Question

What is the best way to get birth certificate copies from India?

Answer 1

Do you have names, dates and places?

Comments

Jagdeo son of Odh Behari and Jagdeo was married to Patia

Dates would be between 1880 - 1948 (do not have exact dates and emmigration records don't show any last names either)

From Chapra, Saran Bihar India

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There may not always be birth certificates.  Sometimes all that is available is a baptismal record, and not even those if the person wasn't baptised into a Christian church.  (A family member was unable to obtain his birth record from Bombay (and it was Bombay both when he was born, and when he attempted to get the birth record), and had to resort to using his baptismal record in order to get a passport.  Friends from Madras have had similar experiences.  Their time frames were also similar — pre 1980.)

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Hi Melanie,

Thank you. My great grandfather was hindu so there would be no baptismal record. Don't know how births were recorded in those days.

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This page at FamilySearch gives some information about Hindu Pilgrimage records that may be helpful:

 https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/India,_Hindu_Pilgrimage_Records_-_FamilySearch_Historical_Records

Some of these records can be researched at FamilySearch.

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Manoj - it may be that the folk you're looking for are part of those who "kept records" by the oral tradition, so unless someone also wrote things down, there may be no records at all.  The closer you get to modern times, the more likely there are written records (the Raj and all that, and the English desire to document everything (which is great for us!)).
I got stuck on my person's siblings, and her parents, because the parents would be pre-1900, and the siblings early 1900s.  Her baptismal record (in Uttar Pradesh) was difficult enough to find.

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Yes, that is correct. Catholics (I don't know about non-catholic christians) only ever received a Baptism Certificate until the 1990s. Their births were recorded in the civil registers by the hospital, but frequently were not fully updated with parents names etc. Therefore the Baptism Certificate was the only certificate accepted for purpose of certification of birth date, application of passport etc.. perhaps even for the Aadhaar card now. This has now changed so that a full birth registration with the civil registrar is required and therefore you can now get a full birth certificate.

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Hi Manoj. If you don't have at least a year or a more accurate smaller range of years, place of birth, surnames etc. I think you'll find it extremely hard to find the records you are looking for.

If you did have that information you could contact the local municipality office or village panchayat or the local registrar who would be in charge not just of births and deaths but for property matters too.

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Hi Fleur,

Thank you for this information. I do have a persons name and dates in my ancestry line. I just need the panchayat information or how I can get a hold of them.