'Gateway to ancient wisdom': PM Modi launches 'Gyan Bharatam' portal

New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday launched the 'Gyan Bharatam' portal, a dedicated digital repository platform that seeks to accelerate digitisation and preservation of ancient Indian manuscripts and enhance the dissemination of traditional knowledge embedded in them.

Modi is attending an international conference on India's manuscript heritage on its second day, being held at Vigyan Bhawan here, with the theme 'Reclaiming India's Knowledge Legacy through Manuscript Heritage.

The portal seeks to serve as a digital gateway to the ancient wisdom of India.

At the Plenary Hall, presentations were made by different working groups constituted under the Gyan Bharatam Mission, in the presence of the prime minister.

A total of eight groups have been set up under different verticals, including critical areas such as manuscript conservation, digitisation technologies, metadata standards, legal frameworks, cultural diplomacy and decipherment of ancient scripts.

The conference is being hosted by the Ministry of Culture from September 11-13.

The government has launched the Gyan Bharatam Mission as a major initiative under the Ministry of Culture.

It aims to survey, document, conserve, digitise and make accessible more than 1 crore manuscripts located at academic institutions, museums, libraries and private collections across India.

The conference brings together leading scholars, conservationists, technologists, and policy experts to deliberate on pathways for revitalising India's unparalleled manuscript wealth and to place it at the heart of a global knowledge dialogue.

India has one of the richest collections of ancient manuscripts in the world, with nearly 10 million texts that hold the country's traditional knowledge and cultural heritage.