With Central Vista, a library without a home and a larger absence

The  Central Secretariat Library (CSL) predates the republic. Established in 1891 as the Imperial Secretariat Library in Calcutta, it moved with the capital to Delhi and was renamed after Independence. Its collection runs to over 8.5 lakh books and documents, including material dating back to 1702. It is, in other words, a working archive of the Indian state, a repository of institutional memory. Yet, as a report in this newspaper has shown, with Shastri Bhawan, its home since 1969, set to make way for the Central Vista redevelopment, the library is yet to find a new space. A government that is building a new administrative centre is also making a statement about what belongs at the centre of public life. That a project of such scale and ambition should leave an institution of archival importance without a secure home is a troubling statement of priorities.

As a long-term project involving some of the country’s most storied buildings, relocation could not have been an unforeseen complication. As early as 2023, the Culture Ministry had sought commensurate space in the new Common Central Secretariat that is at the heart of the Central Vista redevelopment project. Public discourse and expert opinion around the demolition of the National Archives Annexe and the relocation of the National Museum’s collections to the Yuge Yugeen Bharat Museum, coming up in the North and South Block buildings, have underscored why proper inventories and cataloguing, conservation facilities, climate-controlled storage for fragile and rare material, digitisation, trained staff and access are crucial to the preservation and upkeep of objects of national inheritance. Such provisions should, in fact, have been integral to the project from the outset.

There is also a cautionary precedence in its own history that shows that when institutions are displaced without a durable plan, temporary arrangements can lead to permanent absences. CSL’s regional languages section, the Tulsi Sadan Library, was temporarily shut for the construction of the Mandi House Metro station in 2011, its contents housed in the National School of Drama premises. The library is shut to this day. The government must ensure that a similar fate does not befall the CSL.