The importance of archival documentation and the state of indian salesian archives 123
As for the other usual files in the Madras archives, there are many that
contain letters from the various houses to the provincials. Particularly nu-
merous are the letters from Don Bosco Bombay (Matunga) and from Salesian
House or Sacred Heart College Tirupattur, which was for many years the
novitiate and philosophate, and later, the aspirantate of the Southern province.
There are also very many letters from the Salesians who were in the intern-
ment camps during the Second World War. The files which hold the copies of
letters from the provincials to the superiors and the replies of the latter to the
provincials are naturally of great importance to the historian. The volumes in
which the minutes of the provincial council meetings have been recorded are
certainly helpful. Another point to be mentioned about the Madras archives is
that the papers and chronicles of the two closed houses of Trivandrum and
Nagercoil are there.
The later sections of the Madras archives (i.e. from about 1965 onwards)
seem to be in order, but much of the earlier parts are in a state of confusion,
probably because the provincial house was shifted several times from one
part of Madras to another, and nobody took the trouble of putting the files in
order after they were transported. In fact, when I went to consult the archives,
I had to spend several days searching through two or three cupboards filled
with old and dusty files in total disorder, to sort out those which I would need
to consult. Those files which were sorted out are now in some kind of order,
but the rest are still in the same confusion as before.
The next most important archives which I have consulted is that of the
Salesian province of Calcutta. Since that province is the direct successor of
the visitatoria of India, established in 1923, and of the province of India, set
up in 1926-27, one would expect its archives to be even richer than that of
Madras; but actually it is not so, because it does not contain papers prior to
1934. Till that year the prefect apostolic of Assam and the superior/provincial
of India was one and the same person, namely Mgr. Mathias, who had his of-
fice in Shillong. It was only after he was made bishop of Shillong in 1934 and
Fr. Vincent Scuderi became the provincial of North India, that the provincial
came to have a separate office of his own. The papers prior to 1934 are in the
archiepiscopal archives of Shillong.
The Calcutta archives contain the important correspondence between the
provincials and the various superiors in Turin, the ordinary letters from the
houses, the letters of interned confreres to the provincial, some papers re-
garding certain controversies in the internment camp, and much information
regarding the houses of Saharanpur and Mandalay which were eventually
closed. The detailed chronicle of Mandalay written by Fr. Anthony Alessi
gives very interesting information, especially about the period when Burma
(Myanmar) was under Japanese occupation. There are also some letters and
