New Gandhi Heritage portal

By Dilip -
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will launch the much-awaited Gandhi heritage web portal at a function in New Delhi on September 2. The portal which will house the "intellectual heritage of Mohandas K Gandhi" has been developed at Sabarmati Gandhi Ashram where its office is also located. The Union Culture Ministry had sanctioned Rs 8 crore as a corpus fund to the Sabarmati Ashram Preservation and Memorial Trust (SAPMT), Ahmedabad, to create the portal while the trust would earn about Rs 75 lakh as annual interest to run and maintain the portal. 

Tridip Suhrud, a noted Gandhian scholar, is the Editor-in-Chief of the portal and overall director of SAPMT. According to Kartikeya Sarabhai, one of the trustees, the Prime Minister will be launching the portal at a function in New Delhi where a small film about the portal will also be presented. The portal will be hosting "intellectual" Gandhian heritage in six clusters, including the Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (CWMG), Gandhiana (Gandhi's original writings), writings of Gandhi's close associates, autobiographies of Indian leaders during Gandhi's time where Gandhi was mentioned and first and second generation biographies of the leader.

The formation of portal is a part of recommendations of the Gandhi Heritage Committee headed by Gandhi's grandson, Gopal Krishna Gandhi. Eventually, there were some modifications in the original recommendations to make the portal as open-source archive. SAMPT has hired around 50 persons to run the portal which is said to be the biggest forum with regard to information on Gandhi. The officials also claim that "it will be the most authentic source of information."

Finally some good news even as controversies over interpretation of Mahatma Gandhi's life and times still rages on. The long-pending proposal of a nodal online portal providing "authentic" information about Bapu may finally be on its way.
The Gandhi Heritage Portal project, anchored by Gandhi Ashram Preservation & Memorial Trust, will be the first portal which will endeavour to provide elaborate and exhaustive information about the Father of the Nation.
The project has been in the pipeline for a couple of years. But with work beginning full steam this month, the portal is scheduled to be inaugurated on Gandhi Jayanti (October 2) this year. A team headed by former director of DECU (ISRO) BS Bhatia has been put in place.
The mammoth task of collating, authenticating, digitising and indexing all the writings of Bapu, letters to and from him, his photographs, audio and video records, et al is underway.
"The current focus is to bring together all direct Gandhi-related material, especially those which are already available with the ashram and other Gandhi institutes in the country, on this portal. The task of collecting material from secondary sources, archives and private collections will be the next stage," said Kartikeya Sarabhai, trustee, Sabarmati Ashram.
For the uninitiated, the Gandhi Heritage Portal is an international project conceptualised to supply authentic, exhaustive information about the Father of the Nation in the public domain, either free or at very nominal costs.
One of the aims is to ensure that Bapu is not misquoted by innumerable authors and researchers around the world or his actions are not misinterpreted - at least for want of genuine information. Though there are many websites which give information about Bapu, this portal will be the first exhaustive station for extensive information on the subject, especially for serious researchers and authors.
The ashram alone has over 1.5 lakh papers including letters written to and by Bapu, texts written by Bapu in journals and some 8,000 odd photographs. And digitising and indexing these, they believe, is only the beginning. Project director designate Bhatia says material related to Bapu is scattered all over the world and it keeps surfacing every now and then in some private collections or at auction houses.
"The architecture of the site is being developed. The 39 sites recommended by Gopal Gandhi, grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, will be documented elaborately for the first time. The site will be made available in various national and international languages. All other Gandhi institutes in the country will also be linked," Bhatia says.
Currently, the team works out of the ashram premises, but later, a proposal to construct a permanent structure next to Hotel Toran has been put forth. A designated full-time team will be functioning as the portal will be dynamic with regular updates.
Union ministry of culture has sponsored the project for which the Sabarmati Ashram has been identified as the nodal agency. A fund of Rs 8 crore has been allocated for the project, Rs 4 crore of which was released earlier this year. The National Knowledge Commission, headed by Sam Pitroda, is also supporting the project internationally.

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