The National Mission for Manuscripts (NMM) was created by the Department of Culture,Government of India in the year 2002, the Mission came into existence on 5th February 2003.
The Objectives of the National Mission for Manuscripts are as follows:
i) To facilitate conservation and preservation of manuscripts through training, awareness and financial support;
ii) To document and catalogue Indian manuscripts, wherever they may be, maintain accurate and up-to-date information about them and the conditions under which they may be consulted;
iii) To promote ready access to these manuscripts through publication, both in book form as well as in electronic form;
iv) To boost scholarship and research in the study of Indian languages and manuscriptology;
v) To build up a National Manuscripts Library at IGNCA.
The end result as envisaged would be to enhance manuscripts access, improve awareness about the cultural inheritance and encourage their use for educational and research purposes and lifelong learning. In the 10th Five Year Plan spanning from 2002-07, the Mission was required to focus on cataloguing, conservation and preservation and improve access to the users. It was envisaged that after assessing the results achieved and evaluating the efficacy of the strategy employed during the 10th Plan Period the scope of the Mission would be extended/modified and fresh estimates would be made for the 11th Plan period.
The evaluation of the achievements and strategies of the Mission was done by EdCIL (India) Ltd. and the final report was presented on 27th February 2009 where it was recommended that “the National Mission for Manuscripts in the course of last five years has thus made steady progress in all the aspects related to manuscripts. The job is still not complete and the good work has to be continued. The NMM has therefore, long way to go, since only a fraction of manuscripts has been unearthed. It is, therefore, obvious that the unfinished task has to be continued…… Looking at the task ahead and capabilities of the NMM as judged by their performance during the last years a minimum of 20 years <span>extension if not on permanent basis is recommended.</span><span> </span>The Government may consider this recommendation and in fact give priority to the Mission’s work to save cultural and textual heritage of India in a planned way through NMM”.(Evaluation Study for Extension of NMM by EdCIL (India) Ltd. pp. 78-79).
The deliverables identified in the Project Document are as follows:
i) Publication of a National Directory of Custodial Institutions;
ii) Detailed conservation and cataloguing status report of manuscript holdings in all the major known institutions in the country;
iii) Completion of the New Catalogus Catalogorum project;
iv) National database of manuscripts by descriptive subjects in electronic form for around 500 institutions;
v) Up gradation of infrastructure for conservation, preservation and storage in around 100 institutions in the country;
vi) National Manuscripts Library at IGNCA with microfilm/digitized collection of up to around 5,00,000 manuscripts;
vii) Funding for conservation and cataloguing of manuscripts in at least 200 institutions;
viii) Training in manuscript reading especially older scripts like Sharada, Grantha, Brahmi, Tiglari, Modiand Newari.
The Mission has made considerable progress in all the areas identified for it and the strategy adopted for this purpose has been as follows:
i) Documentation
Creation of Manuscript Resource Centres that supply data regarding manuscripts in their specified areas (at present 46 MRCs)
National Survey
Post Survey
ii) Conservation
Creation of Manuscript Conservation Centres for preservation and conservation of manuscripts in their specified areas (at present 33 MCCs)
Training programmes for Conservation (Preventive and Curative)
Preventive and curative conservation is provided to manuscripts where the holders ask for it.
iii) Organising Awareness Campaigns through
Outreach programme
Lectures
Seminars/workshops
Exhibitions
iv) Training Programmes in Manuscriptology and Palaeography
v) Digitization
vi) Publication
The National Mission for Manuscripts made commendable progress in its identified area of activities. Considering the fact that it has to depend on voluntary support from repositories and holders of manuscripts, the results achieved are very encouraging. The NMM has been able to create a database of 30.67 lakhs manuscripts; these are edited and corrected for accuracy by the in-house staff before being released into public domain. At present 18.44 lakhs details of manuscripts has been uploaded on the website www.namami.org , about 2.00 lakhs manuscripts details are ready for uploading. These shall be uploaded during the annual day celebrations.
As regards, setting up of the National Manuscripts Library, 45863 manuscripts have been digitized in the first and second phase of digitization that ended on 31st March 2010. The Standards for the third phase of digitization have been revised and shall be released on the 7th of February 2011. A detailed project report for creation of National Manuscripts Library has been under the consideration of Ministry of Culture.
The publication of un-published manuscripts has been taken up recently with the goal of publishing 50 manuscripts in the year 2010-11. Considerable progress has been made in this regards. Expert Committees for selection of manuscripts in different areas e.g. Arabic and Persian manuscripts, Dravidian language manuscripts and manuscripts of Sanskrit as well as the middle and modern Indo-Aryan languages, have been set up. These committees have met, evaluated proposals and short listed manuscripts for publication. The shortlisted manuscripts have been given to editors. The first to be published in this series is Diwanzada (first Urdu Diwan of North India composed by Shah Hatim of Delhi during eighteenth century) and another work Chahar Gulshan in Persian (an account of India from ancient times to the reign of Mughal Emperor Ahmad Shah II). Both the works are expected to be published by April, 2011. There are other manuscripts in different stages of editing and publication.
The Mission mode has helped NMM to progress effectively towards the achievement of its goals. This is because the mission mode has enabled NMM to operate with autonomy in planning and execution. The grants received from the Union Ministry of Culture have helped the Mission effectively achieve its targets. The process of extension of NMM took time and it was granted official approval only in September 2009. After reactivation of the NMM, it is making steady progress in its assigned fields of activities.
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