Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh here today dedicated the Gandhi Heritage Portal to the nation. With this dedication, the Ministry of Culture, Government of India has created a Portal to review the message of non-violence to the world at large as well as to the youth of our country, besides highlighting critical aspects of our freedom struggle and Gandhiji’s message and humanism.
The Ministry of Culture earlier gave the responsibility of the concept design, development and maintenance of the Gandhi Heritage Portal to the Sabarmati Ashram Preservation and Memorial Trust, Ahmedabad and provided them a corpus grant of Rs 7.50 crore for this purpose. The Sabarmati Ashram is the largest repository of Gandhiji’s original writings and has a photo archive of over 6,000 images of Gandhiji and his associates. It also has a substantial library of over 45,000 books on and about Gandhiji and the Indian National Movement.
The Gandhi Heritage Portal is conceptualised around The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi. It has placed the collected works in three languages: English 100 volumes, Hindi 97 volumes and Gujarati 82 volumes. These volumes are interlinked to provide easy movement from one text and language to the other. The key texts provide first editions of (when possible) of Key Texts of Gandhiji. These are: Hind Swaraj, Satyagraha in South Africa, An Autobiography or The Story of My Experiments with Truth, From Yervada Mandir, Ashram Observances in Action, Constructive Programmes: Their Meaning and Place, Key To Health and Gandhiji’s translation of the Gita as Anasakti Yoga.
The Journals provide electronic versions of Indian Opinion, Navajivan, Young India, etc. A sub-section provides some of the journals which make for a fuller archive of the Gandhian imagination and scholarship. At present the Portal has placed as representation Gandhi Marg (Hindi & English), Bhoomi Putra, Pyara Bapu and that unique handwritten journal of the Sataygraha Ashram Madhpudo, which carried Prabhudas Gandhi’s Jivan Nu Parodh and Kakasaheb Kalelkar’s Smaran Yatra. The Portal hopes to include many more journals in future.
