Ever stopped at the Delhi bath metro station to see a glimpse of the big photos of elderly women and read their heartbreaking stories about partitions? If so, thank you 1947 Partition Archive, a global digital archive dedicated to documenting the “History of People’s of the 1947 India-Pakistan Partition”.
Archives, starting about a decade ago, have more than 9,000 stories today.
Neel Kamal Toi spoke to the 1947 partition archive founder and Guneeta’s director Singh Bhalla who said pursuing stories of partition survivors had become part of his life.
How about the 1947 partition archive reached more than 9,000 people to record their terrible stories? This is a wonderful experience and changing the life we feel will be important for everyone to have it.
We are crowdsourcing based archives, and we train and encourage people to reach us.
Many partition witnesses reached us directly via email, while many young people reached us to interview their parents or grandparents.
In addition, our trained historians and scholars also reach individuals.
This is actually a way to connect with the community, especially those who are traditionally less represented, and find hidden stories in places where many traditional scholars will not be brave.
How do people find out about you in the first place? We began posting stories on social media almost a decade ago.
This is followed by more than one million people.
Since 2017, the stories have received more than 10 million interactions every year.
This gives a glimpse of how far the stories spread.
This is what inspires people to share their stories from all over the world.
This is the main means of how people have known about our work.
This is a kind of democratization of information.
How do you start the archive? In the early days, I spoke in as many students as possible.
After a group of local volunteers from all walks of life join, we can start preparing tables in Gurdwaras, temples and mosques in California.
Here, the partition witness will sign themselves, and we will then go to their home and record their story.
We work with freely available materials in Baylor University and with experts at the Regional Oral History Office at UC Berkeley to develop our oral history protocol.
Do you face problems in reaching people in other countries other than India and Pakistan? We didn’t face too much trouble because we let people reach us.
Now, we also conduct interviews from a distance because of a pandemic.
Many people are abandoned.
But if we have enough money, we can travel to the whole world and reach every partition witness.
This is a way to find hidden stories in places where traditional scholars will not be effort: founder of partition archives
