Besides microfilming the rare manuscripts of Mahatma Gandhi, Sabarmati Ashram Preservation and Memorial Trust has drawn a plan to preserve his manuscripts in digital form. A budget of Rs 30 lakh has been set aside and the digitisation work of the manuscripts is to be completed by the end of this current financial year. A website of the trust is also to be floated soon. A total of 34,117 manuscripts, mostly letters in original and photostat forms, running into 1.5 lakh pages, collected from various sources from all over the country as well as abroad during the last several years have already been laminated with the assistance of experts from INTACH, Lucknow, Nehru Museum and National Archives, New Delhi. After lamination, the trust embarked on the microfilming of the manuscripts about a year ago. However, only a part of the manuscripts have been microfilmed so far. The work is, however, going on a fast pace and the microfilming work is likely to be over by December this year. Giving details about digitisation of the manuscripts, trust secretary Amrutbhai Modi said a decision to preserve the manuscripts in digital form was taken recently as a part of info-technology project of the trust costing around Rs 30 lakh. He said a total of Rs 80 lakh had been set aside for various upgradation projects, including a website of the Ashram. Five copies of digitised manuscripts would be prepared initially, for keeping them at Gandhi museums in Patna, Kolkata, Madurai, Pune and Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad. “The logic behind distributing the digitised manuscripts is that if any damage is done to manuscripts at one centre, it will remain preserved at the other centre,” said Modi.
