Asiatic Society to be key centre for manuscript digitisation & decoding
Times of India | 3 November 2025
Kolkata: In a significant move to preserve India's ancient intellectual heritage, the Asiatic Society, Kolkata was officially designated the key cluster centre for Eastern India under the Union ministry of culture's flagship "Gyan Bharatam Mission on Manuscripts".
The decision marks a major step towards conserving, digitising, and decoding thousands of manuscripts written in Sanskrit, Pali, Persian, Farsi, and other languages, many of which remain unexplored.
Under an MoU signed recently in New Delhi, the ministry of culture sanctioned an initial allocation of Rs 40 lakh to the Asiatic Society for conservation, cataloguing, and digitisation of its vast manuscript holdings.
The initiative aims at creating a comprehensive digital database of manuscripts from Bengal and Eastern India, making their content accessible to scholars and the public through a national online repository.
Lt Col Anant Sinha, administrator of the Asiatic Society, said: "Many manuscripts lie neglected in corners of Bengal and beyond. This project must be executed on a war footing before we lose those priceless pieces of wisdom.
Digitisation will help us understand their full extent and importance."
The Society is planning to integrate AI and machine learning into its digitisation process. A research centre is being proposed in collaboration with IIT Kharagpur, IIT Delhi, and Centre for Development of Advanced Computing to develop advanced tools for transcription, translation, and digital reconstruction of damaged or faded manuscripts.
The project has drawn interest from major institutions, including CU, VB, Burdwan University, State Archives, Victoria Memorial Hall, Kolkata Port Trust, and several regional libraries. Funding will be released in two phases — 70% upfront, and 30% upon submission of utilisation and progress reports.