THE STATE OF THE PROJECT REPORT 2000
K. L. Seshagiri Rao, Chief Editor

Let me say that, based on my visits to the Encyclopedia offices in India and my discussions with the authorities and scholars concerned, the state of the project is good, sound, and moving forward expeditiously. The general objective of the trip was "to speed up and to energize the whole project". My India visit lasted for two months.

My first trip was to Rishikesh. I presented my plan and objectives of action for these two months to Pujya Swamiji, with which he agreed. As per program, I went to Bangalore, Chennai, Thiruvananthapuram, Mumbai, Nagpur, Delhi, Rishikesh and Patiala. During my Mumbai, Nagpur and Delhi meetings, Sri B. S. Varma, our Central Coordinator joined me. That gave an opportunity to Varmaji to renew old contacts and make acquaintance with new scholars, willing and eager to cooperate in EH work. This has been very useful for follow up actions. I could not visit this time Ahmedabad, Jaipur, and Chandigarh.

I came to know, on my arrival in India, that Dr. Vidya Niwas Misra was in Delhi. Mr. Varma and I went to see him and get his advice. I also mentioned to him about my trip to the South. We agreed that an office in Varanasi should be established with necessary infrastructure. A letter from the President IHRF would be issued in this regard. Dr. Misra agreed to focus on evaluating the quality of LMS articles. He also said that he would identify a full time person for taking care of EH office work in Varanasi.

In Delhi, the discussions with individual scholars culminated in a workshop of scholars at Bhartiya Vidya Bhavan, Delhi. The Director of the Bhavan, Mr.Veeraraghavan was very helpful. About 25 scholars attended. The list of unassigned articles was circulated to them. They agreed to take responsibility for writing, getting articles written, or for editing in their respective fields of expertise.

Dr. L. M. Singhvi has been an asset for us in Delhi. He put me in touch with Dr. N. R. Shetty, Member Secretary, of Indira Gandhi National Center for Arts. He was previously the Vice-chancellor of Bangalore University. Both of them have opened the doors for us in several directions. First, they have agreed that we may select from the IGNCA archives illustrative materials, (slide, photos, etc.) needed for the Encyclopedia. They have also association with other museums in several countries. We could utilize those resources as well. Two conditions have been specified for their use though: (i) that credit should be given to IGNCA for whatever photos are used in EH, and (ii) that we should pay the cost for duplication. At the instance of Dr. N. R. Shetty, we talked with Prof. B. N. Saraswati. We all agreed that we should have a full time Art Director. Names of Dr. O. P. Tandon recently retired art historian from the Fine Arts Museum in Varanasi, and Dr. Hemani Pande of IGNCA were proposed, Mr. B. S. Varma is charged with negotiating terms and conditions for final selection.

We have also received the cooperation of the Director General of Tourism through the good offices of Mr. P.K. Lahiri as well as from Mr. Francois Myer and Mr. Olivier Barot of Pondicherry through the good officers of Dr. Kireet Joshi. They have a good collection of slides and photographs, and they have also proposed the same conditions as IGNCA for their use in the EH. Pujya Swamiji has assured a scanner for scanning them, so that they can be used directly for high quality offset printing.

Dr. Singhvi, Dr. N. R. Shetty and I discussed about a possible seminar on Dharma at IGNCA. Various perspectives of Indic Religions on Dharma (Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Sikh) are to be presented. Later, it was felt, that articles have to be collected first. Seminar may not be necessary. Dr (Mrs) Ratna Lahiri informed me in Delhi that the entries in Northeastern region are identified and assigned; and the writing of entries is progressing satisfactorily. Dr. Mahendra Kumar, Professor of Political Science Delhi University, and editor, Gandhi Marg, (Journal of Gandhi Peace Foundation), has agreed to review and edit all articles on Gandhi and Gandhian literature.

Meeting with Swami Vedabharati on December 26, 2000 in Delhi was significant. I have been corresponding with him frequently in respect of the EH entries in the subject area 10: Spiritual Disciplines. He was also on the lookout for an experienced editor with good background in South Asian Religions for us. He found one in Ms. Anne Glazier, from London, who is presently in Rishikesh. When Mr. B. S. Varma and I were in Rishikesh, she came to meet us. We were impressed with her abilities and work. After consulting with Swami Vedabharati in Delhi, it was agreed that she will edit all the articles in S.A. 10, under his close supervision. Mr. Varma was to meet him before 13th January 2001, and give all the articles in this area to him. Once Anne finished with these articles, she could be given articles in related areas to edit.

In Bangalore, the meetings were held in EH office in the Indian Institute of World Culture. The writers and editors involved in the project took part in the discussions: Dr. B. V. Subbarayappa, Dr. Rajagopalachar, Dr. Tara Kashyap, Dr. Sudha Gopinath and Dr. L. K. Srinivasan. Together, we went through some articles that had been already edited at Bangalore office. Practical orientation to substance and copyediting was given to them, in the light of the guidelines proposed by the USC Press. The editors agreed with the suggestions. But Dr. B.V. Subarayappa said that their focus was only on substance editing. Copy editing job would take more time; and for that, one more round of editing at the national level may be done, before they are turned over for final international editing to Columbia. All the edited articles, along with the originals would be passed on to Delhi office.

Dr. B.V. Subarayappa stated that he had committed himself to certain other things, and that he would like to be relieved of the charge of Bangalore office, at this stage. Further, he said that it would be unnecessary expenditure to pay rent and run a regular office. He suggested that those who wanted to write articles or do editing work could have direct contact with Delhi/Columbia offices on individual basis. Hence forth, all EH work in India should be centralized in Delhi.

The other scholars in Bangalore, who have been enlisted to work, are Prof. Prabhakar (Sanskrit) and his wife Dr. (Mrs.) Prabhakar (Music). The former came to Delhi for the Vedic Studies Conference and was introduced to Shri B. S. Varma. Dr. Sridhar(Indology & Sanskrit) to write a number of entries relating to Mahabharata.

In Thiruvananthapuram, an International Gita Conference had been organized. The Governor of Madhya Pradesh, Hon. Shri Bhai Mahavir and the Union Education Minister, Hon. Dr. Murli Manohar Joshi addressed the conference. I was also a speaker. Following lectures, we had time for informal conversation. Dr. Joshi remembered our association in the World Hindu Conference, held in Durban, South Africa. He had gathered a fairly good idea of the Encyclopedia of Hinduism Project. He said he is looking forward to seeing the project completed and published. Dr. Kireet Joshi, Dr. Kapil Kapoor, and Dr. Panchamukhi came to attend the conference from Delhi. They wanted to know about the latest developments on the EH project, and I filled them in. They promised to attend the workshop of scholars in Delhi, which they did. They have since become active participants in ensuring qualitative excellence of articles.

In Madras, I had first, an administrative meeting with Smt. Seetha Chidambaram, Smt. Annapoorni Veerappan (Vice-Chair persons of Madras EH Center) and Sri T. S. Velaiah, Academic Coordinator. They told me that Madras Center is in charge of collecting 2000 articles, mostly relating to South India; 1800 articles have been collected.

Next meeting was with substance editors: Mrs. Gita Narayanan, Mrs. Gita Gopal Krishnan, Mrs. Kshama Rangarajan, Ms. Chitra Mahesh, and Dr. Chitra Madhavan. Each one of them is only giving a limited time for this work, and consequently, the output is limited. They informed me that efforts are being made to find qualified substance editors and to increase the output. As in Bangalore, orientation and guidelines were given to the substance editors, which they assured would be implemented.

A highlight of Madras trip was the contact with the Editor of Tatvaloka, Mr. Ramacharndran, an old friend. I introduced him to our Madras group. He assured that a number of scholars, working with him for the magazine would bring their knowledge and experience to help the Madras Centre. It was agreed that a monthly workshop of scholars would be held for discussing the progress of the project, and for obtaining mutual help. Another important meeting was with Mr. Mahalingam, the Chairman of Madras EH chapter, at his residence. He is making contributions on the Puranas and the Hindu measurements of time.

In our meetings in Bombay with Sri S. Ramakrishnan, Mr. Subba Rao, Sri Sivaramakrishnan, and Sri Raje, we went into the details of the work yet to be done to complete the EH project. Mr. Subba Rao turned over to us a C.D. of 500 pages of substance-edited articles. He also showed us the bound hard copies of the same. Although the contracted work is completed, Subba Rao told us that he would continue to lend his cooperation for the EH work. Dr. Raje, an experienced copy editor was enlisted to do copy editing. Our meeting with Sri Ramakrishnanji was most encouraging; he gave us permission to adapt for the Encyclopedia, any article from any issue of Bhavan's Journal, if necessary.

Sri Sivarama Krishnan, a person with 25 years of experience in editing Bhavan's Journal, agreed to move over to Delhi and work as full time staff editor in EH office. He has retired from BVB.

We met Dr. Kala Acharya, Professor of Indian Culture in Bharatiya Samskriti Peetha, at her residence in Somaiya College, Vidya Vihar, Bombay. She expressed her willingness to work as a Unit Coordinatior. We also talked with Prof. Sudhindra Sharma, who is enthusiastic to write and edit articles in Dvaita Vedanta and other schools of Vaishnavism.

In Nagpur, two meetings of scholars were held. These meetings, were very special as I met some of the very dedicated scholars here. In the first, Dr. Ajai Mitra Sastry, Dr. Pitale, Dr. Sathe, Mrs. Dani, Dr. M. R. Joshi, Dr. Vyavahare, and Dr. C.S. Gupta took part. In the second meeting, Dr. Usha Gadkari, Prof. S.G. Kashikar, Prof. S.D. Deshpande, Mr. G. Vaidya, Dr. Datatreya M. Saroj, Dr. Jayant Y Devpujari, Prof. P. V. Shukla, Dr. Deepak Deshpande, and Dr. V.K. Didolkar, Dr. K.M. Ghatate and Dr. S.S. Joshi participated. The expertise of these scholars range from art history through philosophy, sociology and Ayurveda. They constitute a mine from which many precious things can be obtained. They have completed writing a number of entries. The visit to Nagpur was both inspirational and academically rewarding.

In Patiala, Vice Chancellor Dr. Jasbir Singh Ahluwalia, Dr. Prithipal singh, Chief Editor, Encyclopedia of Sikhism, and Dharm Singh, Head, Department of Encyclopedia of Sikhism received me. I made a presentation on Religious Dialogue and the Future of Humanity: The vision of Guru Gobind Singh. Following the lecture, we discussed about Encyclopedia of Hinduism. They told that the four volume Encyclopedia of Sikhism, with full funding from the Punjabi University took 31 years to be completed. They were pleased to know that most of the articles relating to Sikhism in the EH are written by scholars recommended by Jathedar Manjit Singh from Punjabi and Guru Nanakdev Universities. Dr. Dharam Singh expressed his readiness to write or get written, if there are any open entries relating to Sikh tradition.

One of the dire needs in this age of electronic communication is keeping the EH database compatible, computer network connected and the data accessible in Rishikesh, Delhi and Columbia. This is Mr. Girish Yajnik's goal, but has not been fully realized so far, and consequently problems crop up now and then. Dr. Kaushal Sinha discussed the matter with Pujya Swamiji in Delhi, he suggested that Hariom, who is expected to make a private visit to India shortly, could be asked to stay in Delhi to orient computer persons there. Pujya Swamiji found out that access program is already installed in Delhi and Janak could be made familiar in the way the software is used in Columbia in a few days. For this purpose, Hari Om has will donate a week to accomplish this job.

Let me emphasize however, that our interest is not in completing the project in the most rapid fashion, but in completing it with its qualitative excellence. As many rounds of reviewing, editing, and revising as are necessary have to be done. Collection of articles amounts only to 40% of the total work. The rest consists of the national level substance and copy editing, and finally the international editing in Columbia. We have been assured necessary resources for the task. We thank Pujya Swamiji for his inspiration, Drs. Kishan and Madhu Aggarwal for their support. Fortunately, we have willing and dedicated scholars to accomplish the academic part of the project; and we have necessary contacts and resources to pursue the collection and evaluation of the illustrative materials, and match them to appropriate articles. We also thank Sri and Smt. Varma, who have moved from Canada to India, to do the project coordinating work in Delhi. Their hands are to be strengthened in the Delhi office.