This is the second and final in a two-part series on the impact of the effective closure of key public libraries. Read part one here.In a government office complex in Delhi’s R.K. Puram, more than two lakh books belonging to a public library have spent much of the past 15 years inside cardboard cartons. They belong to Tulsi Sadan, the regional-language collection of the Central Secretariat Library. Established in 1972 to commemorate four centuries of the Ramcharitmanas, it held books across 14 Indian languages: Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri, Malayalam, Marathi, Odiya, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu.In 2011, the collection was displaced from its premises near the National School of Drama to accommodate construction of the Delhi Metro station at Mandi House. The closure was supposed to be temporary. Fifteen years later, The Indian Express found that most of the collection remained stored at R.K. Puram. Some sections have been reopened (Assamese and Kannada in 2023 and Hindi at Shastri Bhavan in 2025) but the collection as a whole has not returned to the public life it once had.The books stored at R.K.Puram have survived their time, but for readers who might have consulted them during those 15 years, much of the library did not. Preservation has at least two dimensions: one is the survival and care of an object and the other is the possibility of finding and using it. In this case, the books satisfy the first condition while failing the second. And when access disappears, the consequences are not distributed equally. The first question that emerges in this context is who can afford an inaccessible library. A researcher at a well-funded university may be able to respond to the disappearance of a public collection by obtaining a book elsewhere. They might use another institutional library, access a subscription database, purchase a second-hand copy or travel to another archive, but an independent researcher may not. Neither may a student, translator, journalist or ordinary reader without institutional affiliation. This is one reason public libraries matter for they do not simply preserve knowledge; they also redistribute access to it. It is impossible to clearly account for how many students were unable to consult a resource, how many researchers abandoned a line of inquiry, how many translations were not attempted precisely because they concern encounters that have never happened owing to the effective disappearance of the collection of books and in effect, a particular arrangement of intellectual possibility. ‘Literature, political thought, religious traditions and traditions of dissent have developed through circulation among languages and regions, through translation, borrowing and argument.’ Photo: Facebook/Central Secretariat Library, Ministry of CultureThe multilingual character of Tulsi Sadan makes this disappearance even more significant. India’s intellectual history has never existed within a single language. Literature, political thought, religious traditions and traditions of dissent have developed through circulation among languages and regions, through translation, borrowing and argument. However, the material through which that history can be reconstructed does not circulate equally. English-language publications often move through commercial booksellers, university libraries and digital databases with relative ease. Older regional-language books can be much harder to find, which is why library copies consequently acquire a significance that exceeds their monetary value. The books at Tulsi Sadan’s brought readers to varied linguistic traditions of the nation and made possible newer relationships between books and the multilingual readers. Such possibilities matter in a country that routinely celebrates its linguistic plurality. However, there is a difference between celebrating diversity and maintaining infrastructure that allows for this diversity to thrive. Languages survive through official speeches, festivals or commemorative institutions, but they thrive through sustained publication, circulation, collection, cataloguing, teaching, translating, discussion, and reading. For a collection like this, which holds within itself the ability to facilitate all of these engagements, to remain out of circulation is, in effect, an erasure of these possibilities and relationships. We as a people have a tendency to only recognise erasure or cultural destruction posthumously, or, if it must happen concurrently, then we do so only if the destruction carries a spectacular dimension: a monument is razed, a manuscript is burned, an archaeological site damaged. But what is perhaps equally unsettling is a quieter disappearance like Tulsi Sadan’s collection, first from public infrastructure and then from public memory. However, a library disappears quietly, through relocation, postponed decisions, inadequate accommodation and years of staying locked up in storage. This is because a library is not simply an accumulation of books. Books become usable through systems surrounding them: catalogues that allow readers to discover them, classifications that place them in relation to one another, librarians who know the collection, conservation practices that keep fragile materials usable, and reading rooms in which they can be consulted. If these relationships are removed, then there is no disappearance between the library and a warehouse.The case of the Tulsi Sadan collection has acquired renewed significance because the wider Central Secretariat Library is itself preparing to leave Shastri Bhavan under the Central Vista redevelopment project. Also read: What We Lose as the Central Secretariat Library’s 8.5 Lakh Books Slip Out of Public AccessThe Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs says that a purpose-built library facility is planned as part of the Kartavya Path redevelopment. On October 5, the Supreme Court asked the Union government to provide details of its area and layout and, significantly, to explain whether it would accommodate the approximately two lakh books currently stored at R.K. Puram. That question creates an opportunity to repair an old failure rather than simply avoid a new one.The question should no longer be merely where the books will go. It should instead be when the people will be able to read the books again. That requires answers that can be measured. What condition are the books in, after years of storage? Is there a complete inventory? When will the regional-language sections reopen? What conservation work is required? Will the catalogue be made searchable online? Which materials can be digitised? What will happen to access while the wider CSL collection is relocated? A new building could provide an opportunity to conserve the collection properly, modernise its catalogue, digitise appropriate materials and restore Tulsi Sadan to full public use, but that possibility depends upon understanding that storage is not preservation and preservation without access is incomplete.‘For 15 years, too much of Tulsi Sadan’s multilingual collection has been inaccessible and has been denied that public life. Its books do not need another assurance that they have been preserved.’ Photo: Facebook/Central Secretariat Library, Ministry of CulturePreserving the books of Tulsi Sadan in R.K.Puram illustrates three conditions that are too easily collapsed into the word “preservation”: 1. a book can survive because it has not been destroyed; 2. it can be preserved because its physical condition is being professionally maintained; and 3. it can be accessible because a reader can discover, request and consult it. One does not guarantee the next. As an example, let’s take digitisation. Digitisation can radically expand access and should form part of any collection’s future as long it is done responsibly. But digitisation requires concerted and cogent institutional efforts, wherein books must be catalogued, scanned, described and maintained before they become meaningfully accessible online. All digital files require infrastructure and continuing stewardship. Furthermore, digitisation alone is not enough, especially for researchers interested in editions, marginalia, bindings or print history, the physical object can itself constitute evidence. The process is therefore not an alternative to caring for a collection, but is rather another form of care. The goal in such situations should be to use digital access to extend the reach of a functioning library, not to make prolonged physical inaccessibility easier to accept.For 15 years, too much of Tulsi Sadan’s multilingual collection has been inaccessible and has been denied that public life. Its books do not need another assurance that they have been preserved. They need to be unpacked, their condition needs to be assessed, they need to be catalogued, conserved and, where appropriate, digitised. Above all, readers need to know where they are and when they can read them again. The present relocation offers an opportunity to avoid repeating Tulsi Sadan’s history but also, to repair it as well. There is something profoundly ordinary but miraculous about a library. Unlike a monument, it does not ask to be looked at. Unlike an exhibit, it does not offer visitors a predetermined path. Instead, its democratic possibility lies in the fact that it permits readers to DIY their own adventure as they wander through, discover, compare, disagree with, deconstruct and translate the books. And this possibility depends on access. The nation can stand to preserve its inheritance by ensuring the books’ survival, but that inheritance is truly preserved and its purpose is fulfilled only when those books can be read as well. Rudrani Gangopadhyay is a scholar, writer, editor, and public humanities practitioner whose work spans South Asian literature, cinema, visual culture, and community engagement around democracy, dissent, and social justice.