The Bengal Natural History Society (formerly, Darjeeling Natural History Society) was founded in 1923 and for over fifty years was an institution for the study and collection of Eastern India’s biodiversity. Prominent among their publications was the Journal of Bengal Natural History Society (JBeNHS) which ran from 1926 to 1976. Its documentation of Eastern and Northeastern India’s wildlife during a transformative period of the region’s history, was unparalleled. However, after the society was dissolved, the journal seemingly disappeared from public memory and today is little known even in the wildlife research community. While other journals of its time continue to be key references for current research, JBeNHS remains a missing link in India’s wildlife history.

Today, the largest repository of this journal within India is the Bengal Natural History Museum at Darjeeling, under the care of West Bengal Forest Department. As for digital copies, extensive online searches only lead to a few individual articles painstakingly acquired by researchers and archivists from foreign libraries or private collections.

Our project is working towards a digital archive of Bengal Natural History Society’s publications while the physical material will continue to be preserved at the museum. The publicly accessible digital archive hosted by Archives at NCBS will highlight the scientific and cultural significance of these works and the wildlife research community of Eastern India in the 1900s. And of course, we hope this uncovers interesting stories and fills knowledge gaps about the region’s landscape and wildlife from its contemporary history.

This project is supported by the Program for the Archiving of Science and Technology (PAST) grant from the Archives at NCBS.