I have had museums on my mind lately. It all began with a small idea that took root in our office: how would it be to set up a museum of women’s history in India? Excited, we began to explore it in earnest.

The internet provided some leads on women’s museums in different parts of the world. We discovered there were quite a few of them — in Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Vietnam, Senegal, Dubai, for example.

Targeted travel added to this: we visited different museums — having secured a small grant from the much-maligned Ford Foundation to do the initial research — talked to people who had run them, looked at what they contained, what they were trying to do, where the money came from, and then began to plan our strategy.

Meanwhile, sort of unbidden, other museum-like thoughts began to make their way into my head. Sometimes, when you become interested in something, your brain and your eyes, almost of their own accord, start seeking out that very thing. We discovered a museum of the Bhopal gas tragedy, a museum of conflict in Ahmedabad, a number of small and large museums in Delhi (some listings put this figure at 21, some say it’s higher).

Interest piqued, I decided to visit a museum that had long been on my agenda: the museum of Sikh history, known as Virasat-e-Khalsa, in Anandpur Sahib. Set up in 1999, Virasat, as the locals call it, traces the history of the 10 gurus of Sikhism and was set up to commemorate 300 years of the Khalsa.

Imposing in its design, the museum offers free entry to anyone who wishes to see it. As a result, hundreds of visitors, mostly locals from the town, and pilgrims from nearby places, turn up every day. Many treat the museum as if it were a place of worship, taking their shoes off and covering their heads while browsing the exhibits.

Perhaps the most stunning exhibit is a huge hall painted from top to bottom with everyday images of Sikh life, where both music, and the play of light, tell multiple narratives of what the Sikh way of life has come to stand for. At the centre of this brightly coloured and lively depiction lies a video of the Golden Temple where people ceaselessly make their way to the Harmandir Sahib and circle the water tank in which it stands.

Meanwhile, back in Delhi, coincidentally, a discussion had begun on the possibility of setting up a museum on the Partition of India, and so other thoughts were sparked off.

How might such a museum be set up? Where would it be located? What would its purpose be? What would it house, in terms of tangible things, and how would it deal with those intangibles, people’s memories? And is the time right for such an exercise?

In many ways, I do believe the time is right. In the last few years, so much has happened that refers us to the great need people have begun to feel to speak out, to tell their stories. This is in contrast to, say, two decades back when people were still reluctant to speak out. Witness the numbers of archives that have come up: a web archive called the 1947 Partition Archive, which has thousands of oral narratives, the Citizens Archive of Pakistan, begun in a small way by a few committed individuals, and now a repository of invaluable oral and visual records. And then the large numbers of individual collections of art, films, photos, objects and so on.

All of this, and more, is exciting. But there are also dangers: unearthing memory, dealing with divided histories, is never an easy thing, and it cannot be done without being fully cognisant of the responsibility it carries. This is something that any museum project will need to be aware of. A question that has refused to go away, for example, in our thinking on a women’s museum, is how do you place inside museums the continuing histories of sexual violence? Is it even desirable to do so? What about the women whose histories these are? And if you extend that question to the idea of a Partition museum, then how would such a museum deal with the histories of mass rape? Can this history be left out? Clearly not, but how then can it be included sensitively?

There are, as always, no easy answers. But it is time that we began to think about this and to see how we might begin the process of creating such museums. And here, I think, new technology offers many possibilities. So, for example, my dream of a Partition museum would be to create two such museums, one in India and one in Pakistan, and then connect them through a video link, whereby visitors in Pakistan can see and talk to visitors in India and vice versa. Wouldn’t that be a great way to defeat the designs of our governments?

mailto:blink@thehindu.co.in

(Urvashi Butalia is an editor, publisher and director of Zubaan)

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