papers are housed there. Anyone who wishes to study those papers will have to access them through Ashoka University.”
Several tranches of documentation have already been transported from the family home in Chennai to dusty Sonipat off the national capital, and the last few are waiting to go to Ashoka where they will be catalogued and digitised, Indira Gopal said.
Chancellor Mukherjee said this was only a beginning as the archive was still fairly new. The Radhakrishnan papers will have a pride of place at any repository, he said.
“There is obviously immense historical significance to the works and papers associated with a former President and Vice President. He lived a rich public life and these papers reflect that. The archive has just started and we have started acquiring papers from several individuals,” he told ET.
In fact, this is the area where the Ashoka Archives aim to make a mark: reaching out to individual custodians of valued papers, even beyond policy and politics.
Mahesh Rangarajan, former director of NMML until just after the 2014 change of government and the dean of academic affairs at Ashoka, is steering the mission.
Within a year of being set up, the Ashoka Archives already has in its possession papers donated by Chipko leader and eminent social worker Chandi Prasad Bhatt and veteran conservationist MK Ranjitsinh, he said.
“We do not have the right to collect government records but are focussed on private papers. India has many excellent archives but the focus on contemporary India, post 1947 and the wider area of public life beyond politics and policy will hopefully mark the distinctive features of this archive,” Rangarajan said.
“It will, of course, be open to all scholars, both in the real and eventually virtual form (via registration but with no fee),” he said.
This is important because this was one of the only two conditions put by the Radhakrishnan family before parting with the papers.
“We only had two concerns: one, they should be protected and preserved for posterity in the best possible manner and that they should be used for reference purposes by scholars, not as library material. Ashoka agreed to both and hence the decision to donate to the new but rather impressive university in terms of scholarship,” said Keshav Desiraju, a former civil servant and nephew of Radhakrishnan.
“The documentation donated is considerable and ranges from Dr Radhakrishnan’s books, manuscripts, lecture notes and correspondence, philosophy journals he subscribed to and so on. It captures 60 years of his public life. We are quite optimistic about its future at Ashoka,” said Desiraju, who is also secretary of the Dr Radhakrishnan Foundation.
Source | Times of India | 6th October 2018
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