Determined to prevent the erasure of India's past, D.B. Parasnis—a man of modest means but extraordinary resolve—spent his life rescuing the scattered archives of the Maratha Empire. Despite heartbreaking losses like the fire of the Indore records, his decades of "infinite planning and patience" culminated in the 1924 opening of the Satara Museum. Parasnis passed away just months after seeing his dream realized, leaving behind a protected, world-class treasury of Indian history for future generations.
MOST FORTUNATELY for Indian history, D. B. Parasnis stepped into the breach. He was an ordinary middle class man, without wealth, without official power and patronage, without social influence. But his heart and brain were ceaselessly devoted to saving these raw materials of history, and ultimately he did save most of them with infinite planning, patience, and versatility in the choice of means.
This rich and unrivalled collection not merely of written records, but also of other valuable relics of the past, made Parasnis’s house at Satara truly the Mecca of the students of Maratha history.
The greatest disappointment of Parasnis’s life was the burning of the Holkar records at Indore; he was for no fault of his own just too late by a week to see them.
After the Peshwas’ records (partly preserved in the Land Alienation Office at Poona, but mostly lost from Menauli), the next in importance among Maratha historical documents were those of Indore, because the Gaekwad’s State-papers are very modern, (nearly all of them dating from 1802 or later), and the old records of Sindhia are said to have been cleared away as waste paper by a former governor (subah) of Gwalior.
The Indore archives on the other hand, were full and unimpaired. Parasnis had been after these for many years, but the usual obscurantist and obstructionist policy of Native State officials had perversely baffled him. At last a very influential political agent in his retirement in England, heard of it and wrote strongly to the Government of India in support of Parasnis’s application; the screw was put from the top, and then the Darbar gave to fear that permission which it had refused to scholarship.
With this permit in his hand, Parasnis started for Indore, but while halting at Bombay to make some purchases, he received a telegram from Indore stating that a fire had broken out in the low, dark cutcha building where the records had been stored like grain-sacks, and that nearly all of them had perished. Such is the harvest reaped by ignorance and folly in high places.
But how to make his rich store of original sources accessible to the public? How to preserve them from the vicissitudes of a family’s private property and give them to the nation? How to house them in a building worthy of their importance and proof against destruction by fire or flood?
These were his anxious thoughts during the last 12 years of his life. He was himself poor and friendless. Only the custodian of the public purse could realise his dream of founding a historical museum, and he naturally approached Government.
His collection had long been a common talk in cultured circles and in 1909, the Governor of Bombay (Lord Sydenham) had paid a visit to Satara especially to see it.
Lord Willingdon, the next Governor of the province, had promised to build a museum for housing these historical treasures, and a site had actually been selected for the purpose on Government land, when the Great War came and stopped this along with many other good projects.
But Parasnis’s earnestness and perseverance were proof against every obstacle and after many years of hope deferred and anxious fear of opposition from a certain party in the legislature, the Satara Museum was at last completed in 1924.
The Governor, Sir Leslie Wilson formally opened it on 3rd November, 1925,—a day which Parasnis truly declared was “the proudest and happiest day of my life.”
Alas! it was destined to be very nearly the last also, because he did not survive this day by even five complete months, dying quite unexpectedly for one of his excellent health and temperate habits on the 31st March following [1926].
In addition to Marathi and Persian Manuscript records, he made a very useful collection of printed books on Indian history, by a careful and persistent purchase extended over many years. Two examples may be given here.
He did not know French or German, and yet in his careful thought to provide every facility to future research students in India, he bought the French Lives of the Governors-general of the Dutch Indies printed in 1730 and a German journal containing Dr. Oskar Mann’s long summary (in German) of the Majanua-ut-tawarikh bad az Badriyya, which gives the best Persian account of Ahmad Shah Abdali's rise. His hope was that it would throw light on the 3rd Battle of Panipat from the Afghan side, and he was sadly disappointed when I told him that the book ended before the Abdali’s coming to India.
To be continued
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