The National Archives of India has a portal named Abhilekh Patal. It’s become increasingly useful over the years (especially once I learned how to search it properly). While sometimes buggy to use, the quantity of uploaded material has dramatically grown and I really appreciate the access to Indian primary sources it allows. Recently, it seems to be using OCR, which can lead to errors in titles, as you’ll see below, but on balance seems very useful and positive. I’ve very extensively used Indian sources from its Kathmandu embassy in the 1950s and 1960s.
I also now see that several files from the Indian ambassador in Phnom Penh have been uploaded. India was quite involved in Southeast Asia in the 1950s/1960s (in part because of its key role on the International Control Commission), and there is some fascinating stuff in these files. There are also some reports from Laos in the late 1960s that look really interesting. The thing to search for is “Political reports other than annual” or some version thereof – these tend to be monthly assessments of the country in question’s internal and external politics; the annual reports, by contrast, are data on embassy staffing, activities, budget, etc.
I’ve never figured out how to create a durable permalink to individual records, so I’ve copied screenshots below to help people find them. I’ve also included an excerpt of a summary of a conversation between Prince Sihanouk and Raghunath Sinha, the Indian ambassador to Cambodia at the time, in which Sinha expresses his concerns over his tilt to China.
Parts of a letter back to Delhi from the Indian ambassador:
Some screenshots of the files themselves (note the incorrect title spellings – I think this is the AI/OCR at work, but it also OCRs the entire full text so searches go to the right files)
Paul Staniland 