THE STORY BEHIND INDIA LIBRARY
India Library is shaped by two men from different centuries who held one conviction: a book can change what people believe, build, and pass on. This page explains that influence.
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 translated, but he also built. In Serampore, near Kolkata, he established a printing press with movable Bengali type. He founded what would become Serampore 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, beginning with Scripture, mattered for 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 direct question: why did some societies build a culture of books, literacy, and public 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 that the Western tradition of making knowledge freely accessible to all people was a grew from the Bible's insistence that every person, regardless of caste, sex, or status, is made in the image of God and is 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 argued that the public library ideal, books for everyone, knowledge without price, came 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 includes literature from India and the world: the Vedas, the Gita, Tagore, Kipling, Dostoevsky, and Dickens. 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: when people can read freely, societies flourish. We also believe Mangalwadi was right 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.