Born into a modest farming family in Chinakurali village, Karnataka, 78-year-old Anke Gowda knows what it means to grow up without easy access to books. He studied only up to pre-university before financial constraints briefly pushed him to take up a job as a bus conductor, before he finally started working as a clerk. But books had already begun shaping his life. Today, a lifelong devotion to books has transformed a sleepy village near Srirangapatna into home to one of India’s largest free libraries, Pustaka Mane, which houses more than 20 lakh books, ranging across literature, science, philosophy, and rare historical manuscripts.
Gowda devoted nearly 70 per cent of his salary to buying books. His obsession soon consumed every inch of his home. Money was perpetually tight. To support his passion, he bought four cows and sold milk. Eventually, he sold his land in Mysore to continue expanding his collection.
What began as a personal archive slowly evolved into a monumental public resource, earning him a Padma Shri. When space became impossible to manage, the Bengaluru-based Khoday Foundation stepped in and built a sprawling library, where the books were finally moved.
Today, the library houses more than 5,000 dictionaries and over five lakh rare foreign books. “We have 2,500 books on the Bhagavad Gita, 3,000 books on the Ramayana, 2,500 books on Mahatma Gandhi and freedom fighters, along with different versions of religious texts,” he says. What drives him is the belief that books should remain accessible to everyone. “If there is something you love, it never feels like a burden,” he says. “I only ask people to return the books to the same place from where they took them.”
