Creation of HC Archives

Harish Kapadia
The Himalayan Club, since its inception in 1928, has moved to various places. Initially formed in New Delhi, it later moved to Kolkata. Kolkata served as the club’s headquarters until mid-1960s when a shortage of member-volunteers, caused a crisis in the management of Club affairs. Soli Mehta, who was posted there from Mumbai, carried on with the Club’s activities and published some volumes of the Himalayan Journals for few years from Rishra, in West Bengal. Finally, it was decided to move the club to Mumbai, (then Bombay). In Bombay too, the Club had no premises of its own and for decades it operated from the office of Jagdish Nanavati, who was the Hon Secretary for more than two decades and followed as the President of the Club for almost a decade. When he changed the premises of his office, all the Himalayan Club related material moved with him. When he retired from work, all these resources were packed into boxes and stored at the residence of Rajesh Gadgil. In 2006, the Himalayan club acquired its own premises and slowly all the material was shifted to this new office. Unfortunately, in all these movement, a large part of the material was scattered, damaged or even lost.
However, 2006 the club took over the responsibility of handling and managing all related affairs and resources including most papers of importance like the original documents of the first Committee minutes, Memorandum of Association, Rules and Regulations and list of members.

The Himalayan Journal has always been the main activity of the club in its 90-year history. Production of HJ has generated large amounts of paper before the digital age. More than 100 articles were received for each HJ volume. The editor selected about 40 articles and Notes to be printed with photographs. Soli Mehta (10 HJ Volumes) and later Harish Kapadia who edited the HJ for more than 37 years gathered all the material received, whether used or not. They were sorted after the publication of each the HJ volume, bound in albums, all the photographs received were pasted in an album. Captions to each picture written by volunteers, especially Kaivan Mistry. These papers and photograph albums were stored as “Editors papers of the Himalayan Journals”. Each HJ volume generated almost four such hardbound volumes.

In those days the editors kept in touch with contributors and editors of other Journals of the world, by post (now snail-mail!). Thus, many letters were exchanged, many with leading author-mountaineers like Gurdial Singh, Trevor Braham to Chris Bonington and many other younger climbers till 1990. Each editor established personal contacts with different editors of the other journals like H. Adams Carter of the American Alpine Journal and several editors of the Alpine Journal (London). All these correspondences were systematically stored in albums. With advent of emails, further material took a digital shape and was stored on hard disks. However, the paper material amounting to more than 200 albums needed to be looked after for historical importance.
Moreover, Club had in its possession many other important materials like photographs of historic importance, records of Club programmes, studies by Jagdish Nanavati of more than 40 different expeditions, correspondence by Soli Mehta, (from Kolkata and later from Sudan and Nigeria where he was posted), and Harish Kapadia, all for work related to the Himalayan Journals. The Hon Secretary also generated volumes of correspondence but most of it was however lost in transit. The club also received several photographs and material from senior members like Gurdial Singh, Aamir Ali, photo albums donated by Bill Aitken.

In the year 2018, the club first discussed scanning and digitising all this material. It was a major project and after considering many factors a contract was issued to undertake the work and finance was arranged. The job once started, at the club office, went on for almost a year. All the albums were cut- open to scan. Each letter was scanned as per the volume and photographs were scanned with captions where available. Major scanning was of all the volume of the Himalayan Journal, Nos 1 to 73, The Himalayan Club Newsletter, no. 1 to 61, many other journals in the club library like Indian Mountaineer, the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute journals, Himavanta, Climbers Club Bulletin, and the Sahyadri Bulletin were scanned. These ultimately filled up large amount of digital space, which were rearranged and the process of shifting and sifting them will take some time before everything is complete. However, the club now has enviable record of all its Himalayan Journals, Newsletters, Committee Minutes, Members Application forms, Annual Reports and various other matters. Archive contains many expedition reports sent by many members and others and these reports are now available in digital format. Some rare books, manuscripts and unpublished works like from F.M. Bailey, are available too. Some samples of different matters available in the archives ar displayed herewith. Full list is given at the end.

Originals of digitised material were rebound and are waiting for a new home. Total scanned material amounted to more than 60,000 pages and hundreds of photographs.

The concept and program for digitisation was started by the current President of the club, Tanil Kilachand, with Chetan Desai and Harish Kapadia to start with. Many technical specifications were discussed, finances arranged, and contract awarded. Once the actual work stared, it was supervised by Harish Kapadia, with Ratnesh Javeri who looked into the important technical aspects and financial matters. It is now intended to host all the material on a separate website of the Club, if possible, as done by most other clubs in the world. Else, the capacity of the current website of the club will be extended to accommodate these Archives.

With the Phase 1 of this project now completed, the Himalayan Club is up to date in terms of preserving all its records and studies in the digital world.
It is intended that the Himalayan Club archives will n in addition to be the only complete record of the activities of the club, will also be a major source of all Indian documents and reports related to the Himalayan activities. It is sincerely hoped that all researchers, climbers and history buffs will use this digitised material freely for mountain related reference, making the whole exercise and labour worthwhile. That is, after all, what the Himalayan Club is all about.

The Himalayan Club Digitisation project, Items scanned
1. Various expedition reports of more than 200 expeditions.
2. The Himalayan Club Newsletters: (1928 till 2000): Nos 1 to 61
3. Himalayan Journals Volume 1 to 73 (1928 to 2018)
4. Indian mountaineer (1978 to 2019), volumes 1 to 54.
5. Jagdish Nanavati study papers: more than 35 expeditions expedition reports with sketch-maps, photos and comments.
6. Several map catalogues of Survey of India.
7. The Sahyadri Bulletin no 1 to 5
8. Himavanta, published from Kolkata.
9. Editor’s Papers- For each Volume: correspondence by each editor, articles and reference. More than 100 books.
10. Harish Kapadia papers: expedition records, correspondence and working for each expedition- about 40 books.
11. Unpublished books like Shaksgam valley, Planes flying across the Hump, reports by F. M. Bailey, Climbers Club Bulletin, and many more.
12. Articles of special interest to the Himalaya from The Geographic Journal, and many other sources.
13. Hundreds of pictures received for the Himalayan Journal and as gifts from members are scanned. They are being classified and captioned which will be ready in years.

In addition to the above there are items of interest for the Himalayan club: (A) Founding papers, (B) Managing Committee minutes from 1928 onwards, (C) Annual Reports and Accounts of the club for several years, (D) Copies of the Application forms made by members to join the club in hundreds,