No one knows how long the fires in Nalanda Library burned.Until it was set ablaze by Turkish invaders in the 12th century, it had been one of the largest libraries in Asia, home to millions of books on theology, philosophy, science, mathematics, medicine, astronomy and more, and serving as a cauldron of collaborative thinking for countless students and free-thinkers.Some say the inferno raged for days, others believe it took months to die out. Nearly a thousand years later, the fires still burn as the people’s hunger to read remains unmet by the Indian library system that has failed to respond to it.No one knows how many public libraries exist in India today. Some oft-repeated statistics put this number at one urban library for every 80,000 persons and one rural library for every 11,500. Even if we were to accept these figures, it opens up a host of other questions: Is the system adequate to serve 1.4 billion people? Who visits these state-run libraries? What books and services do these libraries offer? How do they consult with and respond to their community? Are they even free for all to enter and use? While we wait for answers that may never come, there is a growing grassroots movement of independent libraries, rising to meet the people’s hunger to read, learn and think.Saba Khan’s Savitribai Phule and Fatima Sheikh Library. Photo: Special arrangementIn Bhopal, Saba Khan leads a team of young women of the Savitribai Phule and Fatima Sheikh Library project. Every morning the group fans across 11 bastis to set up ‘pop-up’ libraries. Their readers represent Dalit, Adivasi and Pasmanda Muslim communities and are unlikely to access books like Payal Kho Gayi or Mahashweta Devi’s Kyun Kyun Ladki without them. But it’s not just books they receive. Each trip is carefully planned to include read-alouds, games and activities that spur young minds to reflect, think and imagine wider worlds within themselves and in the world beyond.“I started my first library, when I was in 8th grade, with school books and comics like Champak,” says Khan. “At the time, there were two Hindi medium madrassas near my home, which were absolutely free. Their students started coming to my library. Even those who’d dropped out frequented the library to read with us. I never had to try very hard. Books are such powerful things, if they find the right reader they come alive.”Khan’s work is revolutionary in growing a culture of reading amongst ‘first-generation learners’ who had not recognised themselves as readers until her library came along. Yet, more than a decade after she started, she still has no resources to set up a permanent centre. “Readers who are left out are largely women and daily wagers. If the library operated full time at each location, then I believe that the curiosity for reading and books could easily be promoted in every generation from children to the elderly.” While Khan’s work has been appreciated by publishers, local NGOs and activists, without an institutional support mechanism, her libraries remain vulnerable to closure.Khan along with over 300 grassroots librarians and library activists is part of the Free Libraries Network (FLN), a collective that empowers free libraries and advocates for reform in the public library system. In April 2024, it unveiled the People’s National Library Policy (PNLP24): a draft document which predicates itself on the idea of ‘free, anti-caste, excellent and autonomous libraries’ and carries within it the language of inclusion for India’s most marginalised and underserved communities including Dalits, Bahujans, Adivasis, women, non-binary and trans people and people with disabilities. The PNLP24 aims to push public discourse on libraries; to define them not just as rooms for those who already possess education, but as modern-day Nalandas, where everyone can access knowledge and information resources freely, as a constitutional right.FLN member and contributor to PNLP24 Amit Gautam founded the Savitribai Phule Community Library and Resource Center in 2019, in village Singhagadh in Uttar Pradesh. Just over an hour away from Allahabad, the library prides itself on being anti-caste and feminist. Growing up Dalit in a village with poor education resources for his community spurred him to seek opportunities in the city. “It was not easy to get out. [However,] I was able to leave the village and gain an education. Reading about Babasaheb and Savitribai compelled me to return home and start something here.” Gautam found that nothing had changed in Singhagarh since he was a child. “The state of schools was very bad. Children in class 7 and 8 could barely write their own names. They could read neither Hindi nor English. Their foundational numeracy skills were next to nothing. I realised that the biggest problem was fear, and this fear has been there for generations, which is the effect of the caste system. Children could neither ask questions, nor speak. Parents were uneducated, working in the fields and brick kilns.”Gautam got to work, without institutional support and with just personal resources and the solidarity of his people. “Casteist forces created obstacles. But we overcame those challenges because the community had faith in us.” Today his library houses over 2,000 books and two computers. It is free and open to all. However, it grapples with a crippling lack of resources, from electricity to trained librarians.Amit’s contribution to FLN’s draft PNLP24 infused it with anti-caste language and the provision of affirmative actions like reservations. “If we define libraries as ‘democratic and inclusive’ then we have to have clarity on caste, so that marginalised communities (Dalit, Adivasi, Bahujan) can feel comfortable in those spaces and have ownership of resources like books. We can get equal rights, we can think about ourselves and our people, we can read books of our choosing and know about the history of our community, which is our constitutional right.”The policy and FLN’s advocacy for library reform has been endorsed by activists, library organisations and publishers, including the National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights, International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions, digital rights activist Apar Gupta, HarperCollins India’s Ananth Padmnabhan, Dalit Bahujan Resource Center, Stree Mukti Sangathan and more. But the fight to realise the PNLP24’s vision is just beginning.The launch of FLN’s PNLP24. Photo: Special arrangementLibrary movements in the last century have brought India to the precipice of reform and been defeated. As recently as 1986, the Chattopadhyay Committee drafted a national library policy. In 2022, a Rajya Sabha committee repeated the mandate of the government to activate national policy and streamline public libraries through standardisation and basic minimum guidelines. As the grassroots-led free library movement waited for this to happen, a different type of government ‘reform’ began to emerge, driven by the National Mission on Libraries. It focused much of its attention on digitisation and creating the National Virtual Library of India; endeavours which failed to address the fundamental problem of access for all. The Union government’s announcement of a plan to move libraries from the State to the Concurrent List has been met with fierce resistance by Kerala and rightly so. Such a move will lead to centralisation of such questions as collection curation, opening the door to further exclusion, censorship and the erasure of marginalised histories and aspirations.At the recently held launch of the PNLP24, a reporter asked FLN’s representatives, “What would you do if the government ignored your policy altogether? Would this become a movement?” Our answer is, it is already a movement. The PNLP24 carries the voice of the people and of everyone denied the right to read throughout history. In these voices are the smouldering embers of Nalanda, now sparking a renewed call for change, for justice. No matter how many books are burned, the hunger to read continues to rage, only to be extinguished when the right to learn and think freely is assured for all.Purnima Rao is director of the Free Libraries Network.
