At Gandhi Bhavan in Bengaluru, ‘scanning’ is the new ‘spinning’ to digitise Bapu’s thought

The 60-year-old institution now sees fewer visitors; its halls are quieter than before. However, whenever conversations on social justice or Gandhian thought stir the city, people return, filling its vast stone corridors with the hum of debate and discussions. The engraved figure of Mahatma Gandhi on its walls stands as a silent witness, waiting for those who still believe ideas can shape the world. And for those fleeting moments, the Bhavan feels alive again.

An interesting aspect of this stone building is a spacious room on the second floor, which has become a beehive of activity in recent years. Here, a group of young individuals is busy with digital scanners and computers, meticulously scanning page after page of the extensive collection of volumes on Gandhi. Anyone visiting this large, airy space will be surprised to see these dedicated youth diligently digitising books using advanced scanners. The entire digitisation process is being closely supervised by Omshivaprakash H. L., a digital archivist, long-time Wikipedian, and open-access advocate.

All-India Gandhi library?

Omshivaprakash H. L. is the Managing Director of Servants of Knowledge, a non-profit organisation whose newfound slogan, “Scanning is the new Spinning,” reflects its commitment to digitising books. As part of the All India Gandhi Library Project, the organisation has undertaken the massive task of digitising the books available at the Gandhi Library at Gandhi Bhavan. In fact, “Scanning is the new Spinning” serves as the official slogan of Servants of Knowledge — a volunteer-driven initiative dedicated to digitising knowledge and making it accessible to the public.

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The organisation believes in the philosophy that access to knowledge is a human right. “It is part of a cumulative effort to build a vast online resource known as the Public Library of India,” Omshivaprakash told The Federal. Servants of Knowledge began its activities in 2015 when American technologist Carl Malamud and Omshivaprakash, both independently working on digitising various Indian materials, decided to combine their efforts.

One of their early achievements was creating a backup copy of the Government of India’s digital library. This decision proved fortuitous when the government’s server crashed a couple of years later, rendering the collection inaccessible. However, the materials remained available to users through the access provided by Servants of Knowledge. “The organisation, which has relied primarily on volunteers over the years, was incorporated as a non-profit corporation in early 2024 under its official name: Anubhava Mantapa: Servants of Knowledge Association,” says Omshivaprakash.

Accessible to all Gandhi Bhavan libraries

According to him, Servants of Knowledge currently scans 10 to 15 lakh pages every month. Its aim is to achieve the target of scanning at least 1 crore pages a month. Servants of Knowledge is strong in the South now even though it scans text and materials from all over India. Its idea is to see this effort go national as a grassroots effort. It is a fact that youngsters today do not know much about Mahatma Gandhi, let alone his recorded works, philosophy and ideology. “We want to put these books out on the internet so that anybody from any corner of the globe can access them,” N R Vishukumar, Vice-Chairman, Gandhi Bhavan told The Federal.

Also read: How Richard Attenborough’s ‘Gandhi’ deconstructs British Empire through the colonised lens

Servants of Knowledge has digitised over 11,720 books — a rich repository of Gandhian ideals and made available to all Gandhi Bhavan libraries across the country. “On Wednesday (January 29), we handed over Gandhi Digital Library to Gandhi Adyayana Kendra (Gandhian Study Centre) of Bengaluru City University at a function,” Omshivaprakash said. Besides digitising Gandhian library, Servants of Knowledge has digitised knowledge from the Indian Academy of Science, the entire National Law School of India University library, and digitally obtained material out of copyright books from Motilal Banarsidass.

Text speech format to help visually challenged

“Servants of Knowledge presented this digital library to various Gandhi organisations across the country. A significant part of this collection such as the Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi and material published by Navajivan Trust is open access, but other copyrighted materials can be accessed by researchers at any Gandhi organisation across the country. With Optical Character Recognition (OCR), the readers of the digitised books can make use of the text speech format, which would also help visually challenged people gain access to the books,” says Omshivaprakash.

Explaining their working model, Omshivaprakash said, “We capture content. Our editors find and license important content. We combine manual and automated methods to index and preserve the material. We respect content creators by linking to their websites and driving traffic to them. We use human and artificial intelligence to add metadata, summaries, exact titles and entities, identify languages, check links, and enrich in other ways. We constantly improve our cataloguing as new technologies and techniques emerge. We provide comprehensive indices with advanced search tools that help researchers and students find and analyse previously hidden content.”

“Servants of Knowledge don’t use AI for metadata and don’t license the content because that makes content commercial. It requests authors and publishers to release the content in open licence to make it accessible to a larger audience," he adds.