In Kerala, a fascinating cultural alliance has taken root. The Shevadhi Museum, in collaboration with Alliance University, will study ancient palm-leaf manuscripts held at the centuries-old Kumaranalloor Devi Temple. These manuscripts, often preserved in hidden temple treasuries, carry liturgical texts, family histories, almanacs, ritual instructions and more. The project is significant not only for its content but for who is involved: a religious institution, a museum, and academic researchers working together. This cooperation underscores how complex, sensitive, and rich manuscript preservation is—and presages debates ahead under India’s New Delhi Manuscripts Declaration, where governments, scholars, and religious trusts must negotiate access, authority, and stewardship over heritage often held by temples.
A Unique Alliance: Temple, Museum, University
It is rare to see all three players—religious custodians, museums, and universities—come to the same table with equal respect. Typically, manuscripts held in temples are treated as private or sacred holdings; scholars petition access; museums may lobby for transfer or digitisation; governments hover. But here, the Shevadhi Museum (which already works in Malayalam manuscripts) and Alliance University are not seeking to take control. They propose collaboration. The temple grants access and permission; the museum brings conservation and display knowhow; the university undertakes research, cataloguing, translation, critical editions and pedagogy.
The challenges are many. Para-manuscripts are fragile. Palm leaves are vulnerable to humidity, insects, decay. Conservation requires controlled environments, first-aid repair, digitisation, and careful handling. The team will need to inventory, microfilm, photographic capture, transliteration, perhaps Sanskrit/Malayalam/Grantha expertise. The question of ownership and access becomes real: which items become public, which remain temple property, who may touch them, who may publish them. These discussions often pause many projects. But this initiative starts from mutual trust and transparency.
By combining institutional capacities, the project gains legitimacy and efficiency that none of the three parties could muster alone.
Negotiating Sacred Trusts: The Manuscript Declaration Challenge
This collaboration is a microcosm of a much larger challenge: India’s effort to frame a “Manuscript Declaration” or national policy for manuscripts held in private, temple, or family contexts. Many manuscripts of historic value lie in temple sanctums or family chests, unindexed, vulnerable, and opaque. The government and scholarship field must respect religious sentiments, proprietorship, ritual uses, and community prerogatives.
Under the New Delhi Manuscript Declaration, questions will arise: should temples be compelled to hand over manuscripts? Or should metadata and facsimiles suffice? Who owns the copyright of critical editions? How are access rights regulated? How do scholars and citizens obtain permissions? The Kumaranalloor initiative anticipates this. Its models for permission protocols, conservation standards, editorial credit, and revenue or usage sharing might become precedents.
If the national declaration assumes a top-down claim over temple holdings, resistance will follow. But projects like the Museum-University-Temple partnership show a gentler path: negotiate rights, respect ritual uses, gradually phase in public access, co-manage preservation. Such a model might reduce conflict and improve trust. For scholars, it offers a moral as well as practical roadmap: where heritage is jointly stewarded.
Conclusion: Manuscripts, Trust, and the Path Forward
The Shevadhi-museum and Alliance University collaboration at Kumaranalloor temple is more than a manuscript rescue effort. It is a test of India’s capacity to respect devotion, scholarship, and public heritage simultaneously. If conservation, cataloguing, publication, access, and ritual respect can cohabit, then India may have a live example to guide fragile negotiations in Delhi’s manuscript policy rooms.
Let this effort grow, multiply, and refine itself. The manuscripts of Kerala—and of all India—deserve not just dusty safekeeping, but collaborative, caring, living scholarship.