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Bhubaneswar, August 9: The need to preserve, document and disseminate information pertaining to the history of Quit India movement was highlighted at its platinum Jubilee celebration Tuesday. Development Commissioner R Balakrishnan, the chief guest at a function organised on the occasion by State Archives, said the Quit India movement was the perfect example of mobilisation of people, considering that India held a great deal of diversity.
“With its many tribes and diversity in language, socio-economic conditions and political diversity, standing up together was a big achievement for the nation. Therefore, we need to collate all available information to immortalise the movement. These documents are our heritage and help us build layers of history,” he said.
The government, according to Balakrishnan, was planning to create an institutional arrangement for preservation of heritage in association with international institutions such as Chicago University.
“The Chicago University had brought out an encyclopaedia on Purnachandra Raghunath’s book — the only book whose seven volumes have been completely digitised and given it free access. Similar activities are needed to digitise more than 4,000 books printed between 1900 and 1951. Anything that is not copyrighted should come in the public domain and belong to people,” Balakrishnan said.
He believes the work would take the objective of Public Libraries Act 1972 forward. “Archival and documentation would be prioritised and the government will do what is to be done in this direction. Resources are not a constraint in documenting and preserving heritage. The archives have many documents that only need to be brought out in the public domain,” the development commissioner said and went on to stress the need for new ways of archival.
“To access a document from the archives now, one has to physically visit the archive. It is difficult for people from, say, London or Mumbai to come all the way here to access these. So access to documents in the archives must be provided in the electronic form,” Balakrishnan added.
Book released
A book titled ‘Quit India Movement: A Documentation of Archival Sources’ was released at the platinum jubilee celebration of Quit India movement at State Archives Tuesday. The book highlights the contribution of Orissa to the movement. It includes documents such as reports and letters submitted by police officers on public protests, baton charge, firing, public meetings and arrests that happened in different parts of the state. “The book highlights different aspects of the movement such as the events that led to police firing at Koraput, Nabarangpur, Nimapada, Nunia, Erom and such other places,” state culture secretary Manoranjan Panigrahi said. The event also marked the beginning of a 10-day photo exhibition comprising portraits of personalities who played key roles in the Quit India movement. It also includes photographs of letters and reports of the movement. A seminar on the contribution of Oriyas to the movement featured experts, historians and scholars from different college and universities.
