How India's food crisis fueled American library collections

In 1996, Ananya Vajpeyi, a doctoral student in history, discovered the collection of legendary South Asian books at the Regenstein Library at the University of Chicago.

“I have spent time in some of the world's leading South Asian libraries, at Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard and Columbia. But nothing compares to the endless riches found at the University of Chicago,” Ms. Vajpeyi, now a visiting professor, said. At India's Ashoka University, he told me.

The 132-year-old University of Chicago houses more than 800,000 volumes related to South Asia, making it one of the world's leading collections of studies on the region. But how did this treasure trove of South Asian literature end up there?

The answer lies in a program called PL-480It is a US initiative launched in 1954 under Public Law 480, also known as Food for Peace, and is a hallmark of Cold War diplomacy.

PL-480, signed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, allowed countries such as India to purchase American grains with local currency, easing the foreign exchange burden and reducing American surpluses. India was one of the largest recipients of this food aid, especially during the 1950s and 1960s when it faced severe food shortages.

Funds were provided in local currency at minimal cost to participating U.S. universities. These funds were used to purchase local books, periodicals, phonograph records and “other media” in multiple Indian languages, enriching the collections at more than twenty universities. As a result, institutions such as the University of Chicago have become centers for South Asian studies. (The manuscripts were excluded due to Indian antiquities laws.)

“PL-480 has had stunning and unexpected consequences for the University of Chicago and for more than 30 other American collections,” James Nye, director of the South Asian Digital Library at the University of Chicago, told the BBC.

Building a stunning South Asian office collection was no simple task.

A special team of 60 Indians was set up in Delhi in 1959. Initially focused on collecting government literature, the program expanded over five years to include books and periodicals. By 1968, 20 American universities were receiving materials from the growing collection, noted Maureen L. B. Patterson, one of the leading bibliographers in South Asian studies.

In a paper Published in 1969, Patterson recounts that in the early days of PL-480, the team in India faced the challenge of sourcing books from a vast and diverse country with a complex network of languages.

They needed the expertise of booksellers who had a reputation for judgment and competence. Patterson, who died in 2012, wrote that given India's size and the complexity of its literary scene, no single trader could handle the buying process alone.

Instead, dealers were drawn from different publishing centres, each focusing on particular languages ​​or language groups. This collaboration worked smoothly, as merchants sent addresses they were unsure of for approval. The final choice lies with you Delhi officePatterson noted.

The program was keen to capture a comprehensive collection of Indian novels in all languages. “This policy has resulted in a large number of detective stories and novels of no lasting value,” Patterson wrote.

In 1963, the choice to acquire books was narrowed to “research-level material” – and the number of fiction books in many languages ​​was halved. By 1966, more than 750,000 books and periodicals had been sent to American universities from India, Nepal, and Pakistan, and India contributed more than 633,000 items.

“We have sent works like History of India from 1000 to 1770 AD, Handicrafts of India, Hindu Culture and Personality: A Psycho-Analytical Study, and more.” a report At a meeting in an American library about the program in 1967, he said:

Todd Michelson-Ambelang, a South Asian studies librarian at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, wonders whether the huge collections from the region in the United States and other Western libraries have taken literary resources from the Indian subcontinent.

Founded during Cold War tensions and funded by PL-480, his university's South Asia Center expanded its library to more than 200,000 titles by the 21st century.

Mr Michelson-Ambelang told the BBC that the removal of books from South Asia through programs such as PL-480 “creates knowledge gaps”, as researchers from there often need to travel to the West to access these resources.

It is unclear whether all the books acquired by American universities from India at that time are still available there. According to Maya Dodd, of India's FLAME University, many books that are now unavailable in India can be found in the collections of the University of Chicago Library, all marked “PL-480.”

“For the most part, books that came through the PL-480 program are still available in South Asia. But their preservation is often a challenge due to termites, pests, and lack of temperature and humidity control. In contrast, most of the material in Ambelang: “The West remains well preserved thanks to the preservation and preservation efforts of our libraries.”

Another reason Mr. Michelson-Ambelang called the colonial archives of Western libraries “part is because they serve academics, often excluding those outside their institutions. While librarians understand the disparity in access to materials in South Asia, copyright laws limit sharing “This reinforces these gaps.”

So what happened when the PL-480 program ended?

The end of the program in the 1980s shifted the financial burden to American libraries, Mr. Nye says. “Libraries in the United States had to pay for the costs of selecting, acquiring, collecting and delivering resources,” he said. For example, the University of Chicago now spends more than $100,000 annually purchasing books and periodicals through the Library of Congress. Field office In delhi.

Ms. Vajpeyi believes the books-for-cereals deal has achieved a positive outcome. She studied Sanskrit, but her research at the University of Chicago covered Indian and European languages—French, German, Marathi, and Hindi—and touched on linguistics, literature, philosophy, anthropology, and more. “At the Regenstein Library, I never failed to find the books I needed or get them quickly if they weren't already there,” she says.

“Books are safe, valuable, accessible and usable. I have visited libraries, archives and institutions in every part of India and the story in our country is universally dismal. Here they are lost, destroyed, neglected or often inaccessible.”