India, France Sign MoU to Digitise Manuscript Heritage
Partnership under Gyan Bharatam Mission will focus on digitisation, digital access, conservation, technology exchange and research on Indian-origin manuscripts.
- India and France sign an MoU under the Gyan Bharatam Mission.
- Partnership targets digitisation of Indian-origin manuscripts held by BnF.
- Five focus areas include conservation, technology exchange and research.
- National Digital Repository aims to enable secure, permission-based access.
GG News Bureau
New Delhi, 28th Oct: India and France have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to strengthen cooperation in preserving, digitising and researching India’s manuscript heritage, opening new avenues for scholarly and technological collaboration.
The agreement was signed and exchanged in Paris on October 26, 2026, between the Ministry of Culture, Government of India, and the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), or National Library of France, under the Gyan Bharatam Mission.
The MoU was signed by Vivek Aggarwal, Secretary, Ministry of Culture, and Gilles Pécout, President of BnF. The partnership aims to improve the preservation, accessibility, study and dissemination of manuscript and documentary heritage, particularly collections of Indian origin held in France.
Five Areas of Cooperation
The collaboration brings together the Ministry of Culture through Gyan Bharatam, the National Archives of India in New Delhi, the National Library in Kolkata and BnF. It establishes a framework for cooperation across five key areas: digitisation, cross-sharing through the National Digital Repository, technology exchange, conservation, and research and development.
Under the agreement, the institutions will work to identify and digitise Indian-origin manuscripts and collections preserved at BnF. The partnership also provides for sharing expertise in digitisation and preservation technologies, cataloguing standards, optical character recognition and handwritten text recognition tools for Indian scripts, digital humanities and manuscript conservation.
Joint workshops, capacity-building programmes, research initiatives, publications, exhibitions and exchanges of scholars and experts are also planned.
Gyan Bharatam Mission to Expand Digital Access
The Gyan Bharatam Mission is the Ministry of Culture’s flagship initiative for identifying, documenting, conserving, digitising, translating, researching and disseminating India’s manuscript heritage.
Its proposed National Digital Repository is intended to serve as a secure platform for Indian-origin manuscripts and materials related to Indian Knowledge Systems held in India and abroad. It aims to facilitate structured, permission-based access for research and study.
The collaboration with BnF is expected to support the identification and preservation of manuscript collections while improving opportunities for researchers to study these historical materials.
Strengthening International Research Collaboration
The agreement marks a step towards deeper institutional cooperation between India and France in preserving cultural heritage. By combining expertise in conservation, digital technologies and manuscript research, the partnership seeks to support the long-term preservation of historical records and broaden their reach among scholars and researchers.
The initiative also creates opportunities for knowledge exchange and joint research, helping connect centuries-old manuscripts with contemporary academic inquiry while supporting the wider dissemination of India’s intellectual and cultural heritage.
