India–France MoU Signed for Manuscript Conservation

On October 26, 2026, India's Ministry of Culture and the National Library of France (Bibliothèque nationale de France - BnF) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in Paris for the conservation, digitization, and research of Indian manuscripts.

Key Highlights

Signatories: Vivek Aggarwal, Secretary of the Ministry of Culture, and Gilles Pécout, President of the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF).
Gyan Bharatam Mission: Signed under the Gyan Bharatam Mission to advance the conservation and digital dissemination of manuscripts and documentary heritage of Indian origin.
Partner Institutions: Involves the Ministry of Culture, National Archives of India (New Delhi), National Library (Kolkata), and the National Library of France.
Five Focus Areas: Digitization, sharing on a national digital repository, technology exchange, conservation, and research and development (R&D).
Manuscript Digitization: Both nations will identify manuscripts of Indian origin within the BnF collections and create digital surrogates.
Technical Cooperation: Sharing expertise in Optical Character Recognition (OCR) for Indian scripts, Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR), cataloging standards, and digital humanities.
Research & Training: Promoting joint workshops, capacity-building programs, research, publications, exhibitions, and expert exchanges.
Digital Accessibility: Envisages storing and preserving Indian manuscripts in the Gyan Bharatam national digital repository to provide researchers structured, permission-based access.
Gyan Bharatam Mission: Announced on February 1, 2025, in the Union Budget 2025–26 as a flagship initiative by the Ministry of Culture for manuscript conservation and digitization.