The Ministry of Culture on Thursday signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Google Arts & Culture to digitise India’s cultural heritage and make it accessible to audiences in India and abroad.
The agreement was signed at a virtual ceremony in the presence of Culture Secretary Vivek Aggarwal and Google Arts & Culture Vice President and Founder Amit Sood.
The partnership will cover monuments and archaeological sites protected by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), national museum collections, manuscripts being documented under Gyan Bharatam, and crafts, performing arts and living traditions supported by the Ministry’s institutions.
A central focus will be the upcoming Yuge Yugeen Bharat Museum, being developed in the North and South Blocks in New Delhi to showcase India’s history across the ages. The digitisation initiative will document the buildings and the artefacts they will house, while offering the public an early look at the museum.
The collaboration forms part of the Ministry’s broader efforts to expand digital access to cultural resources, enabling people to explore India’s heritage in Indian languages and across devices. It also seeks to link preservation and public access with the growth of the country’s creative economy.
“India’s cultural heritage is a living inheritance. It belongs to every citizen and speaks to the whole world,” Aggarwal said.
He said the partnership would use technology to document, preserve and share ancient manuscripts, monuments and museum collections. Making these resources available in Indian languages and to global audiences would help bring more people closer to Indian civilisation and safeguard its heritage for future generations, he added.
Google Arts & Culture has previously worked with institutions under the Ministry, including the ASI, the National Museum and the National Gallery of Modern Art, to bring their collections to wider audiences.
Sood said the agreement reflected a shared commitment to preserving India’s heritage through technology. He said Google Arts & Culture would support the vision for the Yuge Yugeen Bharat Museum and the preservation of historic manuscripts, making collections freely discoverable for audiences worldwide.
(PIB)
