In 1958, a piece of paper — yellowed over time — marked the very first turn of the wheel in the history of science and technology studies in post-independent India; it recorded the proceedings of a planning committee for what we today know as the Indian Institute of Technology — Madras. A year later, in 1959, one of the largest educational projects to have emerged from Indo-German relations during the Cold War came into existence.
This is perhaps the most seminal document among the 7,000 cubic feet of records and 18,855 bundles of paper documents from across 40 units that are still undergoing meticulous cataloguing at the newly opened Archive of IIT Madras. The mammoth project that was realised over five years since its announcement in 2019, now has a shiny home deep inside the verdant campus. The physical archive designed by renowned architect Benny Kuriakose houses digitisation and conservation wings (think: sorting, cleaning and quarantine rooms), apart from record and reading rooms that will soon be accessible to the public.
Students at Gajendra Circle inside IIT Madras | Photo Credit: VELANKANNI RAJ B
The need to understand and record the Indian perspective of institutional history is what fuelled this prodigious project. While the Indian Institute of Technology is well represented in the German archives as seen in the archives of the Foreign Office in Berlin, the same cannot be said of the documentation here. “Writing Indian history from what is available in the German archives is more about the German perspective than the Indian perspective,” says Roland Wittje, founder of the project and member of the advisory board. “One of our key ideas for this project was to make it accessible,” says S Ponnarasu, archive project leader.
Facade of the physical archive | Photo Credit: Thamodharan B
Roland says that “termites, cat poop and a treasure trove” are what they found, initially, in addition to five different agreements of Indo-German collaborations over time, technical drawings, plans and models of buildings, and heaps of files that demanded sorting. Maps, diagrams and architectural plans of some of the old buildings within the campus, and personal documents (including student, faculty and staff logs) that carry historical significance, are all part of this quantum of records.
From correspondence that traces the Indo-Soviet programme of cooperation in science andtechnology dated 1984, to a more decipherable map of Guindy with a site plan for The Higher Technological Institute as it was known then, these archives have it all. Cassettes with video recordings of scientific and educational experiments are also part of the repository, apart from floppy disks, CDs and hard drives of information.
One of the records brought in for cleaning and sorting | Photo Credit: Thamodharan B
What constitutes an archive?
The starting point was the collection of records at the Director’s Office, says Roland. “It was very organised, so much so that a Master’s student wrote about the history of computing in IIT-Madras using documents from there,” he adds. The community hall, on the other hand, was lined with 120 steel cupboards, 1,500 square feet filled with heaps of files. “One of the things we found lying there was a photo album of different types of construction trucks, which gives you a view into the people who actually built IIT-Madras. What about their history?” asks Roland.
“Nearly a 100 cubic feet of material was damaged beyond repair,” continues Ponnarasu. A bulk of the fragile material will be made available digitally, in the reading room for immediate consumption. “The material is largely in English and German. Tamil was not used often as a medium of communication then,” says Ponnarasu. He adds that the archive is temperature-controlled at 22 degree Celsius with the humidity levels maintained at 50%.
Cleaning of a fragile document | Photo Credit: Thamodharan B
An archive functions as the heart of an institution’s history and only public engagement can ensure its life. “I am looking at the archive as an interface to invite people into thinking about the history of science and technology studies in a contemporary fashion,” says Mathangi Krishnamurthy, principal investigator at the archive and associate professor of Anthropology. To that end, the team plans to facilitate public tours as an introduction to what an archive is, and what it does. Screenings that involve ethnographic films, and science and technology documentaries, will be part of future programming.
“It is not just about a community that was, but it is about a community that still has an eminent presence,” says Mathangi.
Archive of IIT Madras is located in the KCB Building inside IIT Madras. It can be digitally accessed at archive.iitm.ac.in/home. To contact, write to aoiitmadras@gmail.com or call 044 22579483
Published - July 25, 2024 01:24 pm IST
