In India, we have a propensity to treat our heritage as part of a flowing river. In a better mood I call it the votive figure syndrome, or when I am miffed about it, the shaadi shamiyana syndrome. With all love and respect, we instal pandals, place the deities in them, chant the correct mantras to invoke prana prathishtha and finally bid a tearful adieu before immersing the votive figure into a river or the ocean. These occasions are so many that it has become an intrinsic part of our psyche. These are such important aspects of our cultural moorings that they are virtually inseparable with notions of culture.
In such a scenario, virtually everything which is not part of here and now or damaged (khandit) in any way, must find itself at the bottom of the river or the sea. One has to just drag the sea and riverbeds and the booty, which is found will fill up many museums.
The recent report that Mamata Banerjee is unable to gather funds to set up railway museums, despite the buildings being ready at two locations, set off a train of thoughts (pun totally intended) about how we treat heritage. Many officials who were too scared to be quoted said that the Railways should be running trains not setting up museums. This is logical from their point of view.
However, this is like saying why should we go nuclear, when we have so many empty stomachs to fill? These are obviously people with no sense of history, heritage or imagination.
Railways in India has such a vibrant history, which if not preserved, will just be lost forever. Babus should realise that these museums will recover the costs sooner than we think. Just a thought: Many steam engines are going to phase out soon; maybe these can become part of the exhibits of the mooted museums?
By any stretch, UK takes the “bakery” when it comes to museums. You think of a subject, they have museum for it. It may be a small one-room place, but it is there, replete with printed history and documentation. Some of the unusual ones I can off hand recall are: fan museum, maritime museum, theatre museum, museum of textiles, museum of footwear, museum for kimonos, museum of porcelain, museum of Sherlock Holmes, museum of war etc.
In India, I can think of so many areas where we need to preserve for posterity, so many things and so many historical objects. When Sushma Swaraj was the minister of information and broadcasting, she had mooted the idea of a media museum. Considering we have so many firsts to our credit historically and such fast changing technology, the museum of media would have been a splendid idea. Media houses could have donated old machines and other exhibits and maybe even some land for the museum. But myopic media barons did not take it up.
Similarly, we don’t have museum for cinema, theatre, dance and music. There could be a museum for beauty, capturing traditional objects and ingredients used in beautification.
Food is such a big deal in India and there is no museum of food, its traditional preparations, utensils, ovens, stoves, et al. Crafts museum should be the norm in regions especially in places where there are crafts pockets, like terracotta, paper mache, (Bihar and Kashmir have two diametrically distinct styles), metal crafts, folk and regional styles of painting, carpets, paper crafts, designs across the board. The list is indeed endless.
Shops attached to museums should sell replicas and create a niche for themselves. In fact we are still in a position to offer “replicas” that are “originals” rather than “copies”. As we in India live concurrently on so many planes and soon these things will be of times past and then we might wake up and start looking to preserve. And the time to recognize the urgency and capture them is now before it is too late. Private partners should be involved along with public enterprise and it should be mandatory for them to preserve and nurture crafts in regional centres.
Movements should be started for voluntary donations of objects and recognition of donors should be the norm. It should become a matter of pride for people to donate to museums.
These museums should not be dead and boring repositories, but instead they must be vibrant and living interactive centres, where the young and old can find something of interest. The idea is not to mummify culture but to preserve it. It is our bounden duty to make these repositories for future generations.
Hecklers will invariably try to shoot down the idea saying there is no museum culture in our country. If there are not enough museums, where will the culture develop? Let us not take it for granted all that is flowing in front of our eyes, but will be history soon.