'Bharat'kar Govind Pundalik Hegde Desai, (7th Nov 1885 - 15th Aug 1949), a freedom fighter, a social reformer, a valiant journalist started 'Bharat' ('O Bharat' in Portuguese) a Marathi-Portuguese bilingual weekly, on 6th November 1912. For 36 years thereafter, Bharatkar courageously protested the Portuguese occupation, relentlessly advocated radical and progressive social reforms and doggedly championed the cause of an independent and sovereign Indian Goa.
We have developed a partnership with Bharatkar Trust in Goa under the 'Goa liberation Struggle' project from Oct 21. We are facilitating the archival process of O Bharat volumes. After 6 months of follow-up finally Goa Central Public Library has given access to bound volumes of O Bharat and permission to scan them. Another local organisation, Bhakti Dnyan Marg Sanstha in association with Goa University Marathi Department identified few students for the digitisation training. Total 6 students were trained, out of which two students completed the scanning work of @12,000 pages from 27 July to 1 August 2022. After post processing, the volumes would be uploaded on Wikimedia Commons & Wikisource. The relicensing of the content is done by the trust.
