The OHAI Journey: The early years.

The story of OHAI began has an interesting pre-history that began in the imagination of Professor Pramod Srivastava of the History Department of Lucknow University. Professor Srivastava had done oral history interviews with freedom fighters who had returned from the Andaman Cellular Jail after Indian Independence. He was looking for a way of easy transcribing these interviews and making them searchable as this is a challenge all oral historians face. He had got in touch with Professor Michael Frisch well-known in the world of oral history for giving us the concept of “shared authority”. Professor Frisch was not just academically distinguished, he had also worked on developing oral history applications of new media technologies through his consultancy The Randforce Associates, LLC housed at SUNY Buffalo’s Technology Incubator. I myself had met Michael’s colleague, Douglas Lambert in 2010 when I presented at IOHA – the International Oral History Association’s conference at Prague. When an opportunity took me to the Centre for the Advanced Study of India at Philadelphia the following year, I visited SUNY Buffalo on Michael’s invitation. That was the first time I heard about Pramod’s work and about his dream of starting an Oral History Association in India. I got in touch with Pramod right away as I had been thinking about bringing together oral historians in India ever since I began my work in the field.

At that point, I was based at the Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology and we had received a “Connections through Culture” Grant from the British Council to hold the first Oral History Conference, titled “Oral History and the Sense of Legacy” in India. We had invited Dr. Rob Perks, Lead Curator of Oral History at the British Library and Director of National Life Stories along with Mary Stewart of National Life Stories to speak at the conference and also lead a two-day workshop on Oral History at Bangalore. It was at this conference, held on 19 July 2011, that several eminent oral historians from India spoke along with Perks and Stewart and it was here that the idea of creating an Oral History Association in India was discussed. Those who spoke and presented at that conference included Urvashi Butalia, C.S. Lakshmi, Suroopa Mukherjee, Indira Chowdhury and Debarati Chakravarty. Also present at the conference and workshop were Vrunda Pathare from Godrej Archives, Kala Sunder, Pooja Sagar, D’Souza and Aarthi Ajit who became active members of OHAI. We decided to continue our discussions over email. By March 2012 we had created a Draft Proposal and circulated it among a group of potential members, the name OHAI was also approved. A small group met on 2 June 2012 at Srishti, Bangalore to discuss OHAI for the first time. Those present included K. Lalitha, Surajit Sarkar, Deepa Dhanraj, Meena Menon, Rama Lakshmi, Vrunda Pathare, Kathinka Kerkhoff-Sinha, Indira Chowdhury, Sanchia D’Souza, Aarthi Ajit, Lakshmi Murthy and Anthony Selvan of the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library to name just a few. We decided to register OHAI after we had had further discussions. The founding members of OHAI who became Life Members were Pramod Srivastava, Indira Chowdhury, Aarthi Ajit, C.S. Laxmi, Rama Lakshmi, Vrunda Pathare, Suroopa Mukherjee, Surajit Sarkar, Deepa Dhanraj, K. Lalitha and Meena Menon.

On 26th January 2013, Surajit Sarkar, K. Lalitha, Meena Menon, Aarthi Ajit, Indira Chowdhury and Pramod Srivastava met at the historical Lucknow Montessori School which was founded by Durgawati Vohra, the freedom fighter who had accompanied Bhagat Singh to Calcutta in 1928. It was here, at Durga Bhabi’s house, which was now in a state of disrepair that Pramod had met and interviewed many of the freedom fighters who visited her after India became independent. The house now had a Museum with sketches of Freedom Fighters. We finalised the Memorandum of Action at this meeting and circulated the minutes to the founding members. Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology in Bangalore which had hosted the first oral history conference and initial meeting was happy to let us host some of our meetings at its premises.

In April 2013 we initiated the registration process and on 21 May 2013, OHAI was formally registered as a Society under the Karnataka Societies Registration Act 1960. OHAI opened its bank account on 1 July 2013 and went on to organise its first public event that same month. OHAI’s inaugural public event had Professor Pramod Srivastava speak on “What do the oral testimonies of prisoners from the Cellular Jail or “Kala Pani” during British rule in India, reveal?” and a screening of Deepa Dhanraj’s film “Kya hua is shahar ko?” (“What happened to this city?”). By September 2013 OHAI had started its first website announcing its conference. The first OHAI Conference titled “Oral History in our Times” was held in Bangalore at the United Theological College in November that year. Taking advantage of the fact that the Centre for Public History had organised its first Winter School in Public History with an international faculty, OHAI invited Professor Alessandro Portelli, distinguished oral historian and musicologist and Professor Miroslav Vanek, honorary President of the Czech Oral History Association and former President of IOHA to speak at OHAI’s inaugural conference. The conference had oral historians and students presenting their work and initiated a public discussion around the complicated relationship between memory, politics and history. The conference ended with OHAI’s first General Body Meeting and we knew that we were off on an exciting and promising journey.

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