• The papers of once all-powerful bureaucrat, P N Haksar, a key architect of many policies that Indira Gandhi implemented, were kept tucked away, till his daughter Nandita Haksar wrote to UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi, who had to personally intervene to allow a scholar access to them.

• Historian Sunil Khilnani, trying to get an idea about India and its foreign policy in the Cold War period, got more help from a conference in Europe, where papers and scholars from former Socialist countries were present. All Indian records of the time are “classified”. Says Khilnani: “Even China has put out papers, though not the most central ones, on the Sino-Indian war. But there is not a chance of getting anything from India. It’s a scandal.”

Historians or anyone attempting to write the story of modern, democratic India run into the same problem: virtually all papers and records pertaining to policy post-1947 are not available, as they have either not been archived or not even been transferred to the National Archives. This despite rules that such records be appraised and sent to the National Archives on a regular basis after 30 years. Even “classified” documents are required to be downgraded on levels of secrecy by law with the passage of time, but this isn’t followed in practice.

However, the winds of change ushered in by the Right to Information Act may now be blowing this way. Some historians and bureaucrats in the Ministry of Culture have launched a silent but powerful campaign which they hope will revolutionise the chronicling of policy-making in India. And not just in the way records are made available but also preserved for the future. This, they say, will have a wide-ranging impact on the level of scholarship put out in and on India.

... contd.