A digital archive can retain and reinforce ‘memories of social collapses’ because of its ability to act as ‘memory ensembles’ demanding undivided attention. In this context, an analysis of the digital archive http://mumbairiots.tiss.edu (Remembering 1992, Mumbai Riots: A Web Archive), a scholarly intervention by the School of Media and Cultural Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, http://smcs.tiss.edu, I would like to argue that this comprehensive online visual archive which traces the history of the 1992 Mumbai riots leaves ‘traces’ as attempts are made to deliberately compress and suppress those performances of dissent from national memory. Borrowing Ron Hubbard’s notion of ‘engram as a form of memory trace,’ I also argue that this digital archive is a ‘historical memory engram’ which remains as a latent memory picture, a lasting trace lingering in the interstices of times, histories and memories and reminding of an always already inherent contradiction in the Indian social psyche. In between the top-down memory of forced erasure which percolates from the records of official history, and the neutralised versions of bottom-up memory induced by imagined accounts of the event, this digital archive is a Cheshire Cat. It can be compared to Cheshirization, a type of sound change where a trace remains of a sound that has otherwise disappeared from a word.