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Some Secondary and Primary Sources on Indian History


Sumir Sharma

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The Digital Library of India provides some primary and original sources on India.

One should also check ERNET.

The above efforts are a part of on going ICT projects in India under Ministry of Communication and Information Technology and University Grant Commission.

The different links on the above mentioned portals can also help as resources in learning about different educational and cultural aspects of India. They may be highly useful for the teachers taking up assignments on South Asian region.

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The Digital Library of India provides some primary and original sources on India.

One should also check ERNET.

The above efforts are a part of on going ICT projects in India under Ministry of Communication and Information Technology and University Grant Commission.

The different links on the above mentioned portals can also help as resources in learning about different educational and cultural aspects of India. They may be highly useful for the teachers taking up assignments on South Asian region.

Thanks for these very interesting links.

Are you aware of any teacher created web based activities on Indian history?

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Thanks for these very interesting links.

Are you aware of any teacher created web based activities on Indian history?

Interesting question. I would have thought there must be some history teachers who have produced materials for their students whose students and parents came from India. I used to know a teacher called Frank Roberts from London who produced some good materials on India.

Spartacus published three short books on Indian history written by British teachers. They are not currently online. However, when I get time, I will put the one that I did on the web.

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  • 2 years later...

The Digital Library of India provides some primary and original sources on India.

One should also check ERNET.

The above efforts are a part of on going ICT projects in India under Ministry of Communication and Information Technology and University Grant Commission.

The different links on the above mentioned portals can also help as resources in learning about different educational and cultural aspects of India. They may be highly useful for the teachers taking up assignments on South Asian region.

Thanks for these very interesting links.

Are you aware of any teacher created web based activities on Indian history?

First of all I provide an update on Digital Library of India. The new url is as here. The library has an ambitious plan of bringing one million books available in different languages of India online. Some of them are already uploaded. I have given some comments on the library in my blog.

Secondly, Prof. R. K. Khanna, an alumni of Guru Nanak University Amritsar as well as HOD, DAV College Jalandhar is regularly bringing posts on Indian History especially Punjab History. I have learned about using blogging from you people. You may take pride in the fact that Prof Khanna learned blogging from me. The contents of the blog are their own introduction. I hope you may find his dissertations and write ups quite useful as they follow the rules of history writing by giving the references from where the fact is being borrowed. He may not write each post like that but even then all his posts are authentic in nature. That is other thing that he has written recently on League of Nations which I leave to you to evaluate.

Thirdly I will like to direct you attention to Arvind Gupta Toys. The link will again take you to my blog from where you may visit his site. It is one of website dedicated to school students teaching aids. If you explore his site, you will learn about his profile. He is a regular feature on UGC programmes on Gyandarshan, a TV channel of government of India dedicated to spread of education in India.

If you permit me to say it then I believe that my blogs, especially sumir-history is definitely turning up a good source on Indian history though I have intended to make a blog on Philosophy, methodology and digital history in subject of history.

I have collected some blogs and websites which I believe are work of teachers in India. But I have not fully checked them. Whenever I get time, I comment upon them on my primary blog.

I must add that learning from you people I had also developed some blogs for my students. I am not all that successful as some of the forum members are successful in using blog as a teaching tool. However, I am still pursuing it. Now, the present academic session in India is closing. In the next session I will adopt some different strategy to motivate my students. Only one of my student has launched his blog. Secondly gradually I am going to convert the contents into Hindi and PUnjabi. Actually the language is becoming a problem. Well that is a different story.

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  • 5 months later...
Sumir,

In a college class I took about a hundred years ago a text I was very impressed by was Dilip Hiro's Inside India Today (2nd ed. 1979, originally published 1976), enough so that I kept and still have the book. I find that neither the ERNET site or the DLI site

http://www.new.dli.ernet.in/

has anything at all by or about Hiro, a journalist as well as a playwright and literary author. Also an expatriate currently living in London (?), and supporting himself through what suspicious minds may consider "left gatekeeping" endeavo(u)rs......... :ph34r::ph34r:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilip_Hiro

http://www.thenation.com/directory/bios/dilip_hiro

I am just wondering what would be the reasons for the lack of any mention or citing of Hiro in the two websites? Would he be considered "too radical"? Would it have to do with expatriate status? etc, etc, etc.......

I raise the question because of what is to me the really exceptional quality of Inside India Today as an historical account and source for people interested in India and South Asia.

Thank you,

Dan

Dear Dan,

First of all I regret the inordinate delay in replying back.

I must accept that I have not learned about Mr. Hiro. Hence, I can not comment much in it. I will definitely try to get hold of a copy of his works as you have shown great interest in it.

Further, As I have pointed out earlier and I have been making this point on my blog also, that in case of Indian cyber space, there seems to be lukewarm response to democratization of knowledge, using of internet for learning and teaching purpose and also for sharing purpose. I believe this observation is definitely true in case of social sciences. In case of technical sciences, as many IITs are associated with ERNET, you find them doing some good work but as they talk too much technical things that it is beyond the comprehension of users like us who do not have training in field of computers. In case of my sumir-history.blogspot.com blog, I have marked a category Classic Books and Primary sources, wherein I am collecting books. I also bring your attention to arvindguptatoys.com site, wherein you can find good books by D. D. Kosambi and some other books also which I had not studied and which were published in 1947.

Now let me refer to the following two points.

“I am just wondering what would be the reasons for the lack of any mention or citing of Hiro in the two websites? Would he be considered "too radical"? Would it have to do with expatriate status? etc, etc, etc.......

I raise the question because of what is to me the really exceptional quality of Inside India Today as an historical account and source for people interested in India and South Asia”

As I have already mentioned, that as I do not know much about Hiro, I can not comment much. But I would like to start a discussion when, as I believe, that secondary school student in Britain (Kindly refer to http://historyinnews.blogspot.com/2008/08/...llabus-uk.html) are going to learn about the British Indian Empire history, wherein the categorization like Radical Historians, Cambridge School Historians, Subaltern Historians, Marxist Historians (JNU, Jamia Milia Islamia, S. Gopal (s/o of S. Radhakrishana) and Tara Chand) Nationalist Historians like R. C. Majumdar, Ishwari Parsad, A. L. Srivastva are debated. The revisionist aspect as being suggested by Ramajanambhomi controversy can be taken up also. Similarly, such question which I and R. K. Khanna had raised, that can there be two histories about Indian subcontinent for a period between 1909 and 1947 that is from Communal Award in Morle Minto Reform to Mountbatten proposal, one which can be taught in Pakistan and other in India. There in one can answer the question "How was it that, by 1900, Britain controlled nearly a quarter of the world?"

Believe, being a student of history, I am talking as a history student only.

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  • 1 year later...
Thanks for these very interesting links.

Are you aware of any teacher created web based activities on Indian history?

Interesting question. I would have thought there must be some history teachers who have produced materials for their students whose students and parents came from India. I used to know a teacher called Frank Roberts from London who produced some good materials on India.

Spartacus published three short books on Indian history written by British teachers. They are not currently online. However, when I get time, I will put the one that I did on the web.

Hi John,

It is really a long to time to respond to you and even more fascinating is to pick an old thread to do that.

Anyhow, I am catching up with you people and I am here in response to the query raised by Andy Walker given above.

I have also developed a website which I am going to use for my students. There will be lot of material in Hindi, which I am afraid will not be useful for people here. However, I am also be developing the contents in English for some of my students.

I am working on a different paradigm but anyhow, I am mentioning it here because somewhere I was made to tread the path of ICT after reading about the activities of the teachers while exchanging their views. It was other thing, University Grant Commission, the main body in India, directing the quality of the education in India, had been talking about the ICT in 2004 when you invited me to this forum. India is having a dedicated satellite Edusat, and a television broadcasting channel like Gyandarshan Well, I may not be using some archival material but, let us see, what I am going to do during this session with this website.

The site url is sumir.co.in

One thing more, I will be basically catering to the requirements of the students of Punjab University Chandigarh at Undergraduate level and Post graduate. Here in India, the syllabus is decided by the university. In case of India, the syllabus remains same for years to together. Anyhow, that is a different issue.

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