What did the official records not tell?

British recorded all the information for making administration work easier. They considered that writing is important so every plan, policy, decision, agreement, investigation was recorded in a written form. This makes it easier to debate and discuss various issues. This led to the formation of memos, notings and reports which included all the information of the administration system of the British rule.

They also believed in the preservation of the documents and letters. For this purpose, they created record rooms for every administrative institution like village tahsildar’s office, the Collectorate, the commissioner’s office, the provincial secretariats, the law courts. Records were also preserved by the specialised institutions like archives and museums. Notes and reports prepared by the district officials or the instructions and directives sent by the officials at the top to provincial administrators were still available and preserved. As the system of printing evolved all records were printed in multiple numbers and used for the proper functioning of the government department.

But even though these official records were the sources for constructing Indian History but at the same time, there were many things which official records didn’t tell such as –

• These records included only that information which officials wanted to record, which they thought is important, events they were interested in and which they wanted to preserve for the future generations. Thus, these records didn’t tell us what common people felt and the causes of their actions.

• Even though there are other sources to know about the lives and practices of the common people such as diaries of people, accounts of pilgrims and travellers, autobiographies of important personalities, and popular booklets but they are difficult to find as compared to official records. Later, newspapers were published and many issues were debated publicly. Leaders, reformers, poets and novelists began to express their thoughts and feelings in writings. But these sources were only created by those who were literate, what about those who cannot write?

• Those who cannot write like tribals, peasants, workers in the mines or poor on the streets, their history cannot be understood or created. Thus, to know about them is a challenging task.

• The images that we usually see reflecting Indian history should be carefully studied as it was created according to the viewpoint of the one who creates them. For example –in one of the images created after the 1857 rebellion, the caption below states: “Mutinous sepoys share the loot” which shows that British represented rebels as greedy, vicious and brutal.