Sunlight over sepia

Our archives must be nourished with a more responsive declassification system....

When Ramachandra Guha wrote India After Gandhi,a popular history of independent India,two years ago,he would counsel the scholar of independent India to go to the archives. A wealth of private and public papers was there,he said,much of it un-mined and un-cited. As an example,he pointed to his use of the P.N. Haksar papers at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library to deepen his account of the Indira Gandhi years. Haksar was a key aide to Mrs Gandhi,but when another scholar subsequently sought access to the papers,he was denied. It took intervention by Haksars daughter through UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi to have them eventually made available in this case. But the incident serves as a

reminder of the official secrets default option that inhibits scholarly inquiry and the personal networks scholars are forced to tap to gain access to papers that should be in the public domain.

It is good news then that a review panel constituted by the National Archives has recommended steps to address the issue. It has suggested changes in the Public Records Act 1993 to ensure that ministries appraise and release papers to the Archives in a 20-25 year timeframe. A penalty has also been proposed for ministries/departments that fail to do so. That this basic mechanism of declassification has not been functional is a terrible indictment for a democracy. And it is in this regard that any reform must be more robust than the review panels proposals are. There needs to be some guarantee against unchecked recourse to official secrets as a cover for institutional lethargy in appraising papers and also for withholding inconvenient truths.

For this,the government need not start from scratch. Its now four years since the RTI Act came into force,and its successful use to prise out information from the government can offer ways of gaining access to archives. Indeed,the use of the RTI Act itself for this must be studied. Governments around the world have mechanisms to declassify documents without imperilling their national interest,but with enough checks to ensure that these provisions do not instill a culture of secrecy. Sad that India is such a latecomer to this debate.