100-yr-old birth records in Cant still attract British

Rachna Khaira

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, June 5

A visit to the office of the birth and death records here may not appeal interesting to many, but the office of the Jalandhar cantonment hospital is nothing less than an amusement for some.

A few months ago, a 90-year-old retired British army officer landed in the Jalandhar Cantonment Board (JCB) office and sought some records of the pre–independence era. Elaborating, he said he had served here as a young British officer in 1945 and wanted to collect the death certificate of his father who had died during his tenure here. The JCB office immediately took out the old records and handed him over the death certificate of his father.

Though the office could not ask for his details and take his photograph, they still remember the satisfaction on his face upon seeing the changed look of the Jalandhar cantonment after so many years.

This is not the first time that someone from the erstwhile British army landed in the JCB office. Many a time, descendents of British officers who served here came to this place to get their birth certificates.

According to an employee of the department, though the office has birth and death records since 1890, sometimes they face difficulty in providing such certificates to the families as a majority of these are in Urdu.

“While the records after 1950 are mostly written in English, the ones before this time were written in Urdu which we could not understand. We have now requested to get these translated so as to avoid any difficulty in future,” said an employee. Also, he said that the digitisation of the historic records had begun and soon these could be retrieved from the Internet as well.

On The Tribune team’s visit to the office, birth and death records as old as 100 years ago were found intact in the office. Surprisingly, a majority of the records were found to be those of Britishers, as if no need was felt during that time to keep records of Indian families as well. As far as the records of the British families were concerned, the name of the parents was written, but in the column of the child’s name it was written “not yet baptised”!

More surprisingly, at some places the birth and death records were found completely blank. When asked, officials were told that due to the commencement of World War 1 and II, the records might not have been maintained during that time.

Sources said while the General Hospital had been recommended to the Archaelogical Survey of India (ASI) to be declared a historical monument, the JCB should also make efforts to preserve the historic records that might contain birth and death details of some historic personalities who played a major role in the pre-Independence era of the country.