The Indian Memory Project is an online archive that aims to trace the history of the Indian subcontinent using images and narratives offered by families and individuals in several countries. It was founded in India in February 2010 by Anusha Yadav, photographer and designer for The Memory Company. The ongoing project attempts to convey in a unified way the history of the subcontinent, its experiences, humanity, choices and its circumstances that have made the region and its people who they are. It is also intended to promote greater tolerance, understanding, and capacity for learning among the citizens of India, its neighbouring countries and the world.
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Yadav runs the project from Mumbai. There is no restriction on nationality and origin of the contributors, but only contributions related to the Indian subcontinent are accepted.
The project employs photographs, contextualised narratives and letters found in personal archives, highlighting themes such as social transformation, new professions, partition, education, war, marriage, religion and culture, and the impact they had on families living during these times. With personal images serving as evidence, each post on the archive reveals information about people, families and ancestors, cultures, lifestyles, traditions, choices, circumstances and thereby consequences. Indian Memory Project has received images from families and people based in Canada, USA, Ireland, Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, United Kingdom. Currently the oldest photograph is from 1860.
The website also provides a list of books curated by the Memory Company on subcontinental histories.
Letters of Love Project
The project is a crowdsourced book on love letters and postcards received, sent or found, written by hand or typewritten, before the era of computers, and before the year 2000. The project accepts photographs and letters from before 1991. Entries are accepted from any country, nationality or region.