Padma Shri 2026 awardee Anke Gowda earns acclaim for lifelong service to librarianship

Seventy-five-year-old Anke Gowda, selected for the prestigious Padma Shri award — one of India’s highest civilian honours — in 2026 in the Unsung Heroes category, runs Pustaka Mane (House of Books) in Haralahalli village of Pandavapura taluk in Mandya district that has a collection of more than 20 lakh books. 

The institution is regarded as one of the country’s largest personal libraries, offering free access to readers.

A book curator and librarian, Mr. Gowda founded Pustaka Mane after a humble beginning. He worked as a bus conductor before joining a sugar factory in Pandavapura as a timekeeper, setting aside a major portion of his salary to buy books. He not only sold his site in Mysuru, but also invested his retirement funds to procure books for the library.

Born in Chinakurli in Pandavapura taluk, he pursued higher education through evening college, earning a B.A. degree, and later completed an M.A. in Kannada through correspondence.

His collection of books, which he started when he was 20 years old, has now surpassed 20 lakh volumes, supporting students, teachers and researchers with dependable academic and literary resources, while also encouraging reading habits and literary awareness in the local community.

His collection spans literature, science, technology, mythology and philosophy, and includes rare historical manuscripts dating back to 1832. It also features more than 5,000 dictionaries in multiple languages and around five lakh rare foreign books.

The library houses books in over 20 Indian and foreign languages, 35,000 international magazines, 2,500 Kannada magazines, 2,500 titles on Mahatma Gandhi, 2,500 books on the Bhagavad Gita, and more than 100 religious texts, including the Bible and other sacred scriptures.

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Despite limited income from his employment, he sacrificed personal comforts and invested most of his earnings in acquiring and preserving books for public benefit, said a note from the district administration.

Mr. Gowda has received numerous awards, including the Limca Book of Records in 2016 for having the largest personal book collection, the Rajyotsava Award in 2014, the Alva’s Nudi-Siri Award in 2011 and the G.P. Rajaratnam Sahitya Paricharika Award from the Kannada Book Authority in 2009, among others.