Age-old ties between India, UAE in focus
100k Indian documents are featured in the UAE’s archives
For several centuries, India has been closely linked with the Arab world, and the Sharjah Book Authority (SBA) underlined this partnership in a discussion it held on Monday at the 27th New Delhi World Book Fair (NDWBF).
Dr Suhaib Alam, assistant professor in the department of Arabic at Jamia Millia Islamia, led the session with a talk entitled ‘Trucial States in Indian Writings and Archives’, sharing with the audience a collection of travel writings by Indian authors from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Alam said: “More than 10,000 manuscripts that contain the intercultural dialogue between the two age-old civilisations are housed in these libraries, with around 2,378 from the UAE,” he added.
From a description of road transportation systems, agricultural produce, eating habits and community life, to business documents that record travels of Emirati and other Arab merchants to India, the ties of the two countries were evident in these records, he said.
“The UAE archives and Indian libraries have a very strong relationship. More than 100,000 Indian documents are featured in the emirates’ archives in English, Hindi, Malayalam, Bengali, Gujarati and other Indian regional languages. The first National Archives of India was founded in 1891 and it is a repository of non-current documents produced over the centuries that are kept in several Indian state libraries,” Alam said.
Alam ended his talk by relating the historical milestones with the current partnership and ongoing exchange between India and the UAE, along with the rest of the Arab world.