TAG: GS-1: ARTS & CULTURE
THE CONTEXT: The Union Culture Ministry is recently planning to revive and re-launch the National Manuscript Mission (NMM) and is considering setting up an autonomous body to help preserve India’s ancient texts.
EXPLANATION:
About the National Mission for Manuscripts (NMM):
- The National Mission for Manuscripts was established in 2003, by the Ministry of Tourism and Culture, Government of India.
- It has made significant progress in documenting, digitizing, and conserving millions of manuscripts. However, challenges remain in ensuring the accessibility and accuracy of the digitized data, as well as in addressing the conservation needs of the vast number of manuscripts.
Objective:
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- To document, conserve, digitize, and disseminate India’s manuscript heritage.
- The mission has set up over 100 Manuscripts Resource Centres and Manuscripts Conservation Centres across India.
- India has an estimated 10 million manuscripts, covering a range of themes, languages, scripts, and illustrations.
What is a Manuscript?
- A manuscript is a handwritten document on materials like paper, bark, cloth, metal, or palm leaf.
- These documents are at least 75 years old and hold scientific, historical, or aesthetic value.
- Manuscripts primarily contain knowledge content, unlike historical records that provide direct historical information.
Achievements and challenges in this:
- The NMM has documented metadata for 5.2 million manuscripts and digitized 300,000 titles, though only a third have been uploaded.
- Concerns were raised over mismatches between digitized data and original manuscripts, requiring correction.
- Of the 130,000 manuscripts uploaded, only 70,000 are accessible for viewing due to the absence of an access policy, which limits public availability, especially since 80% of manuscripts are privately owned.
- NMM has conducted preventive and curative conservation of 9 crore folios over the past 21 years.
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