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Preserving collective history
What began as an idea in 2008 to acknowledge and popularize the people’s history of Partition has been accomplished through the founding and building of The 1947 Partition Archive. Today, over 11,500 memories of Partition witnesses have been preserved. As a result, unlike in 2008, Partition is no longer a forgotten memory today, and witnesses’ plight is being heard the world over. Through the sharing of thousands of witness accounts millions of times over the last decade via social media and other digital means, the “people’s history” of Partition has been established and is now a growing and active area of research as well as new documentation efforts. We are proud to have accomplished our first goal of popularizing recognition for this important chapter in our global history. We look forward to working with you in ensuring that the lessons of Partition are taught in textbooks around the world, so that we may avoid repeating history.
Coming this fall to Berkeley in a collaboration between The 1947 Partition Archive and Pacific Attrocities Education – Forgotten
August 31, 2024
Coming this fall to San Jose in a collaboration between The 1947 Partition Archive and Pacific Attrocities Education – Forgotten
August 17, 2024
A panel discussion and student event commemorating the release of 10,000 Memories, the book.
April 26, 2023
Digital Public Histories Curator
Founder & Director
Digital Oral History Archivist and Archives Educator
Constituency Communications Manager
Human Resource Specialist
Guneeta Singh Bhalla is the founder and executive director of The 1947 Partition Archive. In 1947 her father's family migrated from Lahore to Amritsar on August 14.
Dr. Raashina Humayun is an innovation and engineering leader at Lam Research Corporation. She is passionate about innovation and education and also supports several social and environmental causes.Raashina’s grandfather was a freedom fighter in the quest for Independence from British Rule.
Mr. Eliot Sun is a University of California at Berkeley alumnus with degrees in Mathematics and Economics. He co-founded Kloudless, Inc. and lead the company in its mission to make it easy for developers to build integrations. He has supported The 1947 Partition Archive probono over the past decade in developing its cloud-based oral history documentation platform infrastructure.
Our advisory councils are project-based for focused support. Advisers come from diverse backgrounds and are lending their knowledge, time and expertise in helping towards two aspects of our mission
Task Force on developing oral history accessibility
Building The 1947 Partition Archive is a multidisciplinary effort requiring support from senior advisers with diverse expertise.
We are immensely grateful to our founding donors for laying the foundation for this people-powered oral history archive.During these initial stages of our growth, we seek to work closely with Founding Donors who are not only recognized for life, but have the opportunity to increase their impact and legacy after the initial contribution period is over.
The Seed Level Founding Donor Drive kickstarted our work in the early days
The Archival Level Founding Donor round was launched to fund the important work of documenting at least 10,000 oral histories interviews
Museum level founding donors will be funding important public history work that is critically relevant to our current times, and lay the groundwork for our first physical memorial spaces
The 1947 Partition Archive is funded by thousands of community members like you, from across the world, who range in age and have contributed gifts of all sizes. As the archive has grown, it has garnered support from institutional donors as well. Major donors include (in alphabetical order)
The 1947 Partition Archive (or, “The Archive”) is a collection of life stories recorded on video (and sometimes audio) from those who witnessed the 1947 Partition of South Asian States. The Archive is built for people, by people. The stories are gathered and shared by anyone who wishes to share. You too can record and submit a story. Click here to learn more about us.
The Archive is funded by individual people from around the world through cash donations as well as pro-bono and volunteer services. The Archive has also received grants from a number of Foundations, and invites more partnerships with art and culture foundations and corporate sponsors.
Researchers interested in doing field work involving the recording of Partition witness oral histories are encouraged to apply to our Story Scholars program. Story Scholars are granted a stipend from The Archive to collect stories within a certain geographical location, not already being served by another Story Scholar. Learn more and see the application here.
We conduct our interviews wherever the interviewee is most comfortable, often in their own homes. Learn more here.
The interviews can be conducted in any language, according to the interviewee’s preference. Any language they choose is acceptable.
You do not need any special knowledge to share your story, only an eyewitness account of your personal experience. Learn more here.
Anyone anywhere is encouraged to join us in collecting stories and building The Archive, as a Citizen Historian. We only require that you take a brief online course before you collect and submit stories. Sign up here.
Presently raw, unprocessed footage is available for access to professional researchers and their students, for educational purposes, as it is deposited in The Archive. Apply for access here.
Presently, our collected works are being made available in limited capacity via our homepage. A random selection of story summaries with photographs are also made available through our Facebook page. The full works will be made available on a future date (approximately 2016) for educational purposes to academic researchers, students and the public. Stay tuned for more information or contact us to learn more. Subscribe to our newsletter to keep up with future developments.
Interviewees and their families may request copies of their interview DVD’s here.
We have created a comprehensive list of books and other learning resources on Partition available on the Partition Library portion of our website. Click to view.
Two quick online resources include:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_of_India
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGiTaQ60Je0
You can click here to sign up for an interview.
You may request a DVD online by 1) filling out a simple form here and 2) making the donation suggested on the form online. We request a donation because it takes a lot of resources and raw materials to bring you the DVD. In the past, volunteers have covered these costs. However, with so many DVD requests, the costs began to overwhelm the volunteers. Hence we now ask those requesting DVD’s to provide a small donation to cover the material and equipment cost for creating high quality DVD’s of their interviews. Please be mindful of the volunteer effort when requesting your DVD. For your information, please see the numbers below.
Here is what it takes to make your DVD:
Yes, you can learn to conduct an interview by signing up here.
You may help them sign up using the form listed here, or conduct the interview yourself. Because we are currently developing a broader geographic outreach, the best way to archive a story is to record it yourself!
The Archive does consider other submissions on a case-by-case basis. Please contact us.
All stories submitted to The 1947 Partition Archive by Citizen Historians are currently hosted and preserved in a digital cloud. Hence there is no particular physical location and no particular city or country that plays host to the stories. An international cloud storage service provides hosting for the stories.
In order to bring the stories to the public, we must build the infrastructure carefully. Presently, numerous volunteers are researching and developing exactly this. As with anything however, this will require more time and resources, which we are currently gathering. We expect this process will take about three years. You can help contribute to this effort by making a donation, or volunteering.
The 1947 Partition Archive records life stories shaped by Partition. Witnesses are waiting right now to share their incredible and historic memories. Will you donate now to help us reach one witness?
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