BACSA, the British Association for Cemeteries in South Asia, was set up in 1976 to care for, and to record, European cemeteries wherever the East India Company set foot. It is estimated that some two million European men, women and children are buried in the Indian subcontinent alone.

Our aim is to make positive interventions in areas where there is a strong local base of people willing to restore European cemeteries, with financial aid from BACSA.  It is only by the impetus for restoration coming from the local community that there a chance that the old cemeteries will survive, and not relapse back into ruin and desolation in a few more years.

On this site you will find details of the aims of the Association; examples of the preservation work which BACSA has supported; a list of cemetery monumental transcriptions published by BACSA; publications by BACSA members; and details of the BACSA archive which been built up over the past 26 years to form a unique record of over 1,300 cemeteries based on official sources with inscriptions and photographs.

There are some 2 million Europeans buried on the Indian Sub-continent alone