The ascendency of India as an economic world power

The national database of manuscripts of India has been launched today by the Culture and Tourism Minister Ambika Soni on the occasion of fourth anniversary of the National Mission of Manuscripts. In the ceremony, 45 selected manuscripts have also been published as “Vijnananidhi: Manuscript Treasures of India.” The mission has been working for preserving the millions of manuscripts since 2003 and has already preserved 1.8 million manuscripts. The minister was happy with the initiative of preserving the history of Ancient India.

Daily India reported:

She said that presently, when India is emerging as knowledge society, there is a renewed focus in rediscovering the past and integrating it with the present, in an attempt to revive that perennial stream of knowledge for contemporary society in the country.

The Minister called upon NGOs, scholars and the common people to come forward to contribute in spreading the message about the value and wealth of old manuscripts in a knowledge society.

Recalling that India has the largest collection of manuscripts in the world, she said, "Today is the momentous occasion, when we dedicate to the nation, the electronic catalogue of one million Indian manuscripts," adding that the compilation of this catalogue of ten lakh manuscripts is a world record.

An initiative has been taken to make all of the preserved manuscripts available to Internet so that people can access to the manuscripts at any time. The manuscripts will be available in both Hindi and English. The address of the website is:

http://www.namami.org

The national mission of manuscripts is working aiming to preserve the ancient manuscripts and for that they have a wide network throughout the India. The report said:

The National Mission for Manuscripts, set up by the Ministry of Culture in February 2003, works with the aim to locate, preserve and promote the manuscript wealth of the country.

Its activities range from conducting nation-wide surveys to unearth each manuscript, the documentation and cataloguing of manuscripts and their conservation to training personnel in manuscript studies, and publishing important research on manuscripts.

For this, the Mission has established a network of partner institutions across the country to take its activities to the grassroots. The attempt is to involve people, academics, intelligentsia, administrators, students and the general interested populace.

This is really a good initiative to collect the manuscripts because in the way India’s past culture and tradition will be kept preserved. Making the manuscripts available to the internet is another praiseworthy initiative from the Indian government.