In his recent Independence Day Speech, Prime Minister Narendra Modi mentioned about his government’s “Gyan Bharatam Mission" that aims to preserve, document, digitise and disseminate India’s rich heritage of antique hand-written manuscripts. Gyan Bharatam Mission is a restructured form of the National Mission for Manuscripts (estd. 2003).

The Minister of Culture and Tourism viz. Gajendra Singh Shekhawat had informed the Lok Sabha (vide Unstarred Question No. 3905) on March 24, 2025 that under the National Mission for Manuscripts, 5.2 million manuscripts have been documented across India, approximately 3.5 lakh manuscripts containing over 3.5 crore folios had already been digitized. Over 1,35,000 manuscripts have been uploaded on the Mission’s web portal namami.gov.in out of which 76,000 manuscripts were available for free. An allocation of Rs. 482.85 crores has been made for the period of 2024-31.

The National Manuscript Mission (NMM), which is administered by Indira Gandhi National Centre for Arts (IGNCA) has grown over the last two decades since its inception by the Vajpayee government. The government has identified 15 major manuscript repositories holding between 12,000 manuscripts (Oriental Research Library, J&K) and 250,000 manuscripts (Acharya Shri Kailashsuri Jnanmandir, Koba, Gujarat) with which it works closely. The minor manuscript repositories are 3851 in number, which include foreign institutions like Bibliotheque Nationale de France (Paris) and India Office Library collection now incorporated in British Library, London etc. The Mission publishes a bi-annual journal viz. Kriti Rakshana, though its periodicity has been somewhat irregular of late.

While launching the National Mission for Manuscripts on February 7, 2003 in New Delhi the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had provided an estimate of 35 lakh manuscripts in the country, most of these being in Sanskrit. It was naturally an underestimation, as 5.2 million (or 52 lakh) manuscripts have already been documented. He had hoped the Mission would bring to light several “Harappas, Mohenjo-daros and Dwarkas in the future in the field of manuscripts".

Two decades later we are yet to witness the rediscovery of any “Harappa, Mohenjo-daro or Dwarka" through the manuscripts. No groundbreaking discoveries known to the public have been made. Is it because the time span allowed is too short, during which we are able to digitize only 7 (seven) percent of the estimated number of manuscripts? In the same period thousands of palm leaf manuscripts, mostly in private hands, might have also perished from sheer neglect and ravages of nature. No public awareness campaign was launched for their collection. That is, however, not the real reason.

Harappa and Mohenjadaro were discovered because there were men like Rakhaldas Banerji (1885-1930) and John Marshall (1876-1958) who could see the ruins as part of India’s history as poet laureate Kalidas could describe a mass of wood kept in front of him as lifeless tree (“Nirasa tarubara purata bhage").

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Preserving manuscripts and digitising them is the preliminary step. However, they........

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