Over 40,000 manuscripts identified in J&K under Gyan Bharatam Mission

Srinagar: Over 40,000 manuscripts have been identified in Jammu and Kashmir under the national Gyan Bharatam mission, with one of the oldest manuscripts of Takri script from the 16th century found in a remote area of Jammu.

For the national Gyan Bharatam mission announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2025, the Persian Department of the Kashmir University is the nodal centre to identify, conserve, preserve and catalogue the rare manuscripts that had been lying with people at their homes. As per the central government orders, the administration in all 20 districts of J&K have been roped in to conduct surveys which started from March 16 this year that will continue for at least three months.

"This is an important project to preserve and conserve the traditional knowledge of the country and create a knowledge bank. Till now, we have identified over 40,000 manuscripts from different parts of J&K," said Prof Jahangir Iqbal, who heads the Persian Department and is the nodal officer for the Gyan Bharatam project. Majority of the manuscripts found in J&K till now are in Persian followed by Kashmiri, Arabic, Sanskrit and Punjabi.


"We have found a rare manuscript of the 16th century in Gool Gulabgarh area of Jammu in Takri script, which is no longer prevalent. We have found some Persian manuscripts of medicine, maths as well as poetry," Iqbal said.

Under this project, district commissioners would depute officials at the ground level to conduct surveys and find the address of people who are in possession of such rare scripts. They will upload the information of the owner and a picture of manuscript on the Gyan Bharatam application available on Playstore. Later, experts and researchers from the nodal officer would visit the particular location to assess the manuscript and accordingly conserve, translate and digitise the manuscript after proper permission of the owner.

"We won't collect the manuscript from the owners. We will catalogue the manuscripts so that the interested researcher or anyone else can contact the concerned owner if and when they need it," Iqbal said.

The administration has plans to rope in imams of masjids and municipality workers to spread the information about the survey so that people will come forward with information regarding the manuscripts. At KU, a digitisation laboratory and conservation laboratory have been set up for preservation of these manuscripts.

"We expect to catalogue at least one lakh manuscripts by the end of this exercise. We hope that the administration and people would help us to make this knowledge initiative a success," said Iqbal. He said this is an attempt to save whatever Indian system of knowledge treasure is left with us. "Our rare manuscripts and antiquities were taken by the British with them in 1947 and they are lying in international archives and museums. We have to pay hefty amounts for access. We are now conserving whatever is left with us."