Official sources and their limits
Topic: Studying Indian History: Sources, Dating and Historiography · NCERT: Class 12, Ch 1 "Colonialism and the Countryside"; Class 12, Ch 3 "Mahatma Gandhi and the Nationalist Movement"
Meaning
Official sources are records made by governments, such as reports of commissions, surveys, census records and police files. They hold a lot of detail, but they show the government's view. Officials often blamed others for unrest and avoided saying that their own policies had caused it. So historians read official sources critically. They compare them with newspapers, petitions, court records, memoirs and oral accounts.
Example
After the 1875 riots in the Deccan, where peasants attacked moneylenders, the British set up the Deccan Riots Commission. Its report blamed moneylenders for the anger. It played down the role of the government's heavy land revenue demand.
Don't confuse with
- Autobiographies as sources: these show one person's view of their own life. Official sources show the view of the state.
Related concepts
- Sources of history
- Archaeology
- Numismatics
- Archaeo-botany
- Underwater archaeology
- Literary sources
- Oral tradition
- Hagiography
- Kalhana
- Rajatarangini