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Gyan Bharatam: India and National Library of France sign pact to digitise Indic manuscripts

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The Ministry of Culture signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), the National Library of France, in Paris on Monday, 26 October 2026, under the Gyan Bharatam Mission, to cooperate on preserving and digitising manuscript heritage, PIB said.

Gyan Bharatam: Culture Secretary Vivek Aggarwal and BnF President Gilles Pécout exchange the signed MoU in Paris
Culture Secretary Vivek Aggarwal and BnF President Gilles Pécout exchange the signed MoU in Paris Photo: PIB (Government of India, free to use with credit).

Who signed the Gyan Bharatam pact

The MoU was signed by Culture Secretary Vivek Aggarwal and BnF President Gilles Pécout. The partnership brings together the Ministry of Culture, acting through Gyan Bharatam, the National Archives of India in New Delhi and the National Library in Kolkata, with the French national library, the ministry said. It sets out cooperation in five areas: digitisation; cross-sharing on the National Digital Repository; technology exchange; conservation; and research and development.

Key Facts

  • Signed: 26 Oct 2026, Paris
  • Signatories: Vivek Aggarwal (Culture Secretary), Gilles Pécout (BnF)
  • Indian partners: Gyan Bharatam, National Archives, National Library Kolkata
  • Five areas: digitisation, repository sharing, technology, conservation, R&D
  • Tools: OCR/HTR for Indian scripts

Digitising Indic manuscripts held in Paris

Under the agreement, the ministry and BnF will work to identify and digitise manuscripts and collections of Indic origin held by the French library. The MoU also provides for the exchange of expertise in digitisation and preservation technologies, cataloguing standards, optical character recognition (OCR) and handwritten text recognition (HTR) tools for Indian scripts, digital humanities and manuscript conservation. Joint workshops, capacity-building programmes, research projects, publications, exhibitions and exchanges of scholars are also planned, PIB said. The release did not list specific manuscripts, give their number or set a timeline for the digitisation work.

What the Gyan Bharatam Mission is

Gyan Bharatam is the Culture Ministry’s flagship initiative for identifying, documenting, conserving, digitising, translating, researching and sharing India’s manuscript heritage. Its National Digital Repository is planned as a secure store for Indian-origin manuscripts and Indian Knowledge Systems material held in India and abroad, with structured, permission-based access for research. The ministry described the partnership as an important step in international cooperation for the preservation and study of India’s manuscript heritage, and said it would open new opportunities for scholarly and technological collaboration between the two countries. The mission was announced in the Union Budget 2025-26, and a Standing Finance Committee has sanctioned Rs 491.66 crore for 2025-2031, according to an earlier PIB release. A National Manuscript Survey launched on 16 March 2026 has so far reported more than 1.19 crore manuscripts, the ministry said; over 8 lakh manuscripts have been digitised across the country, of which more than 4.40 lakh are available on the Gyan Bharatam portal for public viewing. The portal uses OCR, handwritten text recognition and script recognition tools. The survey aims to build a geo-tagged national inventory of manuscript repositories, which the ministry calls a Manuscript Presence Map, according to the Culture Ministry website.

Why It Matters: Many Indian manuscripts sit in foreign libraries; digital copies in a national repository would let Indian scholars study them without travelling abroad.

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Source: PIB, 27 Oct 2026 · PIB: Gyan Bharatam Mission · Ministry of Culture: manuscript survey · Bibliothèque nationale de France

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