The Culture Ministry has launched a three-month nationwide survey to identify the manuscript heritage of India. In this campaign, manuscripts held by institutions and private conservators will be recorded, geotagged and digitized. All the information will be submitted on the digital portal of ‘Gyan Bharatam Mission’.
New Delhi. The Culture Ministry on Monday launched a major nationwide survey to map India’s vast manuscript heritage. This campaign will run for 3 months and is considered to be the first national effort of its kind. Its objective is to identify the manuscripts present in the entire country and prepare a systematic record of them.
How will the survey be conducted?
This survey will start from the district level and gradually move up to the state and national levels. The main goal of this campaign is to locate all the manuscripts existing across the country and create an integrated database of them. All the information collected during the survey will be made available on the central portal of ‘Gyan Bharatam Mission’. This data will be kept safe in a National Digital Repository, so that the cultural and intellectual heritage of India can be preserved.
Manuscripts of institutions and private patrons will also be registered
During this survey, not only the collections of institutions but also the manuscripts kept with private conservators will be recorded and documented. According to officials, these manuscripts will also be geotagged. Geotagging will make it easier to find out where the manuscripts are safe and what are the needs for their conservation, protection and digitization.
Information will be uploaded from ‘Gyan Bharatam’ mobile app
Culture Secretary Vivek Aggarwal said that the survey teams will be given the help of ‘Gyan Bharatam’ mobile app in this work. Through this app, teams will be able to upload information about manuscripts found during the survey directly on the portal. He said that technology will also be used to ensure that the digitization of manuscripts is done in a fixed and standardized format. This will make these manuscripts easily available to researchers, students and the general public in future.
Survey started as per the vision of ‘New Delhi Manifesto’
This survey has been launched in line with the vision document ‘New Delhi Manifesto’ released during the ‘Gyan Bharatam’ conference held at Vigyan Bhawan in September last year. During this conference, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said that this mission would prove to be “a declaration of India’s culture, literature and consciousness”.
How many manuscripts does India have?
India is believed to have the largest collection of manuscripts in the world. According to estimates, there are about 1 crore manuscripts present in the country. During this program, Prime Minister Modi had said that these manuscripts will be digitized under ‘Gyan Bharatam Mission’, which was also announced in the budget of 2025-26. He had said that this initiative will also help in preventing “Intellectual Theft”.
Committees formed at state and district level
Special committees have been formed at the state and district levels to complete this massive survey. At the state level, these committees will be headed by the Chief Secretary, while at the district level, this responsibility has been given to the District Magistrates.
Already digitized manuscripts will also be added
According to officials, the Culture Ministry is also working on including those manuscripts in this national database, which have already been digitized by various institutions and state governments. It is estimated that the number of such digital records is more than 10 lakh. By linking all these records on one platform, a comprehensive digital archive of India’s manuscript heritage will be created.