Last week, some tourists from Uttarakhand visited the residence of Insha in her sleepy Aragam village, to see her library. The library, with its array of books all arranged in apple-pie order, offers a diverse collection that caters to different interests, from history to biographies.
“My library houses more than 10,000 books”, said Insha, who is pursuing a degree in law from a local law college.
The quaint tribal village, located a short drive away from Wular Lake, Asia’s largest fresh lake, in district Bandipora has been drawing tourists in droves since the village was designated as a book village by Sarhad, a Pune-based Socio-cultural non-government organisation in 2022.
The initiative to transform the village into a book village was taken by the organisation in collaboration with the district administration to attract tourists to the village.
Dr Owais Ahmed, the then District Magistrate (DM) of the district told businessline that the promotion of village tourism was a key focus of the administration.
“Setting up of libraries in the resident’s house not only attracted the bibliophiles but also promoted the eco-friendly village tourism”, Ahmed said.
He said that the Gurez valley in the district witnessed 50,000 tourists, compared to just 500 in the previous years.
In 2022, the UT government rolled out the Tourist Village Development Programme under Mission Youth to showcase scenic villages on the tourist map. The principal objective of the program was to develop 181 villages across Jammu and Kashmir with unique attributes like scenic beauty, adventurous terrain, artistic and cultural heritage, and bedside historical and archaeological significance.
The libraries
Dozens of residential libraries in the village house between 1.5 lakh and 2 lakh books attracting book lovers and tourists — both local and non-local — alike. Large signs displayed on the exterior walls of these houses give the entire village a distinctive appearance. A selfie point, reading “The Book and Poetry Village” has been created at the gateway of the village.
Siraj-ud-din Khan, a resident and Kashmir co-ordinator at Sarhad said that they initially converted one room in a few residential houses into libraries and put up sign bords on them.
“Later, we set up libraries in a few more houses and today we have around 15 to 20 such libraries in this small hamlet, comprising 250 households”, said Khan
Apart from these libraries, hundreds of books for competitive exams were placed inside a local school.
According to Khan, Sarhad aimed to build a large library to house not only books but also some crucial manuscripts. A couple of months later, he applied for the land allocation with the Revenue Department and completed the cumbersome paperwork. However, at the final stage, he said, he was informed that there were no provisions with the government to allocate land to an NGO, which stymied the further progress.
Home stays
To accommodate the growing number of tourists visiting the village, The NGO has applied for homestay registration under the government’s Mission Youth programme.
“Once registered, the tourists and bibliophiles could make night stays in the village, which will boost the rural economy”, said Khan.