Generation 1947: A Mumbai exhibition on stories from India's first citizens

Through interviews with citizens of the subcontinent born before 1947, the Citizens' Archive of India is piecing together the social history of India in the early years of its freedom.

Mithoo Coorlawala has made all kinds of history in her 102 years. She did her master’s from Cambridge University’s Newnham College in 1938-39 when it was rare not just for Indian women but for women anywhere to be doing so. The idea of women’s colleges being set up caused such a furore that women graduates were given degrees by post without convocation at least for the next decade. Decades later, in 1998, as that college celebrated 50 years of formally awarding women degrees, Coorlawala picked hers up publicly for the first time in academic dress worn over a Parsi gara.

This is one among the many stories Malvika Bhatia and her team of two archivists have collected in more than 350 hours of interviewing some 200 men and women who had one thing in common: They were born in the subcontinent prior to Indian independence, which made them “Generation 1947”, or the “first citizens” of a free nation. Bhatia, who is the archive director of Mumbai-based Citizens’ Archive of India (CAI), a non-profit organisation, has covered the length and breadth of Mumbai in the last two years to meet these people, typically upwards of 80 years in age. 

‘I bought this Mercedes second-hand from a foreigner who was moving away, so I got it really cheap’ — Suman Desai, Bombay, 1960s

Coorlawala’s account, which shows how the world was different for men and women, came up when old-timers were asked to talk about their own realities and the changes they saw in society.

For an exhibition later this month, such episodes from various interviewees have been curated in a way that illustrates what life’s milestones — including birth, school, marriage, and career — looked like in that period. “The idea was to bring out stories that people might not actually think are worthwhile when writing history,” says Deepti Anand, co-founder of Mumbai-based heritage management company Past Perfect Live, which is a consultant to CAI.

‘...taken at my thread ceremony. This ritual signifies the last time a son eats from his mother’s plate’ — Col Deodutta Rajwade, Nagpur, 1930s;

Bhatia agrees. “People assume the archive would be only about the freedom struggle and political struggles but these are stories from society and from communities.” The political, which dominates history writing, is less pronounced in these memories. Still, there are several vignettes. One Nand Kishore Nautiyal apparently made a prank call to Jawaharlal Nehru. Another interviewee, as a little boy, was sent to meet Gandhi with a mango as a present.

The archive throws light on the prevailing prejudices on lines of caste and gender. For instance, Bhatia says one narrator became emotional while reflecting on how her grandfather had wanted a grandson instead and on how that made her feel growing up. In one of the videos, an interviewee, Asha Patravali, recalls a moment in 1941 when Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar stopped by at her father-in-law’s home in Dharwad as they had both attended Cambridge. Although the latter asked for two cups of tea to be sent out, his mother who was in the kitchen refused to do so for reasons of caste bias. “While narrating this incident my father-in-law had tears in his eyes,” she recalls.
 

Harlynn Homan interviews Kamla Bhushan

The archivists, to their surprise, did not encounter a lot of criticism of the Empire. “Culturally, you have a kind of population that is very okay with British rule because the British rule was offering that much to India. And you also have that part which was never exposed to British rule at all, so you never see too much change for them,” observes Anand.

CAI was first launched by Rohan Parikh, managing director of the transportation company Apurva Natvar Parikh Group. He had lost his last grandparent just months before the birth of his daughter, and it affected him that she would never hear stories narrated by her great grandmother. The oral history and material memory project debuted in 2017, coinciding with the 70th year of Indian independence. The group launched another project called “Dilli ki Khirki” last year in which Delhi-based oral historian Ekta Chauhan records interviews in the urban Khirki village in South Delhi. Her project, too, began with quizzing veteran residents who animatedly described to her the time when the neighbourhood first got electricity or how people spent their leisure time back in the day.
 

Mohammad Anis Shaikh shows the CAI team a ticket to Mughal-e-Azam he has saved from 1960

The interviews are quite like the conversations one might have with a grandparent over afternoon tea but made into videos, snippets of which are available on the archive's website and social media. Their idea is to use modern technology to maintain the link between generations of India. 

Their own connections and word of mouth has helped the team find subjects, and now people contact them with leads. While on holiday in other cities, the team always carries a camera and microphone and hunts for elderly citizens. Yet, the “Generation 1947” project has been limited mainly to Mumbai so far, and the archive is looking to set up operations in other cities. When it becomes accessible to researchers, which is said to be the plan, the database would be a “searchable” one. In other words, people will be able to use prompt words, names and dates to find any relevant detail from CAI's repository of audio, video, and objects. This is typically not easy to achieve.

Through the exhibition — which will combine audio visuals recorded by CAI and the material such as letters, photographs, and invitation cards collected by it — the team hopes to attract new talent and funds.

Life As They Knew It: Stories from India’s first citizens will run at Chemould Prescott Road Gallery, Mumbai on November 14-15