Bharatpur: Once a blooming library, Shri Hindi Sahitya Samiti now awaits Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot's allotted budget of Rs 5 lakh it's upkeep. The 111-year-old library is a major library in North India with manuscripts about 450 years old. It holds books ranging from Vedas, Sanskrit literature, Indian history and many more.
A knowledge bank in itself, it has a unique repository of more than 33,000 books of approximately 44 subjects and 1500 manuscripts. The library was started with inspiration from Rajmata Manji Girraj Kaur of the royal family of Rajasthan with the aim of preserving and promoting the Hindi language and Devanagari script for the protection and development of Hindi literature and culture.
The committee was set up on August 13, 1912 under the leadership of Adhikari Jagannath with the assistance of former Rajmata Manji Girraj Kaur. The library back then was started from scratch by collecting books from different houses. it was founded with a total of five books and today is considered one of the largest libraries in North India.
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Vice President of Shri Hindi Sahitya Samiti, Gangaram Parashar said that at present 33,363 books of 44 subjects are kept in the library. There are also 1535 manuscripts which are over 450 years old. The library has also witnessed scores of celebrities participating in several sessions or programs held by the committee. The first session of the Shri Hindi Sahitya Samiti was held in the year 1927, and many litterateurs including Nobel laureate Rabindra Nath Tagore participated.
At that time, Tagore also wrote the poem Neelmonilata here. Apart from this, Madan Mohan Malaviya, Rajarshi Purushottamdas Tandon, Morarji Desai, Jainendra Kumar, Dr Ram Manohar Lohia, Pakistani playwright Ali Ahmed, Russian Hindi scholar Barannikov and others have also come here. Hindi Sahitya Samiti's clerk Trilokinath Sharma said that 715 manuscripts and rare books have been photocopied and made available to the readers.
Also, the original manuscripts have been kept safe by laminating them. As many as 426 manuscripts have been packed and kept in bags, but their binding is yet pending. Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, who visited Bharatpur recently, assured that soon this budget will be made available to the Hindi Sahitya Samiti to keep the age-old library flourishing.
