The division of Punjab archives

Dividing records

Partition required the new administrations of East and West Punjab to decide how to manage records that had served an undivided province. A catalogue description of Punjab Partition Committee proceedings lists duplication and transfer of state records among the subjects discussed in 1947. The catalogue establishes the kinds of decisions documented in the volume; reading the minutes is necessary to establish the outcome for a particular record series. Records were practical tools for government as well as evidence of the past. Their movement and accessibility can therefore affect both administration and later historical research.[1]

In a February 1950 parliamentary answer, India’s education minister Maulana Abul Kalam Azad reported that about 21,000 district files for Karnal, Ambala and Simla and 132 rolls of Khalsa Darbar records had been allocated to Indian Punjab and transferred to the Historical Record Office at Simla. He also reported that a share of books and museum objects remained to be physically divided and brought from Lahore. This is a dated government account of particular allocations and transfers, not an inventory of everything held on either side or a guide to where those files are kept today.[4]

Collections in Lahore

A Sindh Archives profile of the Punjab Archives describes it as a government repository containing administrative correspondence and other records from the region. The profile identifies material connected with the Punjab government and territories beyond present-day Punjab. A repository description helps researchers locate collections, but does not prove that every record remained together or that all material is presently accessible. Catalogues, finding aids and direct enquiries are needed to establish the location and condition of a particular file. Researchers should distinguish the history of a record from that of the institution that now holds it.[2]

Archives and museums

Historian Mrinalini Venkateswaran examines the making of museums in East Punjab after Partition. She notes that a share of Lahore collections, including material from the Central Record Office as well as the museum, reached Amritsar by the end of 1949. The study places these transfers within disputes and decisions about heritage and regional identity. Museum objects and archival files are different kinds of collections, even where both were discussed as assets of the former province. Their histories can be reconstructed through inventories and correspondence, while acknowledging losses, separations and gaps in surviving documentation.[3]

The accounts leave a timing question. Venkateswaran describes East Punjab’s share from the Lahore Museum and Central Record Office as reaching Amritsar by the end of 1949, whereas Azad’s February 1950 answer says some allocated books and objects remained in Lahore. The descriptions may cover different groups of material; matching the inventories would be necessary before treating them as a direct contradiction or a single completed transfer.[3][4]