Ministry of Culture is actively engaged in preserving, digitizing, and globally promoting Indian art, monuments, and cultural traditions through various initiatives.

Ministry of Culture promotes Indian Folk Arts and Cultural traditions abroad through the Global Engagement Scheme. Festivals of India are organized under this scheme in other countries showcasing folk art and other cultural events as exhibitions, dance, music, theatre, food fest, film fest, yoga etc. The artists empanelled with the Ministry of Culture are sponsored to perform in Festival of India abroad. Also, Grant-in-aid to Indo–Foreign Friendship Cultural Societies is released for organizing programmes and activities including folk art and other cultural activities for their promotion in other countries.

Sangeet Natak Akademi (SNA), Ministry of Culture organizes festivals at all over the country, gives grants-in-aid for research, documentation, and publishing in the performing arts; organizes and subsidizes seminars and conferences of subject specialists; documents and records the performing arts for its audio-visual archive. The academy documents all its events in the form of audio/video and photographs, and all this material is kept safe in the academy's archives.

In its bid to preserve and promote the lingering vestige of Sanskrit theatre of India sustained in Kerala, SNA launched a Kutiyattam Project in 1990-91. The Project provided regular support to the handful institutions and artists existing in the field, by way of funding training and regular performances, maintenance etc.

The Kutiyattam Kendra, Thiruvananthapuram, is a logical development of Akademi’s project in support of Kutiyattam. It has been set up as a ‘Centre for Kutiyattam’ meant to provide support to the entire field of this classical Sanskrit theatre.

The SNA continues to invite artists of Kathakali, Mohiniyattam, Theyyam, and other forms of Kerala to present at its various Festival and provides assistance for the promotion and preservation of all these art forms under its various schemes.           

As far as protection and promotion of heritage sites is concerned, Archaeological Survey of lndia (ASI), Ministry of Culture takes up conservation and maintenance work of protected monuments.

This information was given by Union Minister for Culture and Tourism Shri Gajendra Singh Shekhawat in a written reply in Rajya Sabha today.

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Sunil Kumar Tiwari

pibculture[at]gmail[dot]com

(Release ID: 2150695)