P.R. SARKAR ARCHIVES
The mission of the P. R. Sarkar Archives is to document the life and works of the Indian spiritual master Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar, also known as Shrii Shrii Anandamurti, and affectionately called Baba by his disciples. The Archives also documents the ongoing work of Ananda Marga and the other organizations he founded.
Beginnings
Beginning in 1971, the Archives project was conceived by Tom Barefoot (Giridhara), and has collaborated with people in India and around the world to gather books, magazines, journals, videos, photos, audio recordings, hand-written documents, memorabilia and other materials. In addition, the Archives played a key role in the development of the Electronic Edition of the Works of P.R. Sarkar. The collection has also been used to produce numerous books and audio recordings of Baba’s lectures and Ananda Marga history, most recently the film, exhibition, and book celebrating Baba’s Centenary. Marking the 100-year anniversary of Baba’s advent, we are now commencing major technological updates to the Archives, and creating new ways for people to get involved.
Writings of P.R. Sarkar
P.R. Sarkar’s remarkable writings span topics in spirituality, philosophy, history, philology, science, natural medicine, and agriculture, and include poetry, drama, and fiction as well. His published works encompass more than 270 volumes in total. Working with our partners in India, the Archives has helped preserve all known early editions in their original languages. Our work supports the ongoing translation of P.R. Sarkar’s books into various languages of the world. A project commenced by the Archives, the Electronic Edition of Sarkar’s complete English-language works in now available in version 9. In addition to published writings, the Archives includes numerous notes and letters handwritten by P.R. Sarkar. These documents and many others are on display in Baba’s Museum, Kolkata.
Photographs
The photographic archive contains more than five-thousand high resolution digital images of P.R. Sarkar from all periods of his life, including his world tours. A wonderful selection of these is available in the recently published Shrii ShriiAnandamurti, a large-format 100-page printed book. In addition, the collection contains numerous photographs connected with the history of Ananda Marga and its projects.
Audio and video recordings
The P.R. Sarkar Archives houses a large collection of audio and video recordings of P.R. Sarkar in various media, all of which have been digitized. The digital collection contains more than 3000 audio and 1500 video files. These have been utilized for several projects, including the albums Baba in Fiesch (3 volumes) and Embodiment of Bliss: The Life and Legacy of Shrii Shrii Anandamurti, a feature-length documentary film.
Acarya Candranath Kumar and his wife, Acarya Rampari Devii
Oral history: documenting the life of P.R. Sarkar through interviews with his disciples
A major part of the Archives involves documenting disciples’ experiences with P.R. Sarkar and preserving these unique records of spirituality for posterity. The archive contains many hundreds of hours of interview recordings (audio and video), including extensive footage of early disciples and others who spent long periods working closely with P.R. Sarkar. We also maintain a large and ever-increasing collection of unpublished records (“Baba Stories” or Ánanda Kathá) and published spiritual memoirs. The Archives form the basis for Advent of a Mystery, an extraordinary multi-volume biography of P.R. Sarkar focused on his years in Jamalpur.
Get Involved!
The P.R. Sarkar Archives not only collects and preserves those items that are directly related to Baba, such as photos, audio and video recordings, etc, but also items related to the establishment and growth of the mission he created. Newsletters, magazines, posters, books sharing personal experiences with him, etc, are all important aspects of the Archive. If you have any materials you think would be an addition to the Archive collection, please contact us and we can discuss the best way to share these items. Some items, such as audio and video recordings and photographs, we can arrange to digitize and return the originals.
If you would like to be more involved in the P.R. Sarkar Archives, we’d love to hear from you. Here are just a few of the areas we can use some help with: Looking for materials regarding Baba and his mission that we might not already have, and people to assist in this research. Sharing relevant experience with the archival process. Are you familiar with the hardware and/or software that is used in the archival process? In other aspects of maintaining a professional archived collection? We’d love to hear from you. Helping to add metadata to the items in the Archive, as well as sort and organize new additions to the Archive. And of course, financially supporting the continual upgrading of the Archive.
Contact us
P.R.Sarkar Archives
PO Box 232 Warren, VT 05674
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