Museum of Word/ Shabdlok, Kolkata

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YEAR-WISE DEVELOPMENTS

As in 2022

Dipawali Mitra, August 21, 2022: The Times of India

Kolkata: A first-of-its-kind museum in the country dedicated to languages, scripts and words is taking shape in the historic Belvedere House located on the National library campus and is likely to be open to public. The Museum of Word, or Shabdlok, under the aegis of the cuture ministry is an attempt to trace the evolution of 22 official Indian languages — Assamese, Benga li, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri, Konkani, Malayalam, Manipuri, Marathi, Nepali, Oriya, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu, Urdu, Bodo, Santhali, Maithili and Dogri — and major linguistic trends in an interactive way.

The primary aim, says National Library director-general Ajay Pratap Singh, is to preserve the history of languages, scri pts and literature with special focus on prominent scholars, poets and writers.

“Since the concept of museums has changed, technological tools will be used to express our uniq ue heritage in an interactive way so that it appeals to everyone, from a kid to asenior citizen,” Singh said.

The museum will also chrocnicle the history of the printing press, the journey of public libraries and the history of Belvedere Estate.

“A proposal to establish a Museum of Word was mooted in 2010 at a meeting held to discuss the reuse of Belvedere house,” said KK Banerjee, then director of the National Library. The meeting was chaired by Barun De, historian and KMC heritage conservation committee chairman, and the proposal was accepted by the government. “There is no bette r place to house such a museum where the priceless heritage of word, languages, script and print would be preserved for the country and the world,” Banerjee added.

The Development and Research Organisation for Nature, Arts and Heritage (DRONAH) has been tasked with the planning, design and curation of the galleries. There will be LED projectors, augmented and virtual reality tools, graphic walls, i nteractive games along with artefacts like manuscripts, replicas of Harappan seals and coins to enhance museum experience.

“Extensive research was undertaken so that no important co mponent of any language is missed out. ,” said Shikha Jain, director of DRONAH. To begin with, there will be nine galleries with the first two focusing on a visitor’s mother tongueand then move towar ds exploring language through interactive modules.