TITLE: Spuren­suche – Indi­en in Berlin­er Archiv­en / Traces of India in Berlin’s Archives.
INSTRUCTOR: Anan­di­ta Baj­pai.
ORGANIZER: Insti­tut für Asien- und Afrikawis­senschaften, Hum­boldt-Uni­ver­sität zu Berlin.

This event is a series of lec­tures, start­ing at 26.10.2016 and occur­ring week­ly until 15.02.2017.

DESCRIPTION (Eng­lish ver­sion): India in Berlin’s Archives? How could one pos­si­bly find any rel­e­vant sources on a coun­try like India in these archives? For many stu­dents, the term ‘Archive’ often evokes intim­i­da­tion and inse­cu­ri­ty if not indif­fer­ence. How does one pro­ceed when look­ing for sources on mod­ern Indi­an his­to­ry in Ger­man archives and why are they important?

The sound record­ings of Indi­an Pris­on­ers of War in Ger­man prison camps (WWI), the reports of bureau­crats from West and East Ger­many who wrote about their activ­i­ties in India, trav­el­ogues and mem­oirs of indi­vid­u­als who trav­elled to India, col­lec­tions of pho­tographs and post cards, state records on the lives of Indi­ans in Ger­many, arti­cles on India in Ger­man news­pa­pers: these are just some of the myr­i­ad sources that point to the rich­ness and poten­tial of the hold­ings of Ger­man archives on mod­ern Indi­an his­to­ry. These diverse sources can help stu­dents engage with Indi­an his­to­ry, more specif­i­cal­ly the his­to­ry of exchanges, encoun­ters and entan­gle­ments between Ger­many and the Indi­an subcontinent.

This sem­i­nar has the fol­low­ing axes:

  • Learn­ing how to do sys­tem­at­ic search­es in archives (Data­bas­es, cat­a­logues etc.)
  • How to work with archival sources?
  • Sys­tem­at­ic search and col­lec­tion of sources on India in a select­ed archive in Berlin.

The sem­i­nar will offer the oppor­tu­ni­ty to vis­it some promi­nent archives in Berlin with guid­ed tours. The aim is to work intense­ly with pri­ma­ry sources on India in one spe­cif­ic archive and par­tic­i­pate in con­tribut­ing to a data­base on such sources. It will thus help in acquir­ing con­crete method­olog­i­cal tools

More infor­ma­tion can be found here.