SOUTH ASIA
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A Selection of Pamphlets on Bangladesh's
Independence Movement. In the fast breaking events of 1971-1972,
in which a movement for independence exploded in what was
then West Pakistan, the Pakistan authorities attempted
to suppress the movement by military force. When India
moved in to settle the issue, the Library's New Delhi Field
Office was able to get pamphlets from all parties putting
forward their positions. As is true for collections of
pamphlets on many other subjects that would not each merit
individual cataloging, these items have been preserved
and cataloged as a collection so that future scholars may
study the events and propaganda battle. (Southern Asian
Pamphlet Collection, Asian Division)
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Before World War II, there was virtually no interest in the
United States in the modern languages of South Asia. Scholars
were then fixated on the classical languages of Sanskrit, Pali,
Prakrit, Arabic, and Persian. In 1945, however, this attitude
began to change. The Library's acquisition program, which had
been disrupted by the war, was resumed and orders were placed
with five Indian dealers for a broad array of publications. Dr.
Poleman, the Asian Division's Indologist, made another trip to
India in 1947, to buy publications in modern languages, recordings
of Indian music and legal texts, and classical reprints published
during the war. During the 1950s, the collection grew rapidly.
By 1953, for example, the Library was receiving eighty-six contemporary
newspapers and periodicals in the languages of India, Pakistan,
and Ceylon.
The collection's growth was spurred even more in 1962 when the
Public Law (PL) 480 program began, which enabled the Library
to use rupees from Indian purchases of U.S. agricultural products
to buy Indian books. The Library's New Delhi Field Office was
opened the same year to implement the program, thereby marking
the beginning of the thorough and systematic acquisition of publications
in the modern languages of South Asia. A field office was opened
in Karachi in 1965 to oversee the acquisition of Pakistani publications.
The New Delhi Field Office also carries out an extensive program
to microfilm newspapers and fragile periodicals and to microfiche
both periodicals and books.
In recent years, the New Delhi Field Office has focused its
efforts on acquiring publications on the political parties in
South Asia. For example, the Library now has a compete set of
all the publications of the Bharatiya Janta Party, which for
a time headed India’s ruling coalition. Another current
focus is the acquisition of textbooks used in Muslim religious
schools, madrasas, in Bangladesh, India and Pakistan. Of special
interest are texts covering controversial topics such as religion,
politics, civics, history and ethics. Another recent acquisition
is a collection of about 60,000 legal and commercial documents
from several of the princely states in India during the period
of the British Raj.
The South Asian collection holds material in over one hundred
modern written languages used in Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the
Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. The majority of the
publications are in Hindi (20 percent), Bengali (15 percent),
Urdu (13 percent), and Tamil (11 percent). Other languages represented
in large numbers include Marathi, Telugu, Malayalam, Gujarati,
and Kannada. The majority of these publications are in the fields
of literature, religion, philosophy, history, and politics, but
all subjects are included.
The Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division
has an excellent collection of audiovisual material from India,
including a large collection of 78 rpm recordings of Indian music
made by British and American companies working in India in the
first half of the century. More music from India, Sri Lanka,
Nepal, and Pakistan can be found in the Library's Archive of
Folk Culture. The Archive also holds recordings of Nestorian
Christian services held at several churches in the Indian state
of Kerala that were made by Prince Peter of Greece and Denmark
in 1949. Also available in the Motion Picture, Broadcasting,
and Recorded Sound Division are recordings of prominent authors
from South Asia reading selections from their works. Since 2000,
the New Delhi Field Office has recorded eighty authors in India,
Bangladesh and Sri Lanka and the project continues.
Electronic Resources: The Library is a member of the Urdu Research
Library Consortium, which has the world's largest collection
of Urdu material, currently being digitized and indexed. Readings
from the South Asian Literary Recordings Project may also be
accessed through the New Delhi Field Office's website (http://www.loc.gov/acq/ovop/delhi/delhi.html).
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