Digitisation of India's manuscripts will help curb 'intellectual piracy': PM Modi

India is now proudly presenting before the world its heritage of ancient knowledge preserved in its manuscripts for centuries, PM said.

New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Friday that digitisation of India's ancient manuscripts will help curb "intellectual piracy", adding that the information sourced to the country's traditional knowledge system has been copied and patented by others.

Addressing the International Conference on Gyan Bharatam on the theme 'Reclaiming India's Knowledge Legacy through Manuscript Heritage' at Vigyan Bhawan here, the prime minister said the exercise is an extension of the country's resolve to forge ahead with the concept of "swadeshi" and "aatmanirbhar Bharat".

India is now proudly presenting before the world its heritage of ancient knowledge preserved in its manuscripts for centuries, he said.

Modi complimented private organisations for working with the government in its goal to digitise these manuscripts spread across the country, and said over 10 lakh of them have been digitised so far.

He said India is working with other countries like Thailand, Vietnam and Mongolia, with whom it has enjoyed cultural ties and which are home to such manuscripts.

This event is witness to the renaissance of India's golden past, he said, asserting that its knowledge tradition is this rich because it rests on the pillars of preservation, innovation, addition and adaptation.

The prime minister said India has the world's largest collection of about one crore manuscripts.

Modi said, "Throughout history, crores of manuscripts were destroyed, but the ones that remain show how devoted our ancestors were to knowledge, science and learning." He said India is a living stream with its cultural identity, consciousness and soul, and its history is not merely about the rise and fall of dynasties.

"India's manuscripts contain footprints of the development journey of the entire humanity," he said.

Modi described the country's manuscripts as a "treasure trove" and "pride of the nation", and asserted that in these ancient texts, "we find the lines of perennial flow of Indian ethos".

The prime minister also launched the 'Gyan Bharatam' portal, a dedicated digital platform to accelerate manuscript digitisation, preservation and public access.

Soon after his arrival, he first visited the exhibition hosted at the venue, showcasing some of the rare Indian manuscripts.

Centuries-old and rarest of the rare manuscripts of Kautilya's Arthashashtra and Sundar Kanda of Valmiki Ramayana, both on palm leaves, are part of the display.

"Both manuscripts, about 500 years old, as per our records, are housed at the Oriental Research Institute (ORI), Mysore, and their original versions have been taken out of our safe custody, especially for this occasion," Krishna Nagasampige, research scholar at ORI and a participant at the conference, told PTI.

A few manuscripts drawn from the Oriental Institute of the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda and another institution in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, and the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute (BORI) in Pune have also been showcased.

Modi also saw presentations made by different working groups constituted under the Gyan Bharatam Mission at the Plenary Hall.

Eight groups have been set up under different verticals, including critical areas such as manuscript conservation, digitisation technologies, metadata standards, legal frameworks, cultural diplomacy and decipherment of ancient scripts.

Union Culture Minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat shared the dais with Prime Minister Modi at the event, which was attended by a large number of scholars, researchers and other participants drawn from different parts of the country.

The three-day event, which began on Thursday, brings together leading scholars, conservationists, technologists and policy experts to deliberate on pathways for revitalising India's unparalleled manuscript wealth and to place it at the heart of a global knowledge dialogue.

India has one of the richest collections of ancient manuscripts in the world, with nearly 10 million texts that hold the country's traditional knowledge and cultural heritage.

The government has launched the Gyan Bharatam Mission as a major initiative under the Ministry of Culture. It aims to survey, document, conserve, digitise and make accessible more than one crore manuscripts located at academic institutions, museums, libraries and private collections across India.

The conference aims to build an "alliance of all custodians" of old manuscripts in India and eventually create a countrywide ecosystem for their preservation and knowledge dissemination under the aegis of the Gyan Bharatam project.