Bihar government’s recent decision to bulldoze a part of the 130-year-old Khuda Bakhsh Oriental Public Library, located in the heart of Patna, has brought it grave backlash from activists, heritage conservationists, and civil society members, who have now formulated a 58-member protest front, ‘Save Khuda Bakhsh Library- Save Heritage.’ The protest front was put together last week after a Bihar Vidhan Sabha library committee meeting. Headed by CPI (ML) MLA Sudama Prasad, the group aims to send a written petition to the CM. It will also aim to get a letter from UNESCO to help stop the proposed demolition of the site.
“We hope that we will be able to put up a strong fight against the ‘rabid’ decision to eradicate parts of Patna’s heritage,” Mr. Prasad, also the chairperson of the Vidhan Sabha library committee said.
The decision to raze the iconic Curzon Reading Room of the KBL comes as part of a 5540-crore project initiated by the Nitish Kumar government to upgrade the Patna Medical College Hospital. The project will be headed by Bihar State Bridge Construction Corporation Limited (BSBCCL) and aims to make the venue more accessible by building a road that gets rid of the existing traffic snarls. For this, the government plans to construct a flyover between the Kargil Chowk and NIT More, which will pass through the 116-year-old Curzon Reading Room.
The library committee was also scheduled to conduct a meeting with BSCCL on Friday but could not do so due to a surge in COVID-19 cases in the state.
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History
The Khuda Bakhsh Library was set up in October 1891 by Khan Bahadur Khuda Bakhsh, a Bihar-based bibliophile, who donated 4000 manuscripts to the library. It was built by the founder as a ‘gift’ for the city of Patna, and today houses several historically significant manuscripts. In 1969, via an act of Parliament, the Government of India declared the library as an Institution of National Importance after it acknowledged the rich intellectual and historic value of the library’s collection.
The Curzon Reading Room was established in 1905 and was named after then East India Company Viceroy Lord Curzon. It houses a large number of newspapers, magazines in English, Urdu and Hindi, reference books and books for competitive exams. As per the library website, roughly 9.5 thousand readers visit the CRR every month.
The library has also been visited by Jawaharlal Nehru, Mahatma Gandhi, and several Prime Ministers and Presidents.
Further developments
The move to bulldoze the CRR has met with dissent from multiple sources. The Indian National Front for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) also wrote a 2-page letter to multiple heads of the government, including the CM, and requested that the existing Ganga pathway be upgraded to ensure a less-busy route to the hospital. “The project, for a stretch of merely 2 km, jeopardises the fate of centuries old heritage buildings lined on this entire stretch. Since the Ganga Pathway is already under construction, we request you to divert the mentioned traffic through these ways,” INTACH state convenor J.K. Lal wrote.
The letter further read, “The razing of any portion of the KBL would be a monumental loss of heritage to Patna.”
Kunal Dutt, founder of a heritage conservation group called ‘Save Historic Patna Collectorate’, feels that the Bihar government could take influence from pedestrianisation projects being done in multiple cities. “I understand that development is necessary, but in places such as Delhi, the state government has decided to pedestrianise the areas around heritag sites to avoid traffic,” he said. Similar projects have also been implemented in southern Indian states, such as near Hyderabad’s Charminar, to ensure that heritage structures do not get bulldozed in the path of development.
The Bihar government is currently in the process of seeking an NOC from the library to kickstart the project. Present Director of the library, Shayesta Bedar said that institutions such as the Khuda Bakhsh Library are the people’s collective heritage and national pride. “It is our and the government’s responsibility to conserve it.” she added.
Several intellectuals and activists in the country have been appealing for citizen support, because of which the pace of the project has slowed down. Writer and historian Rana Safvi, theatre artist Shabnam Hashmi, along with several activists from Bihar have come in support of the CRR. A former IPS officer, Amitabh Kumar Das, also returned his police medal as protest. “The library is an example of our ‘ganga-jamuni’ tehzeeb (secularism), and the decision to raze part of the library has shocked me,” he said in a letter to the President of India.
Delhi Post attempted to contact multiple officials of the BSCCL but the calls went unanswered.
