India has the world's greatest history. Its history is not just ancient, it has some of the world's most significant documents and monuments – in the fields of science, philosophy, and art. 

Greece (and Europe, more generally) pales into insignificance in comparison with India. Greece, for instance, has merely one tiny city-state – Athens to show. India, on the other hand, has 1,000 Athens. 

India's history therefore represents a very significant share of world history and the whole world must be concerned about the preservation of its records. 

Yet, India also happens to have a climate (hot, humid) which destroys documents very quickly. And so it is crucial to use the latest technologies to preserve key records from our past.

As Commissioner for Arts and Culture in Meghalaya in 1999/2000 I visited the National Archives in Delhi to discuss options for preserving the records of Assam. While I won't go into details here, below are extracts from a FB conversation today with Harsh Vora, that show why it is literally impossible to preserve records in socialist India.

Harsh

India has VERY RARELY shown regard for preserving her history. This fact is now evident in the degenerate condition of the 450-year old manuscript of 'Arthashastra' (Chanakya's treatise on economics and statecraft) at the Mysore library – no doubt we have so scant knowledge of our past! 

Link: http://bit.ly/v8CFUA

My response (slightly edited):

Harsh, when I was Commissioner for Arts and Culture in Meghalaya I found similar issues with government records from British times (Shillong was capital of Assam since mid-1800s). Most records have been lost.

The truth is that our "educated" people are focused on getting educated and FLEEING India. Or at most they are happy to work in flashy high paying jobs in the private sector in India.

There is VIRTUALLY NO ONE interested in India's history, or India's historical documents. That is because such work is a lowly-paid dreary dead end.

It is almost IMPOSSIBLE in socialist India to get funds for preserving old records, but it is easy to get thousands of crores of rupees worth of subsidies for industries, or for "rural development" (most of which end up in the pockets of corrupt politicians).

Socialism is insidious. It has many effects, all of them negative.

Therefore there is no point blaming anyone but the Indians themselves, who both elect such socialist rascals to power and refuse to offer themselves up for election.

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