Punjab State Archives

The Punjab State Archives is a state government archive located in Patiala, Punjab, India.[1] It was formerly housed in the Rajindra Kothi at the Baradari Gardens in Patiala but is now housed on the opposite side of the Central Library, near Patiala Court Mall Road.[1] There is also a location of the Punjab State Archives at Puralekh Bhavan, Plot No.3, Sector-38, Chandigarh, India.[2][3] It is the largest repository of archival material in North India. Its origins can be traced to Maharaja Yadvinder Singh of Patiala.[1]

Material

It is the biggest repository of archival material in North India and contains material from princely states, residency records, Khalsa Durbar records, and other records of British-rule in Punjab.[1][4] Examples of works contained in the archive include the Guru Granth Sahib, Ain-i-Akbari, and other Persian, Urdu, and Tibetan manuscripts.[5] There are also Gurmukhi texts amongst the collection.[6]

History

The records of the princely states (the erstwhile Patiala, Nabha, Faridkot, Malerkotla, Jind, Kapurthala, Nalagarh and Kalsia states[5]) were formerly housed in the Rajindra Kothi at the Baradari Gardens, where they were looked-after by Ganda Singh under the aegis of Maharaja Yadvinder Singh of Patiala, who was the Rajparmukh of PEPSU.[5][7] Thus, Ganda Singh served as the founding Director of the Archives at Patiala and was succeeded in his role as director of the archives by V. S. Suri.[5] In 1959, Khalsa Darbar records from the period of Sikh-rule were moved to the Punjab Stale Archives in Patiala.[8]

The Punjab Government later would put the Rajindra Kothi for tender. INTACH attempted to bid but was rejected as it was an Indian entity and the government claimed there would be claims of nepotism if INTACH was allowed to win the tender.[9] In 2003, records were moved to two separate locations within the city by the Patiala Development Authority (P.D.A.).[1][5] The records were shifted so that the front-portion of the Rajindra Kothi could be turned into a heritage-hotel by the Punjab Urban Planning and Development Authority (P.U.D.A.).[5][7] Records in the front-rooms/portion of Rajindra Kothi were dumped in the State Languages Department but there was a lack of space to accommodate the sheer amount of shifted records.[5] Meanwhile, the contents of the library of the State Archives that had around 35,000 books was moved to the Reference Library of Punjabi University.[5] The archival records being shifted to the State Languages Department and Punjabi University was done without any cataloguing.[1] It was apparently a temporary measure until a dedicated building for the archival material at Punjabi University is constructed.[1] Some records were kept at the Quila Mubarak complex.[5] S. K. Gupta of Punjabi University claimed some of the records had been damaged during the shifting process.[5]

The Punjab state government claims to have lost documentation and records relating to the Punjabi Praja Mandal movement during the governorship of Amarinder Singh.[10]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g "Director Punjab State Archives". National Mission on Monuments and Antiquities. Retrieved 7 October 2025.
  2. ^ Husainy, Abi (17 February 2011). "Tracing your Asian roots on the Indian subcontinent: Useful addresses in India". BBC. Retrieved 7 October 2025.
  3. ^ "Patiala - PUNJAB STATE ARCHIVES (Chandigarh & Patiala - India)". e-corpus. Archived from the original on 17 July 2017. Retrieved 7 October 2025.
  4. ^ "Director Punjab State Archives & Tourist Information Center Patiala". National Mission on Monuments and Antiquities. Retrieved 7 October 2025.
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Singh, Jangveer (28 January 2003). "Playing with Punjab's archival records". The Tribune. Retrieved 7 October 2025.
  6. ^ Dhillon, Dalbir Singh (1998). Sikhism: Origin and Development. Atlantic Publishers & Distributors. pp. vi. The study has been based largely on the primary sources. In the first instance, an extensive use has been made of the original sources in Gurmukhi. The various manuscripts in this language available in the Sikh History Research Library, Amritser, Punjab State Archives, Patiala and National Archives of India, New Delhi, have been found particularly useful.
  7. ^ a b Singh, Varinder (16 November 2008). "Royal comfort: The 132-year-old Rajindra Kothi in Patiala's famous Baradari Gardens has been restored and converted into a heritage hotel, the first of its kind in Punjab". The Tribune. Retrieved 7 October 2025. The Rajindra Kothi was taken over by the Punjab State Archives, which had preserved more than 35,000 rare documents and books, pertaining to princely states, in the building till about two years back. The kothi was then taken over by a group under the former Punjab Chief Minister, Captain Amarinder Singh, who envisaged the plan to convert the kothi into a heritage hotel. Interestingly, his archrival and the present Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal had also encouraged the project. He inaugurated it in the last week of September to boost tourism in Punjab.
  8. ^ Hasrat, B. J. (2011). Singh, Harbans (ed.). The Encyclopedia of Sikhism. Vol. 2: E–L (3rd ed.). Patiala: Punjabi University. pp. 477–78. ISBN 8173802041.
  9. ^ Nath, Aman (12 January 2025). "Why Punjab ignores heritage". The Tribune. Retrieved 7 October 2025. When the Punjab government finally decided to tender an ancestral palace of the erstwhile maharajas of Patiala, Rajinder Kothi, which housed the State Archives, was chosen. Neemrana Hotels, being a fore runner in the field, was asked by INTACH to bid for this. After elaborate studies and drawings, we did bid, but were surprised to discover that we were the only bidder from India. This bid was therefore disqualified on the strange grounds that people could raise a finger of suspicion that nepotism had decided the winner.
  10. ^ Kamal, Neel (Apr 24, 2018). "'Praja Mandal movement record now unavailable'". The Times of India. Retrieved 4 February 2025.


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