We did more than just buy paper copies and scan them. We took many of the key documents and retyped them into modern web pages, redrew all the diagrams, applied modern typography to the text. We coded the standards so people who are visually impaired could more effectively work with the documents. We made the codes available as ebooks, we provided full-text searching, bookmarks, and a secure web site.
Governments in US & India not pleased
The powers that be were not pleased. In the US we have been sued in intensive litigation with six plaintiffs and our case for the right to speak the law is now before the US Court of Appeals. In India, the Bureau refused to sell us any more documents and—after a petition for relief to the Ministry was denied—we joined with our colleagues in India in a Public Interest Litigation suit that is currently before the Honorable High Court of Delhi. Our lawyers all donate their time, they are “pro bono,” but they have donated over $10 million in free legal help to defend our work.
While we pursue justice in court, we are also continuing to make these documents available on the Internet to tens of millions of viewers every year. The Indian Standards are particularly popular in the great Indian engineering institutes, where students and professors are delighted to have easy access to crucial standards they need for their education.
Every generation has an opportunity. The Internet has provided our world with a truly great opportunity: universal access to knowledge for all people. I focus on access to edicts of government, the laws of our great democracies, but that is only a small part of the great promise.
We should set our sights higher. In our modern world, there is no excuse to restrict access to scholarly literature, technical documents, the law, or other storehouses of knowledge. As Bhartrhari’s Nitisatakam teaches us, “knowledge is a treasure which cannot be stolen.” Knowledge should be free to all regardless of means.
Universal access to knowledge and the rule of law are the way that our world might surmount these seemingly insurmountable obstacles we seem to face today. But, it will only happen if we engage in public work as Gandhi so often told us to do. And, it will only happen if we all focus on specific goals and do so persistently and systematically.
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