Culture and Heritage

Meeting with Sahapedia

Sahapedia is an open online resource on the arts, culture and heritage of India. Founded in 2011 with sponsorship from the erstwhile and thereafter from the TCS foundation, its vision is to comprehensively capture the various cultural and artistic history and aspects of India and eventually become the one preferred source for all matters relating to the rich, multi-cultural, multi-ethnic and multi-lingual aspects of the country. This is a very daunting and ambitious mission, especially considering the fact that Culture encompasses enormous number of facets such as Knowledge Traditions, Visual and material arts, Performing arts, Literature and Languages, Practices and Rituals, and a host of other aspects. Over the past few years, Sahapedia has been able to notch up significant achievements in some of the above domains. As can be imagined, this is an on-going, never ending activity, requiring considerable resources. The platform is essentially digital, with some minimal physical outputs.

Some of the work done by Sahapedia covers:

  • Multi-volume documentation project from the Rashtrapati Bhavan
  • Project with Parampari Karigar
  • Interview with the 14th Dalai Lama
  • Cultural mapping of Fort Kochi-Mattancherry
  • Chattisgarh Heritage

A comprehensive list of work done is available on the site www.sahapedia.org.

A videoconference was held between Mr. S. Ramadorai (President of Sahapedia, also the President of Fortess), Ms. Sudha Gopalakrishnan, Vice President, Sahapedia and several members of Fortess across Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore, Chennai and New York, on November 26th, 2018. The objective was to apprise the Fortess members about the objectives and activities of Sahapedia and explore areas where Fortess can provide assistance to them. After a lot of discussions, the following broad scope for assistance was arrived at. Technology, being the forte of Fortess, it will identify areas where it can be deployed more effectively.

Broadly, the scope of co-operation will lie in the following:

  • Fortess can examine the current processes of working of Sahapedia and see technology can help in increasing the efficiency i.e. increase the current bandwidth of Sahapedia and achieve more with less effort
  • Fortess can examine various technologies for mining the Net more effectively i.e. help create and distribute content more effectively
  • Fortess will see if individual members, who have knowledge of culture as an interest, can contribute to the content of Sahapedia or assist in researching relevant areas

As interaction between the two entities increases, it is expected that more domains can be identified where mutual co-operation will prove beneficial to both.

Nov 26, 2018
Mumbai