The accused continue to roam scot-free. Barring Rs 10 lakh from the Maharashtra government, little central help has ensued despite the lofty assurances given then by the likes of Murli Manohar Joshi and Sumitra Mahajan. The Pune Municipal Corporation has gone back on its word of building a wall around the institute’s 13-acre campus.
Having set aside public help worth Rs 61 lakh to form a corpus fund, BORI has decided to build the wall itself, stunned by recent theft of sandalwood trees from its premises. But it may prove difficult for the institute to bring about modifications to its building since it is a classified heritage structure.
Meanwhile, BORI has gone about its business quietly. It spent Rs 4 lakh on restoring 20,000 books, 1.5 lakh index cards, 6,000 manuscripts, broken furniture and computers. It acquired 34,000 new books, published six, set up a laboratory to conserve manuscripts and fumigated around 6,000 pages of Persian manuscripts. A 31-strong team is studying 18,101 manuscripts from 23 institutions, 32 personal collections under the National Mission for Manuscripts. Fragile manuscripts are being re-inked. Workshops on manuscript conservation are on the anvil.
The only silver lining is that BORI has bagged the prestigious European Commission-funded INRIA—a France-coordinated project also involving Italy, Nepal and India—for compiling and digitising a critical analysis of ancient manuscripts. However, many feel the threat to BORI from the unapologetic Shiv Dharma cult of Maharashtra’s Brahminetar (non-Brahmin) movement is far from over.
