A History of Inequality — The Right to Read: how India's public-library policy has been built and refused, from Ambedkar's 1915 Columbia letter to the present.
WE HAVE BEEN TOLD. AGAIN AND AGAIN.
By Phule. By Ambedkar. By Ranganathan. By committees the government itself appointed. The plans exist. The will does not. What follows is the historical case for free public libraries in India — the words, the dates, and the people who said them first.
1915. COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY. A LETTER TO BOMBAY.
In 1915, writing from Columbia, a young Ambedkar urged the Bombay government to build a library in honour of Sir Pherozshah Mehta — not a statue. The statue went up. A century on, India is still building statues, expressways named after donors, smart cities that are not smart, vanity projects that enrich politicians' families. Not libraries.
+ The longer story
Ambedkar was reading for his Master's in Economics and Political Science at Columbia in 1915. The Bombay government had proposed a statue to commemorate Sir Pherozshah Mehta, the Parsi reformer and Indian National Congress leader, who had just died. Ambedkar wrote back: build a library in his name. Not a statue. The statue went up. A century on, the same logic governs every public-spending priority — expressways named after donors, smart cities that are not smart, hyperscale data centres for American corporations, and vanity projects that fund politicians' families, friends and the kickbacks they collect.
BUILT BY MOVEMENTS, REFUSED BY THE STATE.
From Phule to Chattopadhyay, the long arc gave hope in pieces — anti-caste reformers and people's movements built reading rooms, village libraries, science circles. The State drafted plans, then shelved them. Then 1991 came, and the State stopped pretending.
OUR PEOPLE HAVE BEEN SAYING THIS FOR TWO CENTURIES.
EDUCATE.
AGITATE.
ORGANISE.
Independent of any political party.
Built on the People's National
Library Policy 2024.
Read the policy: fln.org.in