KIS Archives

"Documentary heritage reflects the diversity of languages, peoples and cultures. It is the mirror of the world and its memory. But this memory is fragile. Every day, irreplaceable parts of this memory disappear for ever."

UNESCO Memory of the World Program

Kodaikanal International School houses a unique collection of documents which track the history and evolution of Kodaikanal, the hill station, KIS from its origins as Kodaikanal School, the American missions of South India, their influence on education, medicine and health, and the social history of the eclectic population who settled in this remote region of the Palani Hills from the first British arrivals of the mid 1800's to the tourist site of the twentieth century.

KIS Archives is a significant and valuable pre-industrial sociological and anthropological archive currently seeking grant funding to copy and preserve its memory bank in order to allow the rest of the world to access its riches. Notable alumna, Elizabeth Granner (Swavely) (Class of 44) is single-handedly supporting an initiative to catalogue and index the current collection during her annual visits to KIS from the US.

KIS has been successful in attracting financial support through Annual fund, class and private donations to restore an Edwardian architectural jewel, the original building of the Kodaikanal Mission Union, in order to provide permanent archive storage for KIS archives along with private museum and exhibition areas to make a home for this unique collection. This support, has also allowed KIS to offer a permanent Archives position to a suitably qualified Archivist who was employed at the beginning of July 2008 and who has been instrumental in discussions and plans to assist the renovation process. To date a number of preliminary renovations have been completed in order to maintain and preserve the current archive materials and work will begin shortly on the larger structural renovation of the main building itself.

Here are 2 articles for your interest, one from The British Library Endangered Archive Program and the other written by KIS Local Archive Coordinator, ex KIS staff member, Anjuli Kaul, who volunteered during her PhD sabbatical year to assist KIS with archive indexing and grant seeking..

If you know of any person or organization who can assist with this significant project, please contact KIS Archive Project at projectassistant@kis.in

The Threat to Archives

The appreciation and exploitation of archives has never been greater. But there is an awareness that archival material around the globe is in danger. At the 2004 Congress of the International Council on Archives (ICA), some 2,000 delegates from 116 countries joined together to discuss how better to preserve the world's documentary heritage.

Archives are endangered both by the actions of mankind and the forces of nature. War may wreak catastrophic effects but other man-made threats which can be more damaging. For instance, there are the problems of fragility and obsolescence associated with the physical formats to which we have entrusted our documentary heritage - such as audiotapes, glass negatives, and acidic paper. The lack of professional training, coupled with the lack of resources, can pose a threat. It is often the unintentional which is most damaging - the sheer neglect of documentary heritage for want of awareness of its significance.

If heritage collections are frequently at risk even when housed in recognized archives, how much more endangered are private collections? They may belong to private societies no longer able to maintain their facilities; or represent the life's work of one collector after whose death no further family interest is shown; or be the papers of an outstanding literary, cultural or historical figure which suffer neglect after his or her demise.

Finally, there is what is perhaps the most insidious and growing danger to archives - the increasing trend towards cultural homogenization. As more and more of the world embraces the industrial and technological revolution, and as the pace of globalization accelerates, the remaining evidence of pre-industrial societies, their history and culture, is fast being discarded.

Kodaikanal International School Archives

History of Kodaikanal International School
Kodaikanal School was founded in 1901 as a school for the children of mainly American missionaries serving in South India and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). A high school was added between 1924 and 1932 whose curriculum allowed students to enter schools in the United States and Canada. The outbreak of World War II impacted the recruitment of teachers from the United States and soon European teachers and students became a part of the growing school community. In 1972, the school became Kodaikanal International School (KIS) adopting an international curriculum in 1975 (International Baccalaureate Diploma Program), reaffirming, its Christian tradition. The growth of the school was almost synchronous with the growth of the town.

History of Kodaikanal
Until the last 150 years the Palani Hills (in the upper reaches of which Kodaikanal International School is located) in South India were sparsely populated. Dolmens mark the prehistoric megalithic age of its history. Subsequently indigenous tribal peoples (the Paliyans and the Puliyans) lived as hunter-gatherers for centuries until in the last 500 years they were joined by people from the surrounding plains who brought agricultural practices and customs. Recorded history of Kodaikanal proper begins in 1821 when the British colonial government sent Lieutenant Ward to survey the Palanis. "The Ordinance map of the East India Company, printed in 1840, does not have Kodaikanal on it . . . . " (Wyckoff: 4). By 1834 the American Mission in Madurai (connected with the Jaffna Mission in Ceylon) began looking for a settlement in the hills as a reprieve from the heat and diseases of the plains. In 1845 Reverend HS Taylor and Reverend CP Muzzy explored the top of the Palani ranges and identified what is now known as Kodaikanal as an ideal site for a "sanitarium". The first two houses built - Sunnyside and Shelton - housed the first six American families that came in June that year. Over decades more houses were built, churches, cemeteries, clubs, schools, the lake itself (not to mention the trees - pine, blue gum, wattle). Colonel Law lends his name to the main Ghat road that today connects Kodaikanal to Madurai. Initially families came during the "season" (the summer months of April, May and June), but by the turn of the century permanent residents were growing in numbers. The American and British settlers indeed created the town through the first half of the twentieth century. Many of them were government officers, doctors, nurses, teachers and missionaries. Charlotte Chandler Wyckoff, the child of missionaries and student of Kodaikanal School (then known as Highclerc after the hotel on whose premises it was built), from 1901 - 1908, concludes her history of Kodaikanal (1845 - 1945) with the words: "For this first hundred years we thank God" (Wyckoff: 61).

Indian independence and the development of tourism in the second half of the twentieth century brought Indians to this hill station in large numbers and yet the character of the town remains, with its natural beauty, absence of industry (other than tourism), old mud and stone houses and the nomenclature of its sites (first trout stream, Marion Shola, Blackburn Shola, Law's Ghat Road), in some ways, a relic of its own past. Kodaikanal International School lies in the centre of this town, literally. Employing hundreds of residents, spread out over all the mission compounds that supported it (though some have changed hands in the recent past), counting in its past and current staff and students, children and grandchildren of the missionaries that peopled the town, housing the building known as the KMU (the site of the Kodaikanal Missionary Union), its history is intertwined with that of the town.

The Archives
Both Kodaikanal and KIS are unique in that they were the outcome of American interests and needs, unlike other hill stations in India which were the outcome of British colonial needs. The history of this school and its environs is to be found in a few private scattered collections. Probably the most significant collection lies in the school itself. Housed in a room in the above mentioned KMU, there exists a collection of documentary and photographic material that pertains to the development of the school, the KMU and Kodaikanal town. A large amount of correspondence, minutes of meetings, handbooks, books dating back to 1899, old maps (including hand-drawn ones), students - work on local and global issues, and newspaper cuttings bear evocative testimony to the life of American missionaries and their influence on the development of education and medicine to which the schools and hospitals in the region bear witness.

Significance of the Collection

1. The archival materials document the history of a unique subculture of pre-industrial India - that of the American missionary in South India and his world of evangelism, education and medicine
2. This subculture lived in relative isolation, developed its own norms and practices and became an integral, sometimes central, part of the life of the school and the town
3. The lives of these early missionaries were set against the backdrop of the growing town, the disappearing tiger and bison, the arduous climb up to Kodaikanal, the sinking of the Titanic, (one of the school's students numbers among its survivors), the internment of Germans during World War II, the visit of Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first Prime Minister in 1962, and more recently, in 2003, the death (in Kodaikanal) of Adam Osborne, the inventor of the world's first portable computer. These vignettes of local/social history, if available to scholars, will become foundation stones for research or provide the missing links of their work
4. Most directly, the archival materials provide a detailed and nuanced history of K(I)S as an early experiment in American and, after 1974, international education in south India.

Vulnerability
In the current industrialization and modernization of India this archival treasure will soon be considered irrelevant.

1. There is limited coordination among the many scattered institutions that own important archival material
2. There is no local political initiative
3. The tension between missionaries (particularly foreign) and some political groups in the country may create an atmosphere in which these records may perish
4. Deprived of the support of the Mission Boards that supported the school through much of its history, KIS works hard to support itself and creates an environment for the pursuit of academic excellence and spiritual growth, with no funding available for the systematic preservation of this archival material
5. The archives or rather the room allotted for document and photograph storage, is subject to the impact of the local climate which is humid for most of the year. The roofs of our old buildings often leak, making the current storage conditions extremely inadequate
6. The lack of an archivist has resulted in the school keeping the archival area largely closed in order to limit handling of the material. This has minimized the accessibility of scholars to the potential primary sources for their work

Conclusion
KIS is also looking for grants / donations to ensure that the preservation and cataloguing of the archive materials are completed so they may be made available to researchers. Committed to the idea that all knowledge of the past is important to the future, Kodaikanal International School is seeking worthy partners in the preservation and continued good health of the KIS Archive.