Archives and special collections: Subject guides - South Asian Studies

South Asian Studies: Contents Page

• Publications
• Archives and Manuscripts
• Further Information

This guide aims to draw the attention of prospective scholars to material relating to South Asia held in the Brynmor Jones Library (BJL). South Asia is taken to include the present-day states of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. It is heterogeneous in character and spirit, with many religions, languages, races and cultures. Hindus are the majority community in India and Nepal, and form significant minorities in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Bhutan. Muslims are the majority in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Maldives. Buddhists form the majority in Sri Lanka and Bhutan and important minorities in Nepal and India.

South Asian Studies is now well established at the University of Hull. In the 1960s Tom Kemp of the Department of Economic and Social History started teaching Indian economic history. This was followed by John Major, of the Department of History, who included twentieth century Indian history as a component of a course on comparative historical developments. At the same time, in the Department of Theology, Andrew Rawlinson introduced a series of courses on Indian philosophy and religion. The Department of Economics & Commerce included studies of India in its teaching of development economics and banking. Professor Arthur Pollard of the Department of English broadened his existing study of Commonwealth literature in the 1970s to encompass Anglo-Indian fiction. After his retirement, this discipline continued to be taught by Owen Knowles. Lewis Hill of the Centre for South-East Asian Studies has conducted teaching and research on the social anthropology of the hill peoples of the Assam-Burma border. In 1985, Subrata Mitra was appointed to a 'new blood lectureship' in Indian politics which was awarded to the Department of Politics by the University Grants Committee. In the same year Douglas Reid started teaching Indian history under the British Raj in the Department of Economic & Social History. Most significantly, in 1990 the Centre for Indian Studies was created under the Direction of Professor Bhikhu Parekh.

The first India-related publication was donated to University College Hull by the Superintendent of Records at the India Office in London in January 1927, preceding by over a year the official opening of the College in October 1928. The book was TH Holland's Sketch of the mineral resources of India (Calcutta: Office of the Geological Survey of the Government of India, 1908) [shelved at QE 375 H7]. The BJL has since built up extensive and varied collections in support of teaching and research in this area, as was reflected in the publication of SK Mitra, D Reid and GD Weston's Catalogue of Primary and Secondary Material on Indian Studies in the Brynmor Jones Library, University of Hull (Hull: University of Hull, 1989) [(R)DS 402 U5], which contained approximately 3600 titles grouped into broad subject categories, with additional details of archival holdings. However, the most significant boost was given by the arrival of the Library of the Indian High Commission (IHC).

The IHC Library at India House in London was established in the 1920s to cater for the needs of its staff and of researchers on Indian matters. In 1990, the BJL received the bulk of the collection, comprising some 15,000 books, periodicals, pamphlets, reports and monographs. It includes valuable primary and secondary sources published in pre- and post-independent India, particularly in the fields of history, economics, politics, sociology, law, agriculture, labour and textiles. These are written in English but a small number of items are in different Indian languages such as Hindi, Bengali, Urdu and Sanskrit, with some in German and others in Burmese. The Collection has now been completely catalogued and added to stock by subject. The BJL now contains one of the largest Indian Studies collections in the North of England.

For ease of use, the publications described in this guide have been arranged alphabetically by country, with subject divisions for the larger collections. Archive and manuscript collections are treated in a separate section.