President to open world’s largest Gandhi archive !!!
Week [23-29 November]
President Pranab Mukherjee will formally redesignate the Sabarmati Ashram Preservation and Memorial Trust as a research centre.A new archive building has been recently constructed in the ashram complex, which Mukherjee will inaugurate.
Gandhi’s documents run into almost 1.6 lakh pages.
“The Sabarmati archives will be the largest repository of documents in the world on any single person. The collected works of Mahatma Gandhi which runs into 100 volumes is based on the letters and writings that are archived here,“ says director Sabarmati Ashram trust Tridip Suhrud.
“Every digitised letter has a short summary , helpful for re searchers, which is rare to be found in any archive,“ says Suhrud, who has a 15-member team for maintaining the archive.
The President will also plant a tamarind tree . He will be the only other dignitary after Nehru to plant a sapling within the campus. The tamarind tree is symbolic as Dandi yatra was kicked off by Gandhi in 1930 from the spot underneath a tamarind tree.
A cursory glance of the repository will reveal its richness. There 34,111 letters -that Bapu has either written to someone or people had written to him. These letters have been microfilmed and digitised.There are 1,371 manuscripts of Gandhi’s articles published in `Navajivan’, `Young India’ and `Harijan’ in three languages. The museum has a collection of 6,368 photographs and negatives belonging to Mahatma Gandhi and his associates.
There are also about 47,000 books including rare ones on India’s Freedom Movement.These works have now been shifted into a special high grade metal vault for storage.