Miranda House launches project to trace family genealogies, local histories

NEW DELHI: In an attempt to encourage people to document family genealogies, community narratives, and local histories, Delhi University’s Miranda House College on Saturday launched an academic initiative titled "Recrafting history through the Indic lens."

The project, part of a larger effort to decolonise Indian history, aims to revive the age-old practice of Vanshavalis (family genealogies) and connect citizens with their ancestral and cultural roots, an official statement said. The programme will include an annual national-level competition that invites participants to submit research-based essays of at least 5,000 words.

Two broad themes have been identified: "family and community history," focusing on larger kinship groups, and "the history of my village, town, or city," including villages that were absorbed into urban areas. Entries will be accepted over a nine-month period and evaluated by a panel of distinguished scholars rooted in Indic knowledge traditions.

Miranda House alumna and academic Madhu Kishwar, who established the Kishwar Memorial Trust (KMT) in memory of her parents and is funding the initiative, said the project would help bridge the gap between people and their past.

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"A society ignorant of its own roots cannot produce an authentic national history. To chart a clear future, we must first reclaim our past through our millennia-old Gyan Parampara," she said.

At the launch event, attended by around 200 students and faculty members, Kishwar shared anecdotes from her family history, underscoring how knowledge is often lost when genealogies are not preserved. In today's era, many are unable to recall the names of their ancestors beyond their grandparents, which highlights the urgency of such an endeavour, Kishwar said.

Miranda House Principal Professor Bijayalaxmi Nanda welcomed the collaboration, describing it as "a valuable opportunity for scholars and citizens everywhere to engage in meaningful historical research and contribute to the process of nation-building."

Organisers stressed that the initiative is open to all, not just academics, making it a grassroots effort to promote authentic historical scholarship and community engagement. By drawing upon family archives, oral traditions, and local memories, the project hopes to create a collective repository of histories that offer a counter-narrative to colonial accounts.