SOURCE: THE INDIAN EXPRESS, NATIONAL MISSION FOR MANUSCRIPTS
Established
in February 2003, The National Mission for Manuscripts promoted by the Ministry
of Tourism and Culture, Government of India aims to preserve the treasure trove
of manuscripts in India. Our nation alone houses five million manuscripts,
perhaps, the largest in the world. This multitudinous collection covers a
variety of themes, calligraphy, illustration, scripts and such others. Collectively,
these manuscripts constitute the memory of India’s history, culture, heritage, value
system etc. This Mission aims to locate and document these scattered manuscripts
on record. Engaging with the past, the mission has taken the charge to nominate
manuscripts for inclusion in UNESCO’s Memory of the World register. Within the framework
of this programme, UNESCO recognizes the manuscripts as part of a country’s
heritage; promises its preservation and universalizes it through open access. Some examples of submission are: Shaiva
manuscript submitted by the French Institute of Pondicherry, Rigveda manuscripts
at Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Gilgit manuscripts at the National
Archives of India, the I.A.S Tamil Medic Manuscript Collection (1997) to name a
few.
Dato’ Habibah Zon, Director-General of the National Archives of Malaysia, said, “ ….what is at stake is the recorded memory of mankind.” Digitizing the heritage protects it against decay and neglect over time. The enduring appeal of the three Indian literary texts: Tulsidas’s Ramcharitmanas, Vishnu Gupta’s Panchatantra, and Acharya Ananvardhan and Abhinav Gupta’s Sahrdayaloka- Locana have made it to the register in 2024. Besides celebrating aesthetics and literature, it also included Bangladesh’s feminist author, Rokeya S Hossain Sultana’s Dream from Asia-Pacific entries. These entries were decided at the 10th General Meeting of the Memory of the World Committee for Asia and the Pacific held from May 7-8 in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.
IMAGE SOURCE: ECONOMIC TIMES