The covid-19 pandemic profoundly impacted how social science research was conducted. The pandemic specifically affected historical anthropology research as restricted movement and locked institutions made the archives inaccessible to scholars. However, the pandemic and post-pandemic period began a new era of archives digitisation and accelerated the earlier digitisation projects. In this context, this paper looks into the archival research experience during the Pandemic period and investigates the digitisation process of archives in India.
This paper involves autoethnographic, ethnographic, and archival research methods to explore the archival experience in the institutions where the historical documents and records associated with historical ethnography works are stored. The paper looks into the archival research experience in the National Archives of India, Delhi State Archives, and the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library during the pandemic and post-pandemic period. The focus is also on their digitisation projects, particularly the archives associated with the Partition of 1947, a historical event that shaped the contemporary South Asian region. The work also probes into other digitisation of archives related to the Partition and its consequences on the Indian subcontinent.
The pandemic and digitisation of historical archives and oral history have a crucial impact on historical anthropology research. It changed the process of doing ethnography in historical fields and provided a new window of looking into digitised historical materials. A new site of ethnography of digitised historical materials has provided a unique opportunity for the researchers of historical anthropology.
