Nehru Memorial Museum and Library digitisation

The Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML), India is starting a large-scale digitisation programme. The pilot so far has digitized 50 collections of manuscripts, 834 interview transcripts, 29,802 photographs, over one lakh images of the newspaper Amrita Bazar Patrika (dating from 1905 to 1938) and much more.


The Digital Library includes:


Private papers (the Nehru Memorial Museum Library [NMML] Archives was set up in 1964 with the family papers of Jawaharlal Nehru and now has over 1,000 collections of personal papers of eminent leaders and institutional records, and claims to be largest repository in the country of primary and non-official source material for historical research on Modern Indian History. The collection of personal papers include those of freedom fighters, politicians, educationists, scientists, jurists and industrialists who contributed to the making of modern India. These include among others, private papers of M.K. Gandhi, C. Rajagopalachari, B.C. Roy, Jayaprakash Narayan, Charan Singh, Sarojini Naidu and Rajkumari Amrit Kaur. In the list of institutional records, one will find the papers of the All India Congress Committee, All India Hindu Mahasabha, All India Trade Union congress, Indian Merchants’ Chamber and D.A.V. College Trust and Management Society, among others.)


Oral History (including the recollections of men and women who came into contact with India’s great leaders or were connected with important political events or movements either as participants or as witnesses. The oral history recordings and the transcripts cover the wide span of the nationalist movement and thereafter, going back to the partition of Bengal, and the First World War; the Satyagraha campaigns, the activities of revolutionary and terrorist groups, growth of the Socialist movement, Indo-British relations in the context of Indian and British politics, and the events leading to the partition of India. )

Newspapers and Journals (currently available is a selection of the title Amrit Bazar Patrika (Calcutta), 1905-1996)


and


Photographs (including photographs of Jawaharlal Nehru and his contemporaries as well as of important events associated with the nationalist movement. The photographs have been acquired from several sources, mainly as gifts from organizations like the Press Information Bureau (PIB), Indira Gandhi Memorial Trust (IGMT), Photo Division, and the Nehru Collection, and individuals like Shri P.N. Sharma, Smt. Sonia Gandhi, Mohammad Yunus, Pyarelal and Shri K.R. Narayanan. The Photo-Section of the Library has at present 1,15,068 photographs in the General Collection, 52,072 in the IGMT collection and 4030 in Mohammad Yunus collection & 4541 in KRN collection which have been processed.)


The material currently available within the Digital Library is a small selection of these very large collections, but a growing one, well worth exploring and returning to.