India Heritage Project

Aims & Objectives: 

A. Cultural Knowledge & Documentation

1. Digitize Ancient Texts – To scan, transcribe, and publish rare manuscripts (Sanskrit, Prakrit, Persian, Tamil and other 18 official languages) with translations.

The Digitization of Ancient Texts initiative aims to rescue thousands of rare and often fragile manuscripts scattered across temples, mathas, private collections, monasteries, and forgotten libraries before they are lost forever to insects, dampness, or neglect. High-resolution scanning, multi-spectral imaging, and careful handling will be employed to create permanent digital surrogates of palm-leaf, birch-bark, cloth, and paper manuscripts in Sanskrit, Prakrit, Pali, Apabhramsha, Tamil, Persian, Arabic, and India’s other constitutional languages. Each manuscript will be transcribed using OCR-assisted tools fine-tuned for Indian scripts, critically edited where necessary, and translated into English and modern Indian languages. The entire corpus—along with metadata, commentaries, and variant readings—will be made freely available on an open-access platform under the svarxiv umbrella, ensuring that scholars, students, and the general public worldwide can access India’s written heritage without barriers. Special focus will be placed on “at-risk” collections in remote areas of the Northeast, Himalayan regions, and coastal Tamil Nadu that have never been microfilmed or digitized before.

List of Tamil Works [.txt]

2. Oral Traditions Archive – To record folk songs, epics, and local stories before they vanish.

India possesses one of the world’s richest living reservoirs of oral literature—folk epics longer than the Mahabharata, bardic genealogies, women’s ritual songs, and tribal creation myths—that are disappearing as the last traditional performers pass away. This project will deploy mobile recording teams to document these traditions in their original linguistic and performative contexts across villages, tribal hamlets, and nomadic communities. High-quality audio and video recordings, accompanied by ethnographic notes, translations, and performer biographies, will be preserved in a dedicated, searchable archive. Special efforts will be made to record vanishing genres such as the Pabuji ki Phad of Rajasthan, the Pandwani of Chhattisgarh, the Tulu Paddanas of Karnataka, and the Mizo storytelling forms, ensuring that future generations can hear the actual voices and melodies of their ancestors.

3. Craftspeople Interviews – To document the life histories of traditional artisans, sculptors, weavers, and performers.

Traditional artisans—temple sculptors, Madhauls of Bihar, Pattachitra painters, Kashmiri papier-mâché artists, Warli painters, and countless others—represent living links to techniques refined over centuries. In-depth video interviews will capture their life stories, training under gurus, material knowledge, iconographic understanding, and the socio-economic challenges they face today. These oral histories will be supplemented with footage of complete craft processes from raw material to finished product. The resulting archive will serve both as an educational resource and as evidence for GI tagging, policy advocacy, and the creation of sustainable livelihood models that respect traditional knowledge systems.

4. Digital Heritage Library – To build an open-access online archive of India’s heritage materials, as part of svarxiv.

svarxiv will be India’s answer to a truly open, multilingual, and community-driven digital repository for cultural heritage. Unlike existing pay-walled or institution-locked platforms, svarxiv will be completely free, searchable in Indian scripts, and designed for contributions from individuals, NGOs, and universities alike. It will host digitized manuscripts, oral recordings, craft documentation, 3D models of monuments, festival videos, and research papers under Creative Commons licenses that balance access with respect for community ownership. Advanced features such as AI-assisted transliteration, script conversion, and semantic search across 22+ Indian languages will make the platform accessible to schoolchildren and scholars alike.

5. Lexicon Projects – To compile glossaries of heritage terms across Indian languages.

Many technical terms in Indian arts, architecture, music, medicine, and philosophy have no exact equivalents in modern languages and are rapidly falling out of use. Specialized glossaries and polyglot dictionaries will be compiled for domains such as Shilpashastra, Natyashastra, Sangitashastra, Ayurvedic pharmacology, and regional temple terminology. Collaborative teams of traditional scholars, linguists, and domain experts will define each term with textual references, visual examples, and audio pronunciation in the original language, creating invaluable resources for translators, conservators, performers, and educators.

B. Built Heritage & Monuments

6. Community Monument Watch – To train local youth to monitor and report damage at heritage sites.

Hundreds of lesser-known temples, stepwells, and forts are crumbling simply because no one notices the damage until it is irreversible. Local youth will be trained to conduct monthly inspections of assigned monuments using a simple mobile app that allows them to photograph cracks, vegetation growth, vandalism, or water seepage and instantly upload geo-tagged reports. These reports will trigger rapid-response conservation requests to district authorities and the ASI, creating a country-wide early-warning system run by the people who live closest to the heritage.

7. Adopt-a-Monument Program – To partner with ASI (Archaeological Survey of India) to maintain specific lesser-known monuments.

Many historically significant but “unprotected” monuments receive no regular maintenance. Through formal MoUs with the Archaeological Survey of India and state archaeology departments, REAL Institute will “adopt” selected sites, funding basic clearing, structural stabilization, signage, and boundary protection while involving the surrounding community in day-to-day care. Successful pilot models already exist (e.g., the restoration of Chandela temples in Madhya Pradesh by local NGOs); this program aims to scale such efforts systematically across the country.

8. Virtual Tours – To create 3D models and VR walkthroughs of temples, forts, and heritage towns.

Using photogrammetry, LiDAR, and drone technology, accurate 3D models will be created of monuments that are either too fragile for mass tourism or located in inaccessible areas. These models will power immersive VR experiences and high-resolution virtual tours accessible on smartphones, allowing schoolchildren in Manipur to “walk” through the Brihadeeswara Temple and global audiences to explore the rock-cut caves of the Western Ghats without adding physical stress to the sites.

9. Conservation Training Workshops – To equip students with skills in stone, wood, and fresco restoration.

There is an acute shortage of skilled conservators familiar with India’s traditional building materials—lime mortar, surkhi, wood joinery, and fresco pigments. Hands-on workshops led by master craftsmen and conservation scientists will train architecture students, ASI staff, and local masons in authentic restoration techniques, ensuring that interventions respect historical integrity rather than introducing irreversible modern materials.

10. Crowdsourced Mapping – To encourage people to geo-tag heritage structures in their locality.

Millions of small shrines, hero stones, sati stones, and historic water bodies remain unmapped and unrecognized. A simple mobile app will allow citizens to photograph and geo-tag these structures, adding basic details and oral histories. The resulting open map will become an invaluable tool for researchers, planners, and local governments seeking to protect neighborhood heritage.

C. Intangible Heritage

11. Traditional Music Residencies – To support endangered instruments (sarangi, rudra veena, tabla) with training camps.

Certain classical and folk instruments—rudra veena, vichitra veena, sarangi, dhrupad been, sattriya instruments of Assam, and rare percussion of the Northeast—are played by fewer than a dozen ageing masters today. Month-long residential camps will bring together these last exponents with committed young learners for intensive guru-shishya training. All lessons will be filmed, transcribed, and archived, while the masters receive honoraria, medical care, and lifelong royalties from the recordings. Successful models like the Dagar Bani gurukul and the Timbaktu collective’s folk-music camps will be expanded pan-India.

12. Culinary Heritage Documentation – To record recipes, food practices, and rituals tied to regional cuisines.

India’s cuisines are among the oldest continuously practiced food traditions on earth, yet thousands of hyper-local recipes, fermentation techniques, and ritual foods are vanishing. Field teams comprising chefs, anthropologists, and local women will document complete seasonal menus, heirloom seeds and vessels, foraging practices, and the socio-religious context of dishes—from the 52 types of apong rice beers of Arunachal to the 108 sadhya items of Kerala temples. The resulting multimedia archive, complete with measured recipes and oral narratives, will be published in regional languages and English to inspire both home cooks and professional kitchens.

13. Festival Preservation Projects – To archive videos, narratives, and rituals of fading local festivals.

Hundreds of village and tribal festivals—many over a thousand years old—are now celebrated only by a handful of elders. High-definition video documentation teams will record entire festival cycles (preparations, rituals, dances, music, costumes, and oral commentaries) in locations such as the Lai Haraoba of Manipur, the Theyyam calendar of Kerala, the Dhinga Gavar of Rajasthan, and the Hornbill equivalents of smaller tribes. The footage will be subtitled, contextualised, and uploaded to svarxiv, while short edit versions will be shared with the communities themselves for pride and continuity.

14. Language Revitalization – To support endangered Indian languages through digital dictionaries and storybooks.

Over 200 Indian languages are classified as endangered. Working closely with native speakers and linguists, the Institute will produce talking dictionaries, graded storybooks, animated folktales, and mobile apps for languages such as Toda, Kurukh, Nicobarese, Onge, and Tulu. Simple teacher-training modules will enable community members to run language nests and after-school classes, while digital keyboards and fonts will be released under open licences to encourage everyday use.

15. Yoga & Ayurveda Archives – To curate authentic, textual and oral sources on indigenous health traditions.

Much misinformation surrounds India’s indigenous knowledge systems. A rigorous archive will collate and digitise authentic manuscripts (e.g., Yoga Yajnavalkya, Hatha Yoga Pradipika variants, Charaka and Sushruta recensions) alongside recorded lineages of living traditions (Kerala’s Kalari-based yoga, the Bihar School of Yoga oral teachings, and family vaidyas of Tamil Nadu). Scholar-practitioners will provide critical editions, layer-by-layer commentaries, and video demonstrations to separate genuine tradition from modern inventions.

D. Community Engagement

16. Heritage Walks – To organize guided walks in towns and villages to connect locals with their heritage.

Every Indian town hides layers of history invisible to hurried eyes. Trained local guides—often college students and homemakers—will lead slow, storytelling walks through old neighbourhoods, pointing out forgotten havelis, kos minars, baolis, temple ruins, and living traditions. Walks will be offered free or at nominal cost in Hindi, regional languages, and English, fostering pride among residents and sensitive tourism among visitors.

17. School Programs – To develop heritage-focused curricula and activity kits for students.

Heritage education is almost absent from Indian classrooms. Age-appropriate activity kits, graphic novels, maps, and short films on local history and culture will be developed in collaboration with NCERT and state education boards. Teacher-training workshops and downloadable resources will enable schools even in remote areas to make heritage a joyful part of the curriculum rather than an additional burden.

18. Youth Volunteer Networks – To train young people as “Heritage Ambassadors.”

A national cadre of “Heritage Ambassadors”—college and senior-school students—will be trained through weekend bootcamps and online modules in documentation, first-aid conservation, and storytelling. They will form local chapters that organise clean-ups, documentation drives, and awareness events, creating a self-sustaining youth movement for heritage across the country.

19. Living Heritage Museums – To partner with communities to create small museums showcasing local traditions.

Instead of relocating artefacts to distant cities, small community-managed museums will be set up in villages and tribal areas themselves—often in restored traditional houses. These museums will display agricultural tools, musical instruments, textiles, and ritual objects still in use, narrated by the community members who inherit them, turning preservation into a source of pride and supplementary income.

20. Storytelling Circles – To host periodic events where elders share cultural narratives with the next generation.

Once a month, in villages and urban neighbourhoods alike, elders will be invited to share myths, historical anecdotes, and family migration stories with children and youth in an informal circle under a tree or in a courtyard. Light recording ensures the narratives enter the archive, while the live experience rebuilds the broken thread between generations.

E. Research & Policy

21. Heritage Research Fellowships – To fund research on Indian heritage themes across disciplines.

Young scholars from diverse disciplines—anthropology, architecture, musicology, linguistics, ecology—will receive two-year fellowships to pursue original fieldwork-based research on Indian heritage themes. Findings will be published open-access and translated into regional languages, creating a new body of credible, India-centric scholarship.

22. Policy Advocacy – To advise government on safeguarding cultural practices under UNESCO’s heritage frameworks.

Drawing on field evidence and research, the Institute will prepare white papers and briefing documents for central and state governments on issues ranging from amendments to the Ancient Monuments Act, inclusion of living heritage under UNESCO frameworks, tax benefits for artisan cooperatives, and integration of traditional water systems into modern urban planning.

23. Collaborative Projects – To partner with IITs, IIMs, and global universities for interdisciplinary studies.

Tie-ups with IITs (for VR/AR and material science applications), IIMs (for heritage entrepreneurship), IISc (for conservation science), and international leaders such as the Smithsonian, Getty Conservation Institute, and Kyoto University will bring cutting-edge technology and rigorous methodology to Indian heritage challenges while ensuring knowledge remains in Indian hands.

24. Heritage Economics Studies – To research sustainable ways artisans and performers can earn livelihoods.

Artisans and performers often live in poverty despite possessing extraordinary skill. Longitudinal studies will map value chains, identify choke points, and pilot sustainable models—e-commerce platforms owned by artisan cooperatives, fair-trade certification for traditional textiles and music, tourism revenue-sharing at monuments, and IPR protection for community knowledge—proving that heritage preservation can be economically regenerative.

25. Heritage & Sustainability Integration – To link preservation of traditional practices (e.g., water tanks, farming) with modern environmental solutions.

Many traditional practices—rainwater-harvesting stepwells, mixed-cropping systems, sacred groves, natural dyeing, and mud architecture—are remarkably climate-resilient. By documenting and scientifically validating these practices, the Institute will create bridges between tradition and modern environmental solutions, showing policymakers and communities how preserving culture is inseparable from preserving the planet.