The summer of 2020 did not go according to plan for me. I had planned to be in Pakistan and take advantage of the various archival sources present in the country. This time would also have given me the opportunity to interview bureaucrats from Pakistan’s formative years to understand how the state and society worked to conduct the Census of 1951 in the country. Unfortunately, a series of lockdowns, quarantines, and shelter at home orders halted most progress I could make research wise. This is an unfortunate situation that many researchers found themselves in from the start of the year. Even though I was able to get intermittent access to certain archives, it was not nearly enough to cover all the material that I wished to. In this blog, I will instead be talking about a few of the major archives in Pakistan, and how other researchers might be able to take advantage of the material within them.
The first of these are the National Archives in Islamabad. The National Archives of Pakistan are supposed to be the largest repository of official documentation in Pakistan and carry records from the Pakistan movement up to the 1980s (for now). The archives host a large collection of Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s private and official papers, and more from the leaders of the Pakistan movement. In addition, records from various ministries are available, though it is a tough task to convince the archivists to share this information with you. Though citizens of the country are entitled to these documents by law, the slow functioning nature of the archives means it is a long, and thankless task to get a hold of these documents. The easiest acquisition from the archives are definitely the vast newspaper and periodical records they keep, going back to the late 19th century in some cases.
The Punjab Archives nestled in Lahore’s Civil Secretariat provide a similar experience for researchers. The Punjab Archives are more digitally and organizationally advanced than the National Archives, and work is already under way in digitizing records from the Sikh period of the region’s history. Records date back to the 18th century, and include many official documents from the Sikh Empire, the British Raj, and in some cases the Pakistani government. It is harder to get post-independence documents here because a reorganization of the department has left many of these records unsorted, and unclaimed in various store-rooms. The library of the archives can be a useful tool for researchers, providing them with official documentation from various provincial and state level ministries from the colonial and post-colonial period.
By far the most organized archives in Pakistan happen to be in the National Documentation Center (NDC), also in Islamabad. Given their level of organization and digitization, gaining access to these archives is a touch harder than it is for other archives in the country. A registration, and security clearance is mandatory before any documents can be requested or viewed at the NDC. This repository stores documents from the Cabinet department, and the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), and as of writing, documents have been digitized from 1947-1967, with the rest in the process. The Cabinet and PMO files give the clearest and most detailed view of policy discussion and making in the higher echelons of the Pakistani government, and many of these have proved immensely useful in my research thus far.
Pakistan is a tough place for researchers, and even more so for foreign researchers. There is little official guidance with regards to repositories of information, and it is only through your own networks that you get access to these various records. If there are any scholars who wish to work on Pakistan, I would gladly assist them on their venture and provide as much guidance as I can in this process. Pandemic or not, we are all in this together!