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India–France manuscript agreement plans digitisation and research access

KROV newsroom

28 Oct 2026, 10:02 am IST1 min read

DiscussionThe story behind the news.

India’s Culture Ministry and France’s national library, the Bibliothèque nationale de France, signed an agreement in Paris on October 26 to cooperate on manuscript preservation and digitisation. The ministry announced the agreement on October 27 under the Gyan Bharatam Mission.

A central task is to identify and digitise manuscripts of Indic origin held by the French library. The framework also covers conservation, research, technology exchange and sharing through the National Digital Repository. India’s National Archives and National Library in Kolkata are part of the institutional partnership.

For researchers, the proposed work includes cataloguing standards and tools that recognise printed or handwritten Indian scripts, alongside workshops and exchanges of expertise. The ministry describes repository access as structured and permission-based, rather than unrestricted access to every manuscript.

The announcement establishes a cooperation framework. It does not provide a date when a completed collection will become available or a total number of manuscripts to be digitised. Those implementation details remain to be established before readers can assess the programme’s eventual reach.

Sources and credits

Credit: Ministry of Culture, Government of India, via Press Information Bureau

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