PM Modi Launches Gyan Bharatam Portal to Boost Manuscript Digitisation
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New Delhi, 12 September 2025 — Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the Gyan Bharatam portal on Friday during the International Conference on Gyan Bharatam held at Vigyan Bhavan, aiming to accelerate the digitisation, preservation, and public accessibility of India’s ancient manuscript legacy.
The Gyan Bharatam Mission, announced in the 2025-26 budget, seeks to survey, document, conserve, digitise and provide access to over one crore manuscripts held across academic institutions, museums, libraries, and private collections nationwide. Modi noted that already over ten lakh manuscripts have been digitised with the help of private bodies and institutional collaborators.
A key motivation for launching the portal is to check what the Prime Minister termed “intellectual piracy”: the appropriation and patenting abroad of knowledge systems rooted in Indian manuscripts. He stressed that making verified digital versions publicly available would help prevent misuse, inauthentic versions, or foreign entities claiming ownership of traditional knowledge.
At the event, leaders emphasized the diversity of India’s manuscript heritage: these works exist across nearly 80 languages including Sanskrit, Prakrit, Assamese, Bengali, Kannada, Kashmiri, Konkani, Maithili, Malayalam, and Marathi. Some exemplars mentioned were the Arthashastra of Kautilya, Buddhist manuscripts of Sarnath, Charaka-Sushruta Samhitas in Ayurveda, the Natya Shastra, the Sulva Sutras, and manuscripts from Gilgit.
Speaking on India’s knowledge tradition, PM Modi outlined four foundational pillars: Preservation, Innovation, Addition, and Adaptation. He called upon youth, scholars, universities, and institutions to participate actively in the mission. Technologies like AI were expected to play a role in decipherment, metadata creation, and making manuscripts accessible globally.
With Gyan Bharatam, the Centre hopes to not just safeguard the physical texts that have survived centuries of wear, neglect, and destruction, but also to place them in the digital domain where they can be studied, celebrated, and built upon.
