Each important moment in history is handed down to posterity only when it is recorded on paper and stamped with ink.
Bunches of cloth, yellowed and withered by time, carry milestones, silently recording the story of a young President of Madras. These papers could be government records, letters, gazettes, receipts or meeting minutes that dictate administrative decisions, perhaps, outlining the city we see today. To this day, all of these are housed in six symmetrical Indo-Saracenic structures spread across nearly five tranquil acres amid the bustling commercial center of what is now Egmore.
Today, except for the urgency that the Office of Government evokes, the Tamil Nadu State Archives and Historical Research Service or more familiarly the Madras Records Office, established in 1909, is little more than a treasure. Case in point: the oldest documents kept here date back to 1670.
Assistant Commissioner P Vijayaraja poring over an old map book at the archive | Image credit: Thamotharan Bharath
That was in the early 1600s. The East India Company had just found a foothold in then-Madras, leading to a series of events that quickly led to the country being ruled directly by the Crown. Every piece of paper recording any transaction or correspondence must be taken into account. This realization first occurred with William Langhorne, Governor of Madras appointed in 1672, who insisted that records of all government transactions be kept. They were originally kept in the Council Chamber of the Fort House at that time.
Mass rapidly increases in size. In 1805, Governor-General Lord William Bentinck ordered the construction of a private space and the appointment of a record-keeper. “He found this space, which was originally meant to be the Sergeant’s office. In 1909 they built this structure in the Indo-Saracenic style, which was the norm at the time,” Assistant Commissioner for Archives and Historical Studies, P Vijayaraja, recounted as he walked. via. He calls himself a “proverb storyteller” when it comes to the history of Madras. HH Dodwell was the first curator from 1911 to 1922.
Historical, indexed
The foundation of a repository is its methodology. Bentinck and his men used chronology as a methodology here. By order, the documents were quickly divided into ‘before 1857’ when the country was under Company control and after ‘1857’, when the Crown took over. Today, more than two million documents are stored on six stacks (storage structures known as stacks) with brick-red facades dotted with white-rimmed arched windows. They are connected by a single corridor, by cement, the spine.
The massive structure is designed so that the corridors and entrance to each stack are in direct view from the gate for constant surveillance.
View of the wooden stairs at the Madras Records Office | Image credit: Gowri WILL
“If you open the window of one stack, you can see through the other stacks. Vijayaraja said: “There is no obstruction to light and air, a prerequisite for the healthy life of a recordkeeper.” Each stack, made of cast iron, has legs surrounded by a moat-like recess to keep insects out, transporting the material chronologically. With unusually high ceilings supported by beams imported from Birmingham for this purpose, interior temperatures remain cool in summer and warm in winter. “Books or folders are made to stand on the spine and never sag, which also ensures an extended lifespan,” says Vijayaraja.
The newest stack is also home to the oldest documents and has the advantage of air conditioning and the invention of cement as a building material after the war. Here one can sift through the beautiful cardboard Fort St George Legislative Council Magazine, an original report in sepia tones announcing the death of Napolean Bonaparte, or a rare volume that meticulously documents the Great Exposition of 1851 entirely in pictures.
One of the rare records found in the stack | Image credit: Thamotharan Bharath
Two flights of stairs away was a completely different world: Against a curved wooden board that read ‘Recording Screen’, an army, slowly recovering from an afternoon jolt, was constantly cramming with notes. chiffon sheets flank withered, tattered or damaged sheets to laminate and release them to new life. Almost like the hands of a clock, they rolled and laid the sheets out to dry. Not far away was another team scanning fragile, yellowed pages – the first step to digitization, an admittedly slow but important process.
A first look at this 114-year-old building will shed light on the treasures it painstakingly preserve through its inhabitants. On a weekday, you stumble across a crowd impatiently waiting for an RTI application, except for academics, academics and researchers wandering the digital library in search of a document. rarely have the ability to seal their research paper that has been done for many years.
Teresa Joshy, research assistant at IIT Madras Research Park, beamed with joy as she said: “It’s so exciting to be here. When we look at a particular record, it evokes different instincts. If I start talking about records, I will never stop.”
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