Dear colleagues,

As the new director of the National Mission for Manuscripts of the IGNCA, I would like to give you an update of the current situation. There are about 3.10 laks of manuscripts that have been digitized over the past 20 years of which about 52 laks have been registered and labeled in the NNM portal. 16 thousand titles have been uploaded and as soon as the metadata is entered they will be put in the public domain. Although we live in a technologically advanced age, much of this work needs to be done by people who are competent to read the manuscripts and process the data. Part of our mission is to train such bright, young scholars to carry on these tasks into the future. We also plan an international division that will work with Indic collections of manuscripts outside India to make them available for study and research by all scholars. I want to let you know that we are working on all these fronts and will keep you the students and scholars most affected up-to-date as and when new developments occur.

Yours sincerely,


Anirban Dash, PhD

DIRECTOR,  NMM, Delhi  





On Sat, 17 Dec 2022, 12:08 Shrinivasa Varakhedi via INDOLOGY, <indology@list.indology.info> wrote:
Dear All 

I am in constant touch with NMM system. Recently Dr. Anirban Dash is appointed as new Director. He may take some initiation to make the Mss available to the public. 

This is for your information. 

Regards
SV 

On Sat, 17 Dec 2022 at 7:07 AM, Dhaval Patel via INDOLOGY <indology@list.indology.info> wrote:
Dear Harry and list members,

I regret to inform that there has not been compliance to the order by NMM. I have filed a non-compliance complaint. It was heard in November end. Order is yet to be received. 

In the meanwhile, there seems to be certain manuscripts which are put in public domain by NMM. 
2. Click on Digital Manuscripts.
3. Search for the manuscript.

I checked with writing only “a” and searched with the presumption that every name of title would have at least one “a” in its spelling. It gave me a response stating that there are 27,049 manuscripts matching the query. I have not checked, but it seems that these many manuscripts are available in digital format for viewing online. If the presumption is good, this is a substantial improvement.

With best wishes,
Dhaval


On Sat, 17 Dec 2022 at 6:58 AM, Harry Spier <vasishtha.spier@gmail.com> wrote:
Dear list members,
Its now over a year since Dhaval Patel informed the list that through his great efforts the NMM (National Mission for Manuscripts) was ordered by the Central Information Commission to put all the manuscripts it had photographed into the public domain.

Does anyone know the current status of this.  Has the order been complied with either partially or in full.

Thanks,
Harry Spier

Harry Spier


On Mon, Nov 1, 2021 at 12:57 PM Dhaval Patel via INDOLOGY <indology@list.indology.info> wrote:
Dear scholars,

This information may be of interest to those of you who work with manuscripts for their research. It is regarding access of manuscripts digitized by National Mission for Manuscripts, Government of India.

I would like to bring it to the notice of this august gathering that my second appeal in honourable Central Information Commission was decided on 30.10.2021. The order is attached herewith.

Honourable Information Commissioner Mr. Uday Mahurkar has decided this matter with a well reasoned order. 

The order directs NMM to do two things.
1. Put the digitized manuscripts (roughly 3 lacs) in public domain within a period of 1 year
and
2. Allow me access of 30000 manuscripts for downloading the same within a period of 1 month.

This order would surely pave the way for easier access of manuscripts digitized by NMM to research scholars.

 I once again pay my respects to the honourable Information Commissioner for enabling access to this centuries old manuscript treasure of India. I also place my appreciation on record for NMM and manuscript repositories without whose support the manuscripts would not have been digitized, and their digital access would have been impossible.

Dr. Dhaval Patel

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Dr. Dhaval Patel
www.sanskritworld.in

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Prof.Shrinivasa Varakhedi
Vicechancellor
Central Sanskrit University
New Delhi

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