THE STORY BEHIND INDIA LIBRARY
India Library exists because two remarkable men, separated by two centuries, shared a single conviction: that the greatest book ever written has the power to awaken an entire civilization. This is their story, and ours.
I
William Carey (1761-1834)
In 1793, a self-taught cobbler from Northamptonshire, England sailed to India with a singular mission: to translate the Bible into as many Indian languages as possible. His name was William Carey, and his impact on Indian society would prove incalculable.
Carey did not merely translate, he built. In Serampore, near Kolkata, he established India's first printing press with movable Bengali type. He founded what would become Serampore University, India's first modern university. He launched India's first newspaper, the Samachar Darpan. He created the first Bengali dictionary and grammar. He translated the Bible into Bengali, Sanskrit, Hindi, Marathi, and dozens of other languages and dialects.
But Carey's revolution went beyond linguistics. He campaigned relentlessly against sati (the burning of widows), helped establish the first savings bank for the poor, introduced modern agriculture and horticulture, and championed the dignity of women and the lower castes. He believed that access to knowledge, starting with "The Book", was the key to human flourishing.
"Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God."
William Carey's life proved that a single book, placed in the hands of a determined person, can reshape the destiny of nations.
II
Vishal Mangalwadi (b. 1949)
Two centuries after Carey, an Indian philosopher named Vishal Mangalwadi asked a provocative question: why did some civilizations develop a culture of books, literacy, and universal education, while others did not?
In his landmark work The Book That Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization, Mangalwadi traces the development of libraries, universities, science, human rights, and literacy itself back to a single source, the Bible. He argues, with meticulous scholarship, that the Western tradition of making knowledge freely accessible to all people was a direct outgrowth of the Bible's insistence that every person, regardless of caste, sex, or status, is made in the image of God and therefore worthy of education.
"An amazing feature of this library is that each book is different from every other. They were written over a span of 1,500 years by about forty authors using three languages... They include every kind of literature: history, law, poetry, prophecy, philosophy, biography, theology, and personal letters... Yet all sixty-six books have an organic relationship to each other. They tell one cohesive story."
Mangalwadi showed that the very concept of a public library, books for everyone, knowledge without price, was born from a worldview that sees literacy as a sacred right, not a privilege of the elite.
III
India Library is built on the conviction that ignited William Carey and that Vishal Mangalwadi has so powerfully articulated: that the Bible is "the Book that made the world of books." Every library, every university, every tradition of free public literacy traces its lineage, directly or indirectly, back to this one extraordinary volume.
Our collection spans the great literatures of India and the world, the Vedas and the Gita, Tagore and Kipling, Dostoevsky and Dickens. But at the heart of our library stands the book that made all the others possible: the Bible, translated into the languages of India by William Carey and his heirs.
We believe what Carey believed: that when people can read freely, societies flourish. And we believe what Mangalwadi demonstrated: that the impulse to make knowledge free and universal is itself a gift of "The Book."
India Library: Books of The Book, for the people of India.