Indian History Websites

India's first Hindi newspaper, Udant Martand, began on May 30, 1826 — printed in Devanagari on a wooden press in Calcutta. That fact shows how much primary material exists if you know where to look. This page helps you find the best Indian history websites, so you can track original documents, credible articles, and digital archives without wasting time.

How to pick reliable sites

Start with official and institutional sources: national archives, university repositories, museum collections, and government portals. These usually cite documents, give reproduction details, and list provenance. Look for pages that show original scans, publication dates, and clear authorship. If a site quotes a primary source, check whether it links to a scan or names the archive where the item is held.

Be cautious with personal blogs and commercial pages. Some offer useful summaries, but they may lack citations or mix facts with opinion. Verify any surprising claim—like publication dates or translations—by cross-checking two independent sources. When possible, prefer sources that publish images of the original document (for example, an original newspaper page or a manuscript photo).

Quick search tips that actually save time

Use specific keywords: combine the topic and format, for example "Udant Martand 1826 newspaper" or "Devanagari press Calcutta 1826." Add words like "scan," "archive," "manuscript," or "catalog" to surface primary materials. Try site-specific searches on large search engines to target university or government domains (for example, search within .gov.in or .ac.in to find institutional holdings).

Filter by date range when you want contemporary reports or original publications. If you read a secondary article, scroll to its footnotes. Good articles list primary sources and give trackable references. Save or screenshot original scans and note the archive's citation so you can reference it later.

Language matters: many important resources are in regional languages. If you don’t read them, look for digitized images rather than relying only on machine translations. Devanagari prints, Persian scripts, and old regional typefaces appear in archives—seeing the original page helps avoid transcription errors.

Finally, use a balanced mix of sources: a national archive scan, an academic article for context, and a museum or library catalog entry for catalog information. For example, reading a scanned copy of Udant Martand alongside a scholarly note about early Hindi journalism gives you both the original evidence and the context needed to understand it.

If you want, I can suggest specific site types and search phrases for a topic you care about—people, periods, or newspapers. Tell me what you’re researching and I’ll point you to the best kinds of pages to check first.