The Indian Museum was established in the globally famous Asiatic Society of Bengal in the city of Kolkata, Bengal residency, British India in the year 1814. It is currently located in Chowringhee area of Kolkata on the Jawaharlal Nehru Road. It has been one of the oldest, largest, most diverse and multipurpose national museum in the Indian subcontinent and in the Asia-Oceania region. The Asiatic Society, the first multipurpose scientific, socio-cultural research institute of its kind in Asia, Africa and Latin America was established by the leading scholar Dr William Kings in 1784.
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Ancient India: New Research, edited by Upinder Singh and Nayanjot Lahiri
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Sānskritik Pravāh (सांस्कृतिक प्रवाह)
Museum plays a significant role in representing the culture and heritage of a geographical region or country through various kind of displays for tangible objects and audiovisual effects for intangible subjects. The tangible form includes various kind of artefacts, monumental structures and their architecture etc. whereas the intangible form includes folklore, folksongs, folk-music, poems, rhymes, proverbs etc. Preserving and exhibiting all of them is one of the prime roles of a museum. While exhibiting the tangible and intangible subjects in galleries a museum also plays the role of an educatoreducating the general public about their glorious past, heritage they possess and the evolutionary development the society have made. A good fraction of this 'general public' visiting a museum is of students, who are the future of a country. Therefore, it becomes all the more important for a museum to play a responsible role in educating students especially in context of delivering updated genuine information about culture, heritage and history. The creation of first museum in India, dates back to 1814 A.D. when Indian Museum (formerly called Imperial Museum at Calcutta) came to existence in Kolkata. Since then, the journey of museums in India have witnessed a gradual development. Museums on various subjects and themes have emerged in every state of the country. Some of these museums are generalized, containing a variety of collection from various periods of the timeline while some are specific, specializing on a particular subject such as botanical or zoological museum of a region or place. In the context of history, the Indian museums are predominantly rich with a massive collection, from its medieval and modern times. As far as the collection from ancient times are concerned, they are mainly contributed by the archaeological excavations that have been conducted all across the country. Though these excavations and findings have provided ample evidences about India’s ancient times and glorious past, yet they have not been presented in the context of ‘Ancient India’. In addition, an effective representation of rich intangible resources of ancient India still needs recognition and respectable place in museum. Revisiting Ancient India through Museum is the focus area of this paper. This paper shall not only highlight the requirement for revisiting ancient India through museum, but shall also underline the untapped aspects of ancient Indian civilization which are worth mentioning to the museum visitors. The paper ends with a conclusive discussion about the advantages of such museum to the country.
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Journal of Indian Museum
Today museums are trying to provide such kind of quality services which give quality experience in every aspect to the users (visitors). The change in the perception and approach of the museums today has brought the visitors in the prime focus of the day to day affairs of the museums of all kinds. Nowadays, in every type of museum education with amusement has become the main objective along with other activities. Hence, the museums are coming up with better facilities and displays for the dissemination of knowledge or education and entertainment. The museums are service sector institutions which provide services to the public for grater social benefit. Anthropological museums in India have emerged as vibrant institutions providing a link between the present and past. The details regarding the active role of anthropological museums, especially the various aspects and modes of dissemination of knowledge and their significance with respect to preservation, education, and awareness are discussed here keeping in mind the changing perspective and vision of Indian museums in the present age of professionalism. Now the Anthropological museums are developing as a supplementary educational, preservation and research institution. But still museums need to develop a lot to become more productive in terms of its main output that is its visitor friendly services. Article published in Journal of Indian Museums.
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The Journal of the Anthropological Survey of India
Anthropological Museums in India have emerged as vibrant institutions providing a link between the present and past. Now, museums are trying more and more for providing such kind of quality services which gives quality of experience in every aspect to the users (visitors). Nowadays, in every type of museum education with amusement has become the main objective along with other activities. Now the museums are developing as a supplementary educational institution. The museums are coming up with better facilities, display, dissemination of knowledge or education and entertainment. The details regarding the history and role of Anthropological Museums, especially various aspects and modes of dissemination of knowledge and its significance as per preservation, education and awareness point of view are discussed here keeping in mind the changing perspective and vision of Indian museums today in the present age of professionalism. Published in the Journal of the Anthropological Survey of India.
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The Asiatic Society of Bengal (erstwhile Asiatick Society, The Asiatic Society of Bengal and Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal) was founded by Sir William Jones in 1784 to rediscover India's glorious past and for the promotion of Western Culture in India, in other words, to encourage oriental studies in India. It is a unique institution that has served as a fountainhead for all literary and scientific activities. The paper will include the aims and objectives of the Asiatic Society, its role in the history of conservation in India, its functions and what roles does it play presently in the field of heritage conservation in India and around the globe (along with the Rotary Club, Urban Heritage Renewal Committee) under the name of Asiatic Society's Conservation Lab. The paper will also talk about the role of the society in preserving and conserving the cultural heritage of India through the past 250 years, and will also touch upon the evolution of conservation practices in India, to give an insight about the various steps taken throughout the centuries towards the preservation of India's rich heritage.
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Community Museums in Asia: Report on a Training Workshop, February 26 - March 10, 1997, Japan by The Japan Foundation Asia Centre
This article is about the new museum movement, steered by the author, as Director, IGRMS, Bhopal, between 1994 and 2000. Museum was converted from a 80 hectare, open air display of community art and architecture to a nationwide and global initiative for reaching out to the communities concerned in their habitats. Initiatives, co-directed by communities were undertaken for regeneration of community resource management strategies and structures in management of sacred of groves, local water harvesting structures, food and medicine chain, cultures and knowledge systems in the Himalayas, river valleys, fragile coastal zones and endangered hilly and forested areas rich in bio cultural diversity. Expeditions were undertaken along the river Narmada and Cauvery and in the cold desert areas of the Himalayas. The museum became a center for unmaking homogenization and museumization of community habitats and revitalization of local knowledge systems.
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Background Papers, Meeting of Resource Persons at Bhopal, April 27-29, 1999, Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Manav Sangrahalaya
Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Manav Sangrahalaya (National Museum of Mankind), an autonomous organisation of the Department of Culture, Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India, is dedicated to the depiction of the story of humankind evolving in time and space. The Museum began primarily as an open air Museum in 197 acres (797 thousand sq. meters) of land, on undulating hills, on the seven mile long lake front of Bhopal, the capital of Madhya Pradesh, the largest province in India, with an area of 4, 43,000 sq.kms. The choice of the site itself was deliberate, intended to establish a hermeneutic circular dialogue through the Museum between the past, present and the future. The site is prehistoric, being situated in the quartzite sandstone belt of central India, in close contiguity to the Betwa source region and to the Narmada river valley, which have been amphitheatres of important geological events and human initiatives in the advance of civilisation. The site has 32 painted rock art shelters from historic, mesolithic and earlier periods, and is geologically part of the ocean floor churned up in course of the upheaval caused by the clash of the central Indian and Tibetan tectonic plates. Not only has the surrounding region yielded evidence of interglacial terrace formation relatable to similar formations in Potwar, Punjab, it has also given evidence of vanished floral and faunal species, including egg shells of ostriches which are supposed to have disappeared in India in the holocene period, and of the Narmada Man (Homo Erectus between Sangiran 17 and Ngandog 12). In the historic period, this site was in the centre of a constant north-south, east-west migration of pilgrims, merchants and preachers who were responsible for the efflorescence of an eclectic and suave version of Buddhism, Jainism and Sufism, which leavened the region with ideas of tolerance and mutual support as an antidote to sorrow and anxiety in human life. Evidence of this survives in stupas, temples, painted scrolls and manuscripts, sculptures, votive and eulogistic inscriptions, literary tracts and learned treatises. This site was transformed as a dynamic centre for a new museum movement in India. The museum was linked with numerous initiatives, codirected by hinterland communities for regenaration of their knowledge systems and conservation of their habitats and environment. Instread of communities visiting the museum alone, the museums started visiting communities.
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This course offers a social history of the institution of the museum in South Asia, and critically examines the politics of representation through it. Here, museums are considered as a tool of cultural and political domination through knowledge production and the creation of authoritative pasts. We explore the history of museums in the context of colonial rule, the rise of independent nation-states, and the heritage and identity politics of contemporary South Asia. How did museums emerge in South Asia? What are the different museum forms in the region? Who is making them, why and when? What is their notion of heritage and whose heritage do they represent? A history of museums in South Asia is especially interesting as the region has a history, simultaneously, of a shared culture and of competing interests among its constituting national and social groups. We discuss examples of museums from Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, and examine the dynamic ways in which politics, identity, religion, history and heritage interact in the institution of the museum.
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