State archives, finally bifurcated

Tarnaka: The segregation of documents pertaining to the two Telugu States, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh has been completed on Tuesday, said Zareena Parveen, Director, Telangana State Archives Institute (TSARI). While the bifurcation of staff was completed in November last, on Tuesday, the officials from both the States were involved in the final segregation. Speaking to The Hans India, Zareena Parveen said, “Only 12 per cent of the documents pertain to Andhra Pradesh, especially those related to the Madras Presidency. With the final segregation now complete, there is no more confusion.”

TSARI is the biggest repository with over 50 million documents covering the Bahamani rulers, Qutub Shahis and Asaf Jahis. Officials said if there were two copies of books and debates available with TSARI, one copy each would be given to the two states. In all there are 8 lakh documents pertaining to Andhra Pradesh that were transferred from Kurnool, after the formation of Andhra Pradesh State in 1956.

To avoid confusion, officials from both sides were told to be present during the segregation, said Zareena Parveen.
Senior officials at TSARI stated that Andhra Pradesh archives could take a copy and digitize them when and if the need arises, but a majority of the documents contained information about Deccan rulers, their imperial orders and related documents which belonged exclusively to Telangana State. TSARI is one among the largest archives in the world.

A majority of the documents are in Shikasta script, in cursive form but there are not enough persons to translate the script. The documents have valuable information on the military and revenue administration of those times. The segregation of the documents was easy, say officials, as the racks pertaining to Andhra Pradesh were always kept separate and the entire set of GOs during the period starting from 1953 to 1956 have been set aside.

The documents pertaining to the Deccan since 1721 was separated long time ago. Administrative records and documents of Hyderabad and other districts of Telangana belonging to the period between 1724 and 1953 were kept in a stack area. A large portion of the documents are in Persian as it was the official language before 1885. The records from 1885 until 1950 are in Urdu and in English. With the bifurcation now complete in its entirety, TSARI is about to start the next phase of digitization of older records.