South Asian History and Culture is a project to build the largest full text repository of quality South Asian books, magazines, reports, historical journals, video, audio, zines, newspapers, magazines, letters, diaries, and other primary source materials. The database provides in-depth, advanced searching, with centralized access to over 500 organizations, 350,000 documents, and millions of pages scattered across the internet.

With South Asian History and Culture, you can…

  • Use the largest full text repository of its kind to find historical and cultural materials from South Asia.

  • Access over 350,000 quality items from this ever-growing resource, from thousands of collections at hundreds of institutions.

  • Help to build new digitized collections, with ten percent of sales going toward this effort.

  • Search the materials easily, using local language interfaces and mobile access.

  • Support free access for institutions in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, and Sri Lanka.

  • Receive a copy of the collections we’ve digitized if you purchase perpetual rights.

Our community

We extend our heartfelt appreciation to our dedicated 6-member editorial board, whose expertise and engagement have greatly contributed to our projects. 

  • Partha Sarathi Das, PhD, National Library of India, Ministry of Culture, Government of India New Delhi, India

  • Swaguna Datta, PhD, Jadavpur University, West Bengal, India

  • William Gould, PhD, Professor of Indian History, University of Leeds, England

  • Aruna P. Magier, PhD, New York University, New York, NY

  • Alka Rai, PhD, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar University, Delhi, India

  • J. Shivarama, PhD, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, India

Today South Asia Commons is used at more than 1,200 institutions around the world, with a majority of them located in South Asia. Thousands of scholars, students and faculty have registered as individual members. You can too at this URL.

Work with us!

Suggest sites for us to index
Please let us know of content and websites you’d like us to include in our index by contacting us.

Suggest collections for us to digitize
Do you know of major collections of South Asian material that need to be digitized? Let us know!

License your materials for the Commons
Do you own South Asian historical or cultural materials? License them to us for South Asia Commons. Contact our editor for details.

Stay informed!
E-mail us here to stay informed.

 

Access options

South Asian History and Culture and South Asia Archive are available for either by subscription or purchase. Contact us for details.