How the food crisis in India fed the American library collections

In 1996, Ananya Vajpeyi, a doctoral student in history, acquired a collection of South Asian fiction at the University of Chicago’s Regenstein Library.

“I have spent time in some of the best South Asian libraries in the world, in Oxford and Cambridge, Harvard and Columbia. But nothing has ever matched the endless wealth held at the University of Chicago,” said Ms. Vajpeyi, now a visiting professor. at India’s Ashoka University, he told me.

The 132-year-old University of Chicago has more than 800,000 volumes related to South Asia, making it one of the world’s leading collections of research on the region. But how did such a wealth of South Asian literature get there?

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

Signed into law by President Dwight D Eisenhower, PL-480 allowed countries like India to buy US grain in local currency, easing their foreign exchange burden and reducing the US surplus. India was one of the biggest recipients of this food aid, especially in the 1950s and 1960s when it faced severe food shortages.

Local currency funds were offered in small amounts to participating American universities. These funds were used to purchase local books, periodicals, phonograph records, and “other media” in many Indian languages, enriching the collections of more than a dozen universities. Institutions such as the University of Chicago became centers of South Asian studies as a result. (Manuscripts are not included due to ancient Indian laws.)

“PL-480 has had an amazing and unexpected impact on the University of Chicago and more than 30 other American collections,” James Nye, director of the Digital South Asia library at the University of Chicago, told the BBC.

The process of building an impressive library collection from South Asia was not an easy task.

A special team of 60 Indian personnel was set up in Delhi in 1959. Initially focused on taking government books, the program expanded over the course of five years to include books and magazines. By 1968, 20 US universities were receiving materials from the growing collection, as noted by Maureen LP Patterson, a leading author of South Asian studies.

In a paper published in 1969, Patterson recounted that in the early days of PL-480, the Indian team was faced with the challenge of seeking literature from a large, diverse country with an array of complex languages.

They needed professional booksellers with a reputation for good judgment and efficiency. Given the size of India and the complexity of the landscape in which it was written, no single trader could manage the procurement alone, wrote Patterson, who died in 2012.

Instead, vendors were selected from a variety of publishing locations, each focusing on specific languages ​​or language groups. This collaboration worked seamlessly, with sellers submitting titles they were unsure about for approval. The final choice depended on Delhi Officenoted Patterson.

The program was determined to pick up a complete collection of Indian folktales in all languages. Patterson wrote:

In 1963, the selection of literature was narrowed to “research-level material” – and the intake of fiction in multiple languages ​​was halved. In 1966, more than 750,000 books and articles were sent to American universities from India, Nepal, and Pakistan, with India contributing more than 633,000 items.

“We have posted works like History of India from 1000 to 1770 AD, Handicrafts in India, Hindu Culture and Personality: A Psychoanalytic Study, etc,” a report at a meeting held at the US Library of Congress in 1967.

Todd Michelson-Ambelang, a librarian for South Asian studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, wonders if many collections in the US region and other Western libraries have adopted literary resources from the Indian subcontinent.

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

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

It is not clear whether all the books received by American universities in India at that time are still available there. According to Maya Dodd, of India’s FLAME University, many books not available in India can be found in the collections of the University of Chicago library, all marked with the stamp “PL-480”.

“For the most part, the books that came through the PL-480 system are still available in South Asia. But preservation is often a challenge due to white ants, insects, and lack of temperature and humidity control. In contrast, many items in the West remain well preserved due to conservation and preservation efforts. of our libraries,” said Mr Michelson-Ambelang.

Another reason why Mr Michelson-Ambelang calls Western libraries colonial archives “is partly because they serve academics, often outside of their institutions. While librarians understand the disparity in access to South Asian materials, copyright laws restrict sharing, reinforcing these gaps” .

So, what happens when the PL-480 program ends?

Mr. Nye says that the end of this program in the 1980s, removed the financial burden on American libraries. “Libraries in the US have had to pay for the selection, purchase, collection and delivery of resources,” he said. For example, the University of Chicago now spends more than $100,000 a year on the purchase of books and publications through the Library of Congress. field office in Delhi.

Mrs Vajpeyi believes that the letter agreement on grain has had a positive effect. He studied Sanskrit, but his research at the University of Chicago included Indian and European languages ​​- French, German, Marathi, and Hindi – and touched on languages, literature, philosophy, anthropology, and more. “In the Regenstein library, I have never failed to find the books I needed or found them quickly if they were not there,” he said.

“Books are safe, valued, accessible and used. I have visited libraries, archives and institutions in all parts of India and the story in our country is very bad. Here they were lost or destroyed or neglected or generally made inaccessible.”