In this article, Soutik Biswas delves into the quirky origins of why American universities have the world’s best collections of books & manuscripts from India:
“The 132-year-old University of Chicago houses more than 800,000 volumes related to South Asia, making it one of the world’s premier collections for studies on the region. But how did such a treasure trove of South Asian literature end up there?
The answer lies in a programme called PL-480, a US initiative launched in 1954 under Public Law 480, also known as the 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 with local currency, easing their foreign exchange burden and reducing US surpluses. India was one of the largest recipients of this food aid, particularly during the 1950s and 1960s when it faced severe food shortages.
The local currency funds were provided at minimal cost to participating US universities. These funds were used to purchase local books, periodicals, phonograph records, and “other media” in multiple Indian languages, enriching collections at over two dozen universities. Institutions like the University of Chicago became hubs for South Asian studies as a result. (Manuscripts were excluded due to Indian antiquity laws.)
“PL-480 has had amazing and unexpected consequences for the University of Chicago and for more than 30 other US collections,” James Nye, director of the Digital South Asia library at University of Chicago, told the BBC.”
However, whilst the Indian currency to set up libraries of Indian books came from PL-480, spending the money to actually build these libraries together was no easy task: “A special team staffed by 60 Indians was established in Delhi in 1959. Initially focused on picking up government publications, the programme expanded over five years to include books and periodicals. By 1968, 20 US universities were receiving materials from the growing collection, as noted by Maureen LP Patterson, a leading bibliographer of South Asian studies.
In a paper published in 1969, Patterson recounted that in the early days of the PL-480, the team in India faced the challenge of sourcing books from a vast, diverse country with an intricate network of languages.
They needed the expertise of booksellers with a reputation for good judgement and efficiency. Given India’s size and the complexity of its literary landscape, no single dealer could handle the procurement on their own, Patterson, who died in 2012, wrote.
Instead, dealers were selected from various publishing hubs, each focusing on specific languages or groups of languages. This collaboration worked seamlessly, with dealers sending titles they were not certain about for approval. The final selection rested with the Delhi office, Patterson noted….
In 1963, the choice for acquiring books was narrowed down to “research level material” – and intake of fiction in many languages was halved. By 1966, more than 750,000 books and periodicals were sent to American universities from India, Nepal and Pakistan, with India contributing more than 633,000 items.”
All good things must come to an end. In 1980, the PL-480 program ended (most likely because India had become self-sufficient in food by then): “Mr Nye says the end of the programme in the 1980s, shifted the financial burden to American libraries. “Libraries in the US have had to pay for the selection, acquisition, collection, and delivery of resources,” he said. For example, the University of Chicago now spends more than $100,000 annually on buying books and periodicals through the Library of Congress field office in Delhi.”
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