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.
Today, the South Asian collection holds material in over fifty
modern languages used in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka,
and Nepal. 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.
Among the Library's unique holdings are World War II records
in English and Hindi from the Indian National Army that operated
against British forces from Burma with Japanese support. In addition,
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.
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