Awesome Digital History of South Asia

Welcome to the South Asian Digital History repository! Our project is dedicated to indexing the libraries and historical records of South Asia - with a particular focus on Digital History. Digital History as in two things

“the history of the digital” - Technology and the Internet and their interplay with socio-cultural phenomenon
Digitized History - As archives across the South Asian move to digitization, many of the cultural and historical artifacts locked away in buildings also become accessible

We’ve curated a collection of links and resources that offer insights into digital history as a discipline in the particular context of South Asia. There are also courses on digital humanities, data visualization, and other relevant topics that provide an excellent foundation for exploring the history of the region.

We welcome contributions from anyone who shares our passion for finding narratives of South Asian digital history. Formalising archives top-down often results in the perpetuation of colonial ideas around what constitutes knowledge and who gets to claim it and profit from it. So the archives curated here cover a large spectrum in terms of what might be “traditionally” considered an archive.

Forked from Awesome Digital History

Contribute
South Asian Digital Archives
- The Subcontinent
- Bangladesh
- Nepal - Needs more contributions
- Tibet
- Pakistan
- India - Needs more contributions from the NE, Andaman and Nicobar, Lakshwadeep
- Bhutan - Needs more contributions
- Afghanistan - Needs more contributions
- Maldives - Needs more contributions
- Sri Lanka - Needs more contributions
- Myanmar- Needs more contributions
History of the Digital in South Asia
More Collections
Learning
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Contributions welcome! Read the Guide to Contributing first.

South Asian Digital Archives

Sources:

The Subcontinent

Museum of Art and Photography - MAP is custodian to a growing collection of over 18,000 works of art, predominantly from South Asia and dating from the 10th century to the present.
The Polis Project - Our work sheds light on the rise of authoritarianism especially in democracies and focuses on issues of racial, class and caste injustice, Islamophobia and State oppression around the world.
1947partitionarchive - Partition Archive.
Tasveer Ghar: Digital Archive of South Asian Popular Visual Culture - Tasveer Ghar is a trans-national virtual “home” for collecting, digitizing, and documenting various materials produced by South Asia’s exciting popular visual sphere including posters, calendar art, pilgrimage maps and paraphernalia, cinema hoardings, advertisements, and other forms of street and bazaar art.
South Asia Open Archives (SAOA) - South Asia Open Archives is a free open-access resource for research and teaching - a rich and growing curated collection of key historical and contemporary sources in arts, humanities and social sciences, from and about South Asia.
South Asian American Digital Archive - This archive principally offers material on South Asian migrants who have made their homes in the United States.
South Asian Newspapers - This is a digitized, partial archive of nine newspapers from the subcontinent, freely accessible. Most cover the 1960s and 1970s period, but there is one from the mid-19th century and another from the early 20th century.
The South Asian Literary Recordings Project - Launched in April 2000, to record the voices of South Asian authors for the Library of Congress’ Archive of Recorded World Literature, the project has captured the readings of prominent South Asian poets, novelists, and playwrights. The authors recorded so far represent more than fifteen of the languages of India, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.
E-Books: Full-Text Online Books on South Asia - (SARAI).
LUMS Digital Archive - The LUMS Digital Archive is a research repository that aims at collecting, cataloging and preserving rare material (books, pamphlets, newspapers and other items) of historical significance and making them available to researchers.

Bangladesh

National Archives of Bangladesh - An online archive of chronology of events, documentations, audio, video, images, media reports and eyewitness accounts of the 1971 Genocide in Bangladesh in the hands of Pakistan army.
Bangladesh Genocide Archive - An online archive of chronology of events, documentations, audio, video, images, media reports and eyewitness accounts of the 1971 Genocide in Bangladesh in the hands of Pakistan army.
FID4SA-Repository - Bangladesh - FID4SA-Repository is the full-text server of the Specialized Information Service South Asia – FID4SA and is provided by Heidelberg University Library.
The Daily Star - Newspaper from 2003.
USA Library of Congress - Bangladesh

Nepal

Collections from Nepal - EAP - The Endangered Archives Programme (EAP) seeks to preserve cultural heritage and make it available to as wide an audience as possible.
1980-2020
2018-2022 - HIMALAYA, published by the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies, publishes original research articles, short field reports, book and film reviews, reports on meetings and conferences, alongside literature and photo essays from the region.
FID4SA-Repository - Nepal - FID4SA-Repository is the full-text server of the Specialized Information Service South Asia – FID4SA and is provided by Heidelberg University Library.
USA Library of Congress - Nepal

Tibet

FID4SA-Repository - Tibet - FID4SA-Repository is the full-text server of the Specialized Information Service South Asia – FID4SA and is provided by Heidelberg University Library.
USA Library of Congress - Tibet

Pakistan

The Citizen Archive of Pakistan - Citizens Archive of Pakistan.
FID4SA-Repository - Pakistan - FID4SA-Repository is the full-text server of the Specialized Information Service South Asia – FID4SA and is provided by Heidelberg University Library.
National Archives of Pakistan - An effort is being made to publish catalogs and lists of whatever source material in National Archives of Pakistan. An endeavor is being made to collect and preserve source material wherever available through purchases/donations with a view to place it eventually in its permanent house in Islamabad i.e. National Archives of Pakistan.
USA Library of Congress - Pakistan

India

QAMRA - The Queer Archive for Memory Reflection and Activism is a multimedia archival project which aims to chronicle and preserve the stories of communities marginalized on the basis of gender and sexuality in India.
Kosh - Kosh is the searchable archive of multi-media content relevant to misinformation and social media in India. It surfaces data collected by Tattle as well as that opened by other researchers.
Things We Make - Handicrafts from different parts of India and their stories.
Pad.ma - Short for Public Access Digital Media Archive, is an online archive of densely text-annotated video material, primarily footage and not finished films.
Netaji Papers - The declassified files relating to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose.
Abhilekh Patal - Abhilekh Patal is a full-featured web-portal to access the National Archives of India’s reference media and its digitized collections through the internet.
Economic and Political Weekly - 1966 - Present
Economic Weekly - now epw - 1949-1965 - Publication of economics, politics, sociology, culture, the environment, and other disciplines.
Archives at NCBS - The Archives at NCBS is a public collecting center for the history of science in contemporary India. The Archives are free and open to the public.
Godrej Archives - Godrej Archives is a repository of records from 100+ years of Godrej’s history.
Sarmaya - Sarmaya is a digital museum.
Living Lightly - Living Lightly ~ Journeys with Pastoralists is the first curated exhibition on pastoralism in India, covering the land, lives and livelihoods of Indian pastoralists. It captures their remarkable history of mobility, the ecosystems that nurture their life-worlds, their culture, science, art, politics, spiritual moorings, the economics and challenges of herding.
INDIAN MEMORY PROJECT - The Indian Memory Project provides materials on individuals and families to offer a micro-perspective on macrohistorical change.
Rare Book Society of India - Rare Books Society of India.
Archive of Indian Music - This is a digital repository of gramophone recordings, many of which feature pieces of music from India’s best-known artists. The collection is particularly strong for Carnatic and Hindustani classical music.
Digital Library of India - Under this project of the Ministry of Human Resources Development of the Government of India, scans of out-of-copyright books from libraries across India are generated and converted into text-searchable PDF form.
Indiancine.ma - This initiative of the Indian Cinema Foundation functions both as a comprehensive index and archive for Indian cinema.
Periodicals and Pamphlets of Indian Anticommunists and Free Market Advocates - This collection covers magazines and pamphlets from the Cold War-era India, including pamphlets of the Forum of Free Enterprise in Mumbai, The Indian Libertarian magazine, and the CIA-funded Freedom First.
Amrita Bazar Patrika (Calcutta, 1870-1949) - English-language newspaper hosted by Endangered Archives Project.
Jugantar Patrika (Calcutta, 1937-1980) - Bengali-language newspaper hosted by Endangered Archives Project.
Collections from India - EAP - The Endangered Archives Programme (EAP) seeks to preserve cultural heritage and make it available to as wide an audience as possible.
https://www.bl.uk/early-indian-printed-books - Collection of cookery books, almanacs, erotica.
community cookbooks from across India - Community Cookbooks.
https://oralhistorynarmada.in/ - On Narmada Bachao Andolan.
Prasar Bharati Central Archives
Explore India’s Constitutional Origins
USA Library of Congress - India

Bhutan

FID4SA-Repository - Bhutan - The National Library of Bhutan has the goal that all Bhutanese, wherever they are, will have access to both Bhutan’s documentary heritage and to the information resources of the world.
The National Library of Bhutan - FID4SA-Repository is the full-text server of the Specialized Information Service South Asia – FID4SA and is provided by Heidelberg University Library.
USA Library of Congress - Bhutan

Afghanistan

Digitized Afghanistan Materials in English from the Arthur Paul Afghanistan Collection - The UNO Criss Library holds the Arthur Paul Afghanistan Collection, one of the largest collections of Afghan primary and secondary materials outside of the country. It contains over 20,000 titles in more than 20 languages, including Dari, Pashto, and English.
Archives for the Study of Afghanistan - This is a list of physical and digital archives or scholars of Afghanistan.
Afghanistan Digital Library - The immediate objective of the Afghanistan Digital Library is to retrieve and restore the first sixty years of Afghanistan’s published cultural heritage.
Preserving and Creating Access to Unique Afghan Records - The collection contains information related to history, social, economic, and cultural heritage of Afghanistan in Pashto and Dari. Content is continuously updated with over 2,300 titles (about 236,000 pages) currently available (April 2012).
FID4SA-Repository - Afghanistan - FID4SA-Repository is the full-text server of the Specialized Information Service South Asia – FID4SA and is provided by Heidelberg University Library.
USA Library of Congress - Afghanistan

Maldives

FID4SA-Repository - FID4SA-Repository is the full-text server of the Specialized Information Service South Asia – FID4SA and is provided by Heidelberg University Library.
USA Library of Congress - Maldives

Sri Lanka

FID4SA-Repository - FID4SA-Repository is the full-text server of the Specialized Information Service South Asia – FID4SA and is provided by Heidelberg University Library.
USA Library of Congress - Sri Lanka

Myanmar

History of the Digital in South Asia

More Collections

Learning

Collaboration Adventures with Primary Sources: Exploring Creative and Digital Outputs - A series of case studies, the authors will share how they experimented with new ways to present research using primary sources through social media, zines, data sets, and visualizations: what we call “creative outputs”.
AdFontes - An Introduction to Working with Sources in the Archive.
Clio Guide - A handbook on digital resources for the historical sciences.
Digital History Guide - Introduction to the web for historians—teachers and students, archivists and museum curators, professors as well as amateur enthusiasts—who wish to produce online historical work, or to build upon and improve the projects they have already started in this important new medium.
Geospatial Historian - Open HGIS Lessons and Resources.
HIST3814o - Methods and Readings in Digital History by Shawn Graham at Carleton University.
HIST 7370 - Methods and Readings in Digital History by Cameron Blevins at Northeastern University.
History Toolkit - You will learn how to critically analyze historical conditions, developments, patterns, and ruptures – or, alternatively, how to call these into question.
Local Linkages - How to frame questions about the past, identify sources to answer those questions, place them in context, and present that historical interpretation online in a digital form.
The CTP Book - A book for teaching Computational Thinking and Programming skills to people with a background in the Humanities.
The Programming Historian - Novice-friendly, peer-reviewed tutorials that help humanists learn a wide range of digital tools, techniques, and workflows to facilitate research and teaching.
Python für Historiker:innen - The Jupyter Book (in German language) is aimed at historians who are looking for a first application-oriented and interactive introduction to the Python programming language.
UCI Digital History - Overview of the field of Digital History and Digital Humanities.
We think History - News about and innovations from digital history.

More Awesome

Digital Humanities - Tools, resources, and services supporting the Digital Humanities.
Data Visualization
Research Tools
Scientific Writing
Tempopedia - Digital History Directory.
The Collection Management System Collection
Computer History - An Awesome List of computer history videos, documentaries, and related folklore.

South Asia - Awesome Digital History