Free libraries are a big hope in need of policy support
A member of a small free library in the national capital of the world’s largest democracy shares her thinking about the choice of red as the background colour for a poster she has created. She is addressing the ‘art collective’, a programme within the library.
“I chose red colour to represent communist ideology. I feel the concepts of a library and communism are very relatable to the thought of sharing." This could be a nightmare come to life for anyone who fears the disruptive power of free libraries and the unfettered access to information they afford everyone, and especially those who have been long excluded from such access.
But in a country without a national library policy, there is little to fear from a girl with that rare membership to a free library. In any case, in that same library, just the previous day the librarian noted yet another Urdu book marked in pencil with a handwritten “Jai Shree Ram." And there has been some debate among library members about whether the library shouldn’t also have a shelf marked “Against Hinduphobia" to sit alongside the one marked “Against Islamophobia".
The power of a library that offers free membership (no security deposit and no fee for the use of its reading room, the internet, book issuance, late returning of books or for losing them) does not reside in its capacity to produce an automaton-like desire among people for revolution. It offers something much more complicated: the possibility of dialogue among disparate elements of our democracy, among people walled apart from one another long before there was a largest democracy in the world.
A free library addresses the caste system so it can undo it. There are about 100-150 children and adults coming through the library door
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