Minister for Libraries and Adult Education Revu Naik Belamagi on Friday appealed to Gandhi Bhavan representatives to support the Library Department in opening a separate section on Mahatma Gandhi's works in libraries run by the department in rural areas.
Inaugurating a library exclusively dedicated to Mahatma Gandhi's works at Gandhi Bhavan here, he said that the department was running over 5,766 libraries in gram panchayats, 176 in taluks, besides 30 major district libraries. It was important to have a separate section on Gandhi's works to promote understanding of his values, he said.
Recalling Gandhi's contributions, Minister for Law, Parliamentary Affairs and Urban Development S. Suresh Kumar said that he was called the Father of the Nation not because of his contribution to the country's freedom struggle alone, but for his ideology that changed the map of the country.
He regretted that Gandhi was mostly misunderstood by the present generation. Study of Gandhi in the right perspective was the need of the hour and libraries of this kind would help the present generation understand his true spirit, he added. There are over 4,50,000 works on Gandhi in the library among which are 478 Kannada translations of his works besides 1,368 English and 578 Hindi translations. There are also a collection of periodicals in English and Hindi, letters from archives, mementoes and manuscripts. According to K.G. Venkatesh, Director, Department of Public Libraries, facilities have been put in place to listen to Gandhi's speeches and view various documentaries.
