4 months ago
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Seventy-five-year-old Anke Gowda, selected for the prestigious Padma Shri grant — 1 of India’s highest civilian honours — successful 2026 successful the Unsung Heroes category, runs Pustaka Mane (House of Books) successful Haralahalli colony of Pandavapura taluk successful Mandya territory that has a postulation of much than 20 lakh books.
The instauration is regarded arsenic 1 of the country’s largest idiosyncratic libraries, offering escaped entree to readers.
A publication curator and librarian, Mr. Gowda founded Pustaka Mane aft a humble beginning. He worked arsenic a autobus conductor earlier joining a sweetener mill successful Pandavapura arsenic a timekeeper, mounting speech a large information of his wage to bargain books. He not lone sold his tract successful Mysuru, but besides invested his status funds to procure books for the library.
Born successful Chinakurli successful Pandavapura taluk, helium pursued higher acquisition done evening college, earning a B.A. degree, and aboriginal completed an M.A. successful Kannada done correspondence.
His postulation of books, which helium started erstwhile helium was 20 years old, has present surpassed 20 lakh volumes, supporting students, teachers and researchers with dependable world and literate resources, portion besides encouraging speechmaking habits and literate consciousness successful the section community.
His postulation spans literature, science, technology, mythology and philosophy, and includes uncommon humanities manuscripts dating backmost to 1832. It besides features much than 5,000 dictionaries successful aggregate languages and astir 5 lakh uncommon overseas books.
The room houses books successful implicit 20 Indian and overseas languages, 35,000 planetary magazines, 2,500 Kannada magazines, 2,500 titles connected Mahatma Gandhi, 2,500 books connected the Bhagavad Gita, and much than 100 spiritual texts, including the Bible and different ineffable scriptures.
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Despite constricted income from his employment, helium sacrificed idiosyncratic comforts and invested astir of his net successful acquiring and preserving books for nationalist benefit, said a enactment from the territory administration.
Mr. Gowda has received galore awards, including the Limca Book of Records successful 2016 for having the largest idiosyncratic publication collection, the Rajyotsava Award successful 2014, the Alva’s Nudi-Siri Award successful 2011 and the G.P. Rajaratnam Sahitya Paricharika Award from the Kannada Book Authority successful 2009, among others.
