NEW DELHI: In a significant move to revive and protect India’s vast legacy of ancient knowledge, the Ministry of Culture will partner with custodians of manuscripts such as trusts, societies, educational institutions and private individuals, who are in possession of manuscripts, to work together for the conservation of ancient texts.
The initiative is part of the Gyan Bharatam project announced in the Union Budget earlier this year. According to the officials, it is an attempt to locate, document, and preserve centuries-old texts that are currently in private and institutional collections.
As a first step, the ministry is convening a three-day international conference -- ‘Reclaiming India’s Knowledge Legacy through Manuscript Heritage’, starting Thursday, to draw a comprehensive framework for the massive preservation exercise.
Over 1,100 participants, including scholars, archivists, conservators, and representatives from national and global institutions, are expected to attend the event.
Under the initiative, a national headquarters for Gyan Bharatam will be established in Delhi, including a large manuscript repository. Regional centres will be formed through partnerships with state-level institutions at different locations, depending on the collection.
“One of the objectives is to first do a survey and cataloguing of all the manuscripts which are there all across the country, then to create a digital repository. Then, to create a mechanism for extracting the knowledge from these manuscripts and disseminating that knowledge across various sections of society, depending on the type of manuscript that we have," said Secretary (culture) Vivek Aggarwal.
"There are a lot of custodians in various libraries, in various institutions, even in private collections. So, this would be an alliance or partnership which would be fostered across the country,” he said.
The conference is a kick-off conference to create an implementable strategy for Gyan Bharatam, he added.
Aggrawal further noted that the participants of the conference belong to diverse backgrounds: academicians, government and private administrators, research scholars, and students.
During one of the sessions, experts and professionals are likely to present their findings on attempts to decipher the Harappan script, which has been a challenge for archaeologists, epigraphists, scientists, and others.
According to the officials, before embarking on the conservation journey, the Government wants to have the confidence of the custodians to participate fully and voluntarily in the process. The conference is an attempt in that direction.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will also speak at the event.
All eight working groups will make their presentations before him. The valedictory session on September 13 will be chaired by Home Minister Shah.
Aggrawal said that on the basis of deliberations, the Delhi Declaration on manuscripts will be adopted.
“The Delhi declaration would be a commitment. We will try to bring in a consensus amongst the custodians of the manuscripts to work together with Gyan Bharatam. It will bring the stakeholders together because, unless and until we have all these stakeholders on board, it is an impossible task to complete the repository at the national level. The declaration is primarily focused on building that alliance,” he said.
Besides a headquarters in New Delhi, the ministry has also planned to have regional centres in states, and there will be some centres of eminence which are custodians of a large number of manuscript heritage.
“We may also institute scholars to do translation and decodification of manuscripts and then publish. The institutions can be encouraged to publish who are actually custodians because they would have done a lot of work. And Gyan Bharatam itself can do the publication work,” said Aggrawal.
To expand digitisation and improve public access to uphold and celebrate the country’s rich traditions, the government restructured the National Mission for Manuscripts (NMM) with the nomenclature ‘Gyan Bharatam Mission’ as a Central Sector Scheme for the period of six years, from 2024-2031, with a total allocation of Rs 482.85 crores.