A brief note on Historical Documents Purchase Committee (HDPC)

To encourage the collectors or the  holders of the historical documents and manuscripts which they had been preserving for centuries to donate these invaluable documents to the National Archives of India, an Archives Purchase Committee was constituted to institutionalize the process of the acquisition of valuable historical documents and manuscripts in 1957. Thereafter, in 1959, the  name was slightly modified to Historical Manuscripts Purchase Committee and  finally it was rechristened as Historical Documents Purchase Committee (HDPC) in 1961.

The aim  and objective of this Committee is to acquire the documents and manuscripts either through gift or purchase. So far, 61 such Meetings have been convened , and the last one (61^st) Meeting was convened on 1 February 2016.

The Committee comprises of eminent historians, archival and language experts. The importance of the  HDPC can be  judged from its extraordinary achievement of acquiring more than 1,60,000 historical documents and manuscripts from individual venders/donors A notable achievement of the HDPC is the  acquisition of an extremely important and enormous historical collection of official Mughal records known as Inayat Jang Collection numbering 1,36,000. 

Numerous other significant series of documents of historical value have also been acquired through the HDPC. These acquired holdings procured through HDPC are extremely useful in providing help and meaningful material to the research scholars.

Some important manuscripts and collection of documents are:

Manuscripts: Shahnama, Mathnawi Gul-i- Rangin, Fatawa Ibrahim Shahi, Fatawa Alamgiri, Ain-i- Akbari, Shigarf nama-i- Wilayat, Thamarat-al-Falasafa and various lexicons and news papers.

Collection of Documents: Mathura collection (regarding Mughal grants to Mathura temples), Sandila collection (for Madad-i-Maash grants), Haldiya Collection in Rajasthani and Persian (regarding family history of eminent Haldiya family), Farmans of various Mughal Emperors, the Letters of Sir Syed Ahmad Khan  (regarding raising funds for present Aligarh Muslim University), Bhopal documents (copies of the letters of the Begums of Bhopal etc.) and so on.

Collection of Newspapers: Weekly Mirat-al-Akhbar ( Persian), Weekly Ladai ka Akhbar (Urdu), Weekly Transport Worker (Urdu),Weekly Hindustan Ghadar (Urdu), Weekly Cambay Gazette (English / Gujrati), Weekly Harijan (English), Daily Rahbar -e- Deccan (Urdu), Ranbheri (Hindi), Aaj (Hindi).