Pandas of Haridwar digitise records of death

Aniruddha Kumar Jha, a panda (genealogist) in Haridwar who has maintained records of thousands of Hindu families from across India for 35 years in Devanagiri, has decided to digitally preserve them. Jha, the 53-year-old who would meticulously jot down data in 300-year-old ledgers, said, “We have to move forward with the times. Records can be maintained better if preserved digitally.”

Jha has been maintaining handwritten records of family members of the deceased since the age of 19. He normally sits in his 6 ft by 6ft office on the ghats of the Ganga River in Haridwar and writes them down on scroll. Owner of a hotel, Jha has done well to ensure his future generations are economically sound.

He is one of the 2,500 genealogists who regularly update family registers (bahis) of people who come to Haridwar to perform the last rites of their loved ones. Pandas are usually found at Har Ki Pauri, jotting down recent births, deaths, and marriages.

A recent dip in footfall at Haridwar to perform last rites has prompted pandas like Jha to digitise death records.  It won’t be long before these handwritten records fade into oblivion. Soon, death records will be available online. 

These 300 years old scrolls sometimes have handwritten data in both Devanagari and Urdu. (Photo courtesy - Cheena Kapoor)

“Over the years, the custom of visiting Haridwar to update family ledgers is slowly dying,” says Mahendra Kumar, a panda who has been maintaining records since the 1980s. “People are now moving abroad and forgetting about these centuries-old customs. Most of them do not even know the names of their great-grandfathers or their original ancestral village. If the records are digitised, people can access them online from any part of the world,” says Kumar. 

Most of these handwritten scrolls have been maintained by over twenty generations of panda, making it a popular family business in the region. Nowadays, pandas are in charge of designated registers categorized as original districts/villages of a particular family’s ancestors. 

These 300 years old scrolls sometimes have handwritten data in both Devanagari and Urdu. (Photo courtesy - Cheena Kapoor)

Aniruddha, for instance, received the family scrolls of Bhagalpur, and from parts of Punjab and Haryana after his father decided to divide his possessions among his sons. “We have been in the business for over 14 generations and have bahis (ledgers) older than Tulsidas’ Ramayana. Most of the older records were written on bhojpatra (leaves of the birch tree) and have been destroyed by moths. We have begun to transfer older records to new scrolls. A few pandas have even begun digitising records, and have thrown the old scrolls into the Ganga.”

According to the Genealogical Society of Utah, Hindu family records dating back to 1194 were once maintained by these Haridwar genealogists. 

An 800 years old scroll has handwritten data written in both Hindi and Urdu. (Photo courtesy - Cheena Kapoor)

These records have been made available to family members on the society’s website. In fact, the society has been maintaining these records since 1981. In a rare find, a record from 1264 was found recently in an old trunk in the ancestral home of Aniruddha in Jawalapur, which is about 8 kms from Haridwar, by our reporter.

Two men perform last rites of their father on the ghats of river Ganga in Haridwar. Kushavarta Ghat is  where Hindus perform last rites for departed souls. (Photo courtesy - Cheena Kapoor)

For families who have converted to other religions, their records are not updated. 

Lachhi Ram, who has been a panda for 26 years, said, “There was a time when people used to come to us to update their family ledgers in order to settle family and property disputes. 

Things have changed now. Religious conversion and migration has reduced dependency on this process.”