If there are not enough museums, how will culture develop

The fire that gutted the Museum of Natural History on Tuesday in New Delhi dashed many hopes of parents and children whom it was targeted at and who were unable to see it when it was still there or was on their agenda in the forthcoming summer vacations. I had taken my niece there about three weeks ago and am so glad I did. Not that much had changed when we went a couple of decades back, but that is another point. However, it was a disaster waiting to happen. In my fairly recent piece on performance spaces, I had written about the abysmally confused entrance to both this museum and the FICCI auditorium.

Unfortunately, with a country like ours where we believe in living tradition and not “mummifying” museums are dead often decrepit places, with a host of problems like lack of trained personnel, inadequate storage and display spaces, paucity of funds for programmes, lack of audience interest and many more such issues.

I am told that even the apex museum of the country the National Museum in New Delhi’s inventory of some collections can’t be checked for the last person who held charge died suddenly and couldn’t hand over charge and since none took over, and he too retired without anything moving an inch. How is that for red tapism

A few years ago when Mamata Banerjee was minister of railways she was unable to find funds to set up railway museums, despite the buildings being ready in 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 railways should be running trains not setting up museums. Logical from their point of view. But 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. Considering that the railways in India have such a vibrant history, which if it is not preserved, will just be lost forever. Stuck in the mud babus even if they don’t think we need repositories of cultural history, should realise that these museums will recover the costs sooner than we think. Just a thought: Many of the steam engines are going to be phased out soon; maybe these can become part of the exhibits of the mooted museums Anyone listening out there

By any stretch, UK takes the bakery when it comes to museums. You think of a subject and 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, Mus-eum of porcelain, Museum of Sherlock Holmes, Museum of War etc. 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. I remember when Sushma Swaraj was the I&B minister in her earlier tenure, she had mooted the idea of a museum of media. Considering we have so many firsts to our credit historically speaking and such fast changing technology, the museum of media would have been a splendid idea. Media houses could have donated old machines and other possible exhibits and maybe even some land and the museum could have become a reality. But myopic media barons didn’t take it up. It is still not too late, but in another half a decade it will be.

Similarly, we don’t have museum for cinema, theatre, dance, music or for that matter for textiles, sarees especially. 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 terra cotta, 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, traditional theatre and dance props, costumes and jewels, puppetry, paper crafts, museums for jewellery and not merely sections should be mooted. The list is indeed endless.

Shops attached to the museums should do 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 recognise 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. Know-how of upkeep should be exchanged. These museums should not be dead and boring repositories but instead vibrant and living interactive centres where the you-ng and not-so-young should find something of interest. The idea is not to mummify culture but preserve it. It is our bounden duty to make these repositories for future generations.

Hecklers will invariably try to shout down the idea saying there is no museum culture in our country. If there are not enough museums, where will the culture develop from Let us not take for granted all that is flowing in front of our eyes, but will be history soon

Dr Alka Raghuvanshi is an art writer, curator and artist and can be contacted on alkaraghuvanshi@yahoo.com