Prepare
Identify narrators and research the histories around their lives.
Delhi Archives · Dr B.R. Ambedkar University Delhi
Delhi
Oral History
Programme
Building a public archive of the city through memory, voice and lived experience.
The programme
A city recorded in its own voices.
Oral history gathers historical knowledge through planned interviews recorded in audio, video or transcription. It preserves how people remember events and everyday life, in their own words and through their own understanding of what happened and why.
Delhi Archives initiated the programme in August 2019 with the Centre for Community Knowledge at Dr B.R. Ambedkar University Delhi.
recordings were proposed as the first target for a lasting public collection.
Why oral history?
Official records tell us what happened. A voice can tell us how it was lived.
Plans, files and institutions hold one account of a changing capital. Memories add the texture of work, migration, neighbourhoods, political life, education, art and social change. Together they make the historical record more inclusive.
Whose history?
Public memory belongs to more than public figures.
StatespeopleGovernment officialsWritersFreedom fightersSportspeopleScientistsTeachersSocial reformersArtistsFarmersWorkersTechnologists
From conversation to archive
Listen
Record planned interviews with space for memory to move in unexpected directions.
Describe
Transcribe, catalogue and connect each account to a wider historical context.
Preserve
Keep voice, image and text accessible so the narrators continue to speak to future generations.
The first phase
Different vantage points on Delhi
The first proposed narrators included writer and chronicler R. V. Smith, photographer Raghu Rai, musician Ustad Iqbal Ahmed Khan, lawyer Ram Jethmalani and broadcaster Salma Sultan.
R. V. SmithRaghu RaiIqbal Ahmed KhanRam JethmalaniSalma Sultan
Cultural insight
Shared experience can reveal the city’s composite culture.
As cultural adviser, framed oral history as a way to make common experiences visible across communities and to help younger people understand the many histories that form Delhi.
Read the programme’s launch coverage:
India Today →Hindustan Times →