Journalism of Courage
In 1857, as the Indian revolt against the British government raged across the country, the authorities were keeping a close watch on revolutionary activities in Pune too. In August 1857, Poona Commissioner of Police A Bettington received information that “seditious conversations were being openly carried out in favour of the mutineers and against the British” at Poona Native General Library. Bettington was quick to send a report to the Governor in Bombay with a request that “the library should be closed down” and people who were said to have held such discussions be acted upon.
The British government, however, did not take any punitive action.
This wasn’t surprising. The library had come into being nine years ago, in 1848, due to the active interest taken by then British governor Sir George Clerk.
Renowned reformist Gopal Hari Deshmukh, who wrote the reformist Shatpatre (hundred letters) under the pen name of Lokhitwadi, has written about how the library was established. In his letter published in the weekly Prabhakar on March 26, 1848, Deshmukh, who also served as the library’s secretary in the initial years, wrote, “There are many schools in Pune but no one knew what a library was, until now. However, the incumbent governor Sir George Clerk directed judge Henry Braun to plan establishing a library in Pune as a move towards public education. He called a meeting on January 28 to discuss this issue. At this meeting, the plan was supported by learned men from the Budhwar Wada English school and also by the court staff and Sardars from the city.”
He reports that a fund of Rs 1,500 was collected from the donors for the purpose. A committee from among the locals was nominated and the library started working from Budhwar Wada on February 7, 1848.
In the same letter, Deshmukh laments that most of its visitors were from schools, not common citizens or the city elite (such as Sardars). “These Sardars who think of themselves highly, do not go out without having a convoy of horses and servants with them. They must be feeling ashamed to sit like a student in a library,” he writes.
In the next four years, the library made modest progress. This is reflected in a report that Deshmukh submitted to the Bombay government in February 1852. By this time, the library had 90 subscribers divided into three classes – based on the subscription fee they paid. Those belonging to Class I paid a monthly subscription fee of Re 1; Class II, 50 paise; and Class III subscribers paid 25 paise. As per the report, at this time, the library had a total of 2,107 books (in English, Hindustani, Persian and other vernacular languages) apart from pamphlets and maps.
“The books most appreciated are those which relate to history and biography, and I might notice that a new taste has within a recent period arisen for books on arts, mechanics, and practical sciences. The less read books are novels, tales, and fictions, and books on abstruse and philosophical subjects,” Deshmukh said in the report.
The fire of 1879
Budhwar Wada, where the library was located for the first three decades of its existence, burnt down in a fire on May 13, 1879. The fire was so devastating that it destroyed most of the library’s collection.
“Only six books and one report could be saved from the fire. Forty other books that were away on loan were saved. A total of 5,000 books were reduced to ashes at this time. Curation efforts of 31 years came to naught,” says Madhumilind Mehendale, the library’s current president.
For about a decade from this day, the library operated from different temporary locations as efforts to rehabilitate the library in a permanent building continued. With the efforts of Justice M G Ranade, the library management purchased a plot from Belbagkar Raosaheb Madhav Ballal Phadnis in 1882 for Rs 4,000. At this spot – on present-day Laxmi Road – a two-storeyed building was constructed at the cost of Rs 25,976, of which Rs 12,055 was borne by the British government.
The library shifted to the new building on April 1, 1889, but the formal inauguration was held on July 30 of the same year in the presence of Bombay Governor Donald Mackay (11th Lord Reay). As per newspaper reports of the event, the secretary of the library committee pointed out that although the library had a new building, it had very few books to house in it. In his speech, Lord Reay used this predicament of the library to emphasise that “having library with no books was better than having one with bad books”.
He expressed concern that the library only had 146 subscribers despite 2,000 students attending schools in the city. He said the attendance at the library was a test to determine if the education policy of the government was working.
“… The object of education was to make one take books as a duck takes to water…He would watch with the utmost interest the statistics of the Poona Native General Library, as it would afford a test of what the Government was doing in the schools. If they still had books and no readers then there was surely something wrong in our system of education,” The Bombay Chronicle of July 31, 1889, reported.
In October 1921, the library was renamed Pune Nagar Vachan Mandir. In 1935, a third storey was added. Built in the Gothic revival style, the main building is an important heritage monument of Pune.
Nagar Vachan Mandir today
The library, which is celebrating its 175th anniversary this year, has over 6,000 subscribers and has opened branches at seven different locations in the city so that the readers do not have to face the inconvenience of travelling to the congested Laxmi Road.
Mehendale says the library has adapted to technology with time. “We have RFID-tagged all our books by making a considerable investment, created a cellphone app for our subscribers so that they can go through the catalogue and put in a request from their homes. As visitors used to face trouble in parking their vehicles while visiting Laxmi Road, we have decentralised by opening seven branches in different parts of the city. Although technology has brought newspapers and books to everyone’s cellphones, we continue to get a good response from our readers,” says Mehendale.
The library also organises cultural events throughout the year. And, surprisingly, it does all this for its patrons at a monthly subscription fee of Rs 30.
