We draw our inspiration from gazetteers. Gazetteers were encyclopaedic directories of various regions in India, written by the British in a major exercise to document the ‘natives’.
This colonial project began in the early to mid-19th century, and was crucial to British understanding of us, and even ruling over us. In fact, in most cases when we study about India today, we are really studying the British experience of India. Gazetteers articulated information on history, physiology, society, governance, development and any other scholarly or administrative element of the place it was about.
Why were the British doing it? Well, not difficult to understand. For a European, India was an explosion of human diversity. They encountered a bewildering array of cultures, geographies and social norms, and felt the need for systematic information about their Indians.
Post-independence, the enthusiasm was lost. We have continued to produce gazetteers, although with little enthusiasm. Some states better than the others. But by and large, they do not remain in popular imagination. More importantly, they continue to follow colonial designs and framework.
And hence, our project. We want to go beyond, and usher a new imagination in documenting our country. We want to develop a new visions and frameworks for building encyclopedias and chronicles of India, zooming in to its towns, cities, districts, using new tools and aspirations.
Here is the Concept Note of the Project.
