How India’s Food Crisis Fueled America’s Library Collections

In 1996 Ananya Vajpei, a doctoral student in history, discovered the legendary collection of South Asian books at the University of Chicago’s Regenstein Library.

“I spent some time in some of the leading South Asian libraries in the world, at Oxford and Cambridge, Harvard and Columbia. But nothing has compared to the endless riches housed at the University of Chicago,” Ms. Vajpeyi, now a visiting professor at India’s Ashoka University, told me.

The 132-year-old University of Chicago houses more than 800,000 volumes related to South Asia, making it one of the world’s leading collections for research on the region. But how did such a treasure trove of South Asian literature end up there?

The answer lies in a program called PL-480a US initiative launched in 1954. under Public Law 480, also known as Food for Peace, a hallmark of Cold War diplomacy.

Signed by President Dwight Eisenhower, PL-480 allowed countries like India to buy US grain with local currency, easing the burden on their foreign currency and reducing US surpluses. India was one of the largest recipients of this food aid, especially in the 1950s and 1960s when it faced acute food shortages.

Local currency funds were made available at minimal cost to participating US universities. These funds were used to purchase local books, periodicals, phonograph records, and “other media” in numerous Indian languages, enriching collections at over two dozen universities. As a result, institutions such as the University of Chicago became centers for South Asian studies. (Manuscripts were excluded due to Indian Antiquities Laws.)

“PL-480 has had incredible and unexpected implications for the University of Chicago and for more than 30 other American collections,” James Nye, director of the Digital South Asia Library at the University of Chicago, told the BBC.

The process of building an impressive library collection from South Asia was no easy task.

A special team of 60 Indians was set up in Delhi in 1959. Initially focused on collecting government publications, the program expanded over five years to include books and periodicals. Until 1968 20 American universities receive materials from the growing collection, as Maureen L. P. Patterson, leading bibliographer of South Asian studies.

In a paper published in 1969, Patterson recounts that in the early days of PL-480, the team in India faced the challenge of sourcing books from a vast, diverse country with a complex web of languages.

They needed the expertise of booksellers with a reputation for good judgment and efficiency. Given India’s size and the complexity of its literary landscape, no single dealer could handle the delivery alone, wrote Patterson, who died in 2012.

Instead, dealers were selected from different publishing centers, each focusing on specific languages ​​or groups of languages. This collaboration works seamlessly with merchants submitting titles they are unsure of approval for. The final choice was on Delhi OfficePatterson noted.

The program sought to bring together a comprehensive collection of Indian fiction in all languages. “Politics has produced a vast number of detective stories and novels of no lasting value,” Patterson writes.

In 1963 book purchase choices have been narrowed to “research-level material” – and the intake of fiction in many languages ​​has been halved. Until 1966 more than 750,000 books and periodicals were sent to American universities from India, Nepal, and Pakistan, with India contributing more than 633,000 items.

“We sent works like History of India from 1000 to 1770. sl. Hr., Crafts in India, Hindu Culture and Personality: A Psychoanalytic Study and Many More’, a report at a meeting at an American library on the program in 1967. said.

Todd Mickelson-Ambelang, a South Asian studies librarian at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, wonders if vast collections from the region in American and other Western libraries have taken away literary resources from the Indian subcontinent.

Founded during Cold War tensions and funded by PL-480, his university’s South Asian Center grew its library to over 200,000 titles by the 21st century.

Mr Michelson-Ambelang told the BBC that removing books from South Asia through programs such as PL-480 “creates gaps in knowledge” because researchers from there often have to travel to the West to access these resources.

It is not clear whether all the books acquired by American universities from India at that time are still available there. According to Maya Dodd of India’s FLAME University, many books now unavailable in India can be found in the University of Chicago library collections, all marked with the “PL-480” stamp.

“For the most part, the books that came through the PL-480 program are still available in South Asia. But preserving them is often a challenge due to white ants, pests and a lack of temperature and humidity control. In contrast, most material in the West remains well-preserved thanks to preservation and conservation efforts in our libraries,” says Mr. Michelson-Ambelang.

Another reason Mr. Michelson-Ambelang calls Western libraries colonial archives “is partly because they serve academics, often excluding those outside their institutions. While librarians understand the disparities in access to South Asian materials, copyright laws restrict sharing, reinforcing these gaps.”

So what happened when the PL-480 program ended?

Mr. Nye says the program’s end in the 1980s shifted the financial burden to American libraries. “U.S. libraries had to pay for the selection, acquisition, collection and delivery of resources,” he said. For example, the University of Chicago spends more than $100,000 a year to purchase books and periodicals through the Library of Congress field office in Delhi.

Ms Vajpeyi believes the books-for-grain deal has had a positive outcome. She studied Sanskrit, but her research at the University of Chicago spanned Indian and European languages—French, German, Marathi, and Hindi—and touched on linguistics, literature, philosophy, anthropology, and more. “At Regenstein Library, I could never find the books I needed or get them quickly if they weren’t already there,” she says.

“Books are safe, valued, accessible and used. I have visited libraries, archives and institutions in every part of India and the history of our country is universally grim. Here they were lost or destroyed, neglected or very often made inaccessible. “