What can Digital do to preserve Bengali Literature — Some Thoughts

Based on some limited exposure to vernacular Bengali literature, and digital technology, here are some of my thoughts on technology saving this heritage. This is primarily based on my exposure to Bengali literature, but I am sure such challenges are there in every field of art.

I will share some anecdotal evidence on this.

As I mentioned, this year I did buy around 100 Pujabarshiki. And there are many more that I could not get my hands on. My sense is there will be around 500+ such publications across Bengal.

All these are magazines which are published regularly. But all are in physical form. Imagine the amount of content that can be preserved even if we tell these publications to share it after scanning.

Some of these publications are good, like Krittibas or Anustup. And they have been published for decades. But little known as they are Little Magazines.

Also, there are great authors like Subimal Misra who write only for small magazines, because they with large publishers will lose their independence.

I recently read about one Mr Kutty a Keralite who did stay as a Bank Officer in Kolkata for four decades and wrote more than 60 books on Kolkata during this time. He recently shifted back to Kerala, and I suppose most of his books are not in print.

Incidentally, Subimal Misra is now being published by Pratibhas, and also being translated into English by Rama Sangya — a Tamil settled in Kolkata.

In the same way, I read that a library in Chennai has a great collection of Bengali books but they are in a state of decay as there are none to take care of.

Again I read that the Kolkata high court corridor is now littered with legal books in Bengali which are essentially decaying.

Delhi government recently has started one project where they will digitize four crore documents and make them available digitally. It will cost 29 crores.

I think a similar exercise needs to be done for Bengali literature. And probably the government of Bengal should be approached for funds.

So how do we do the preservation? The only way is to capture them digitally. This is a massive exercise and will need funds.

We can discuss this if you see merit.

If the National Digital Library (NDL) proposes this, it will have a lot of credibility.

BTW if we add the books with the magazines, and also add the work in Bangladesh, Tripura, and other parts of the world the universe is huge.