Ashoka Reflections_May 2023

Welcome to interactive presentation, created with Publuu. Enjoy the reading!

Early on, we made persistent efforts to build our trust and goodwill with prospective donors. This entailed

country-wide travel. In a fairly short span of time, we achieved extraordinary success in the collection of the

papers of some notable personalities - Chandi Prasad Bhatt (environmentalist & Chipko movement leader,

Chamoli), Gopalkrishna Gandhi (diplomat and academic, Chennai), Divyabhanusinh Chavda (wildlife

conservationist & lion expert, Jaipur), Girish Karnad (film director/actor, playwright, Bengaluru), Kiran Nagarkar

(English/Marathi writer & novelist, Mumbai) Nalni D. Jayal (environmentalist, Dehradun), Justice A.S. Anand

(jurist, Delhi) and M.K. Ranjitsinh (wildlife conservationist, Delhi).

Then in 2018, came the opportunity to archive the very valuable collection of Dr S. Radhakrishnan, the

philosopher-statesman and the second President of India. The archives team made many trips to Chennai, five

to be precise, and sifted through the precious archival material at ‘Girija’, the house built by him in 1935. The

team achieved the prodigious feat of preparing a preliminary list of the huge collection on the spot comprising

writings, speeches, correspondence and photos of his exceptional academic and public life spanning over six

decades. This is one of our most prized collections and includes a rare collection of books and journals too.

The pandemic was a setback, it stalled our work as in other domains. Yet, we added 12 more collections during

the pandemic as people found ample time to sort the papers in their homes. Having started with one small

room in 2017, the fast-growing archives occupied three big rooms on the campus by the end of 2021. Last year

in April, we moved to the new premises in AC04 where we have now a state-of-the-art Archives Repository for

storing papers and all facilities for archivists to work as well as a Reading Room for scholars to consult the

papers.

Ashoka Reflections | Page 09

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94