J&K: Thousands of rare manuscripts have been destroyed by hardliners

Years of turmoil in the Kashmir Valley have not only cost hundreds of human lives, but also eroded the ancient historical and cultural ethos of the state in the form of thousands of rare books and manuscripts that have been burnt or destroyed by religious hardliners.

"It has come to the notice of the National Mission of Manuscripts that thousands of rare manuscripts have been lost in the years of terrorism in J&K," said Dr Dillip Kumar Rana, assistant director of the mission.

"Most of the manuscripts have been lost in huge fires caused by terrorists and religious hardliners in ancient buildings like the Charar-e-Sharif and other art and cultural centres located in the Srinagar," Rana told PTI.

Rana, who was in Ahmedabad to attend the on-going 40-day advance workshop on manuscriptology and paleography at the L D Institute of Indology, was referring to the art centres like the Islamia College building (a repository of rare manuscripts and books) which was destroyed when militants set it ablaze on October 14, 1990.

A fire had broken out in the Jammu and Kashmir Academy of Art, Culture and Languages in June 1999, which is known to be the storehouse of cultural heritage of the state.

However, the National Manscripts Mission formed under the Union Ministry of Culture in 2003 has no account of how many rare books and manuscripts have been lost in about two decades of militancy in the Kashmir Valley, Rana said.

He said the mission had come to know about individuals who have managed to save some of the manuscripts.

"For instance, we have come to know about a resident of Srinagar Manjoor Ahmed Daiku who has a personal collection of about 16,000 manuscripts most of which have been saved from fires," Rana remarked.

He said that some of the rare manuscripts still survive in the Sri Pratap Singh Musuem in Srinagar, which houses the prized Gilgit manuscripts (Sangahata-Sutra) written during the 5th-6th century AD on birch bark.

These manuscripts are regarded as one of the oldest in the world and here we have got about 600-700 bundles of these Gilgit manuscripts, he added.

"The manuscripts have been declared a national treasure," Rana said.

The musuem also contains valuable manuscripts in different languages covering many aspects like religion, history, literature, arithmetic and others.

These scripts and inscriptions are on various materials such as birch bark, hand-made paper, wood, stone and cloth.

The Gilgit manuscripts were accidentally discovered in 1931 when a group of cattle grazers unearthed a box in the region of Gilgit (now part of Pakistan administered Kashmir) in the then undivided J&K state.