As relevant as ever they are, in the internet age, Mahatma Gandhi’s words are closer and more accessible too. Launching next week is a website that hosts all of Gandhi’s collected works, in three languages, among other things, as part of the government’s efforts to preserve the heritage of the father of the nation.

The prime minister will launch the ‘Gandhi heritage portal’ (www.gandhiheritageportal.org) on September 2. The portal has been developed by and hosted at the Sabarmati Ashram Preservation and Memorial Trust (SAPMT), Ahmedabad. The Rs 7.5 crore project, funded by the culture ministry, is overseen by a committee with Gopalkrishna Gandhi as its head.

The idea of the portal goes back to 2005. That year, Congress chief Sonia Gandhi flagged the Mahatma’s great-grandson Tushar Gandhi’s walk from Ahmedabad to Dandi to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Salt March in 2005. As the nation celebrated the original, historic event, a realization soon dawned that many of the sites and spots associated with Gandhi were in bad shape, in dire need of conservation and maintenance.

The government announced a major project for the purpose, and a committee was soon formed under the leadership of Gopalkrishna Gandhi, a great Gandhi scholar himself.

The committee realised that there was need to go beyond the physical heritage of the Mahatma and also take into account his intellectual heritage. And hence the portal that would host not only all of Gandhi’s published works and journals he edited or managed, but also the writings of his associates as well as the audio-visual materials.

While Gandhian literature, now free from copyright restrictions, is widely available on the internet, there is always a question of authenticity – especially after the NDA government’s controversial project of bringing out a “revised edition” of the Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (CWMG). The portal answers to this call for an authenticated and reliable source of Gandhiana on the internet.

The Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad, which is the home of large parts of Gandhi archives, was the ideal host for the portal as well. The site promises to be a treasure trove for scholar and all interested to find Gandhian answers to problems around us. It hosts:
 
* Digital copies of 100 volumes of CWMG, 82 volumes of its Gujarati edition (Gandhiji no Akshar Deha) and 97 volumes of the Hindi one (‘Sampoorna Gandhi Vangmaya’).

* Digital copies of newspapers and journals the Mahatma edited or ran including Indian Opinion, Navajivan, Young India, Harijan, Harijan Bandhu, and Harijan Sevak.

* Digitised copies of the memoirs of Gandhi’s close associates like Mahadev Desai, Kishorelal Mashruwala, Kaka Kalelkar and Jugatram Dave.