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ABSTRACT
The idea of ‘national heritage’ is inseparable from the emergence of the nation-state, democracy, and citizenship. Nationalisation of heritage involved the nation stepping in on behalf of the cultural rights of citizens, and acquiring the ownership of material history from its previous domains of ownership such as monarchy, religion, and colonialism. This paper studies the process of the acquisition of objects for the National Museum of India, New Delhi in the decade that followed India's independence in 1947, in order to trace the varied ways in which a nascent nation-state worked out its equations with pre-existing centres of power. Relying mainly on the archive of the official documents pertaining to the process, this paper tries to understand how the then Government of India negotiated with the erstwhile princely rulers, provincial sentiments, and the British for the ownership of material history. The paper proposes that the project of the National Museum in India was, by extension, a project of nationhood.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 T. Bennett, The Birth of Museum: History, Theory, Politics (London: Routledge, 1995), p. 89.
2 P. Aronsson, ‘Explaining National Museums,’ in National Museums: New Studies from Around the World, ed. by Simon J. Knell et al. (London: Routledge, 2011), p. 45 in pp. 30–54.
3 A. E. Coombes, ‘Museums and the Formation of National and Cultural Identities,’ in Museum Studies: An Anthology of Contexts, ed. by Bettina Messias Carbonell (New Jersey: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), pp. 260–72.
4 J. Clifford, ‘On Ethnographic Allegory,’ in Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, ed. by J. Clifford and G. E. Marcus (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), pp. 98–122; M. G. Simpson, Making Representations: Museums in the Post-Colonial Era (London: Routledge, 1996), p. 247.
5 J. M. MacKenzie, Museums and Empire: Natural History, Human Cultures and Colonial Identities (Manchester: Manchester UP, 2009), p. 7.
6 C. Pinney, Camera Indica: The Social Life of Indian Photographs (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), p. 45.
7 Ethnographical Survey of India, Craniological Data from the Indian Museum, Calcutta, compiled by B. A. Gupte (Calcutta: Superintendent, Government Printing, 1909), pp. 4–13, File No. IOR/V/27/910/2 (London: British Library).
8 D. Scott, ‘Colonial Governmentality,’ in Anthropologies of Modernity: Foucault, Governmentality, and Life Politics, ed. by Jonathan Xavier Inda (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2005), pp. 23–49.
9 Gauri Viswanathan argues that an agenda of public instruction in colonial India was ‘rousing Indians to a consciousness of the inconsistencies in the native system of society while simultaneously leading them to a recognition of the principles of order and justice in the Western’, Masks of Conquest: Literary Study and British Rule in India (London: Faber and Faber, 1990), p. 131.
10 Trustees of the Indian Museum. The Indian Museum 1814-1914 (Calcutta: The Baptist Mission Press, 1914), p. 17, File No. UIN: BLL01011501790 (London: British Library).
11 Ibid., p. 17.
12 Ibid., pp. 19–20.
13 K. Singh, ‘The Museum Is National,’ India International Centre Quarterly 29(3/4) (2002), pp. 176–96.
14 S. J. Knell et al., ed., National Museums: New Studies from around the World (New York: Routledge, 2011), p. xix.
15 Aronsson, p. 31.
16 R. Sebastian, ‘The State Museum in India: Nation, History, and the Politics of Display’ (PhD diss., The English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad, 2019), p. 2.
17 B. Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, 4th edn (London: Verso, 2006), pp. 160–1.
18 A. Ghosh, ‘Stories in Stone’ in Dancing in Cambodia and Other Essays (Gurgaon: Penguin Books, 2008), pp. 48–56.
19 T. Guha-Thakurta, Monuments, Objects, Histories: Institutions of Art in Colonial and Postcolonial India (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2004).
20 K. Phillips, ‘Grace McCann Morley and the National Museum of India,’ in No Touching, No Spitting, No Praying: The Museum in South Asia, ed. by Saloni Mathur and Kavita Singh (New Delhi: Routledge, 2015), p. 138 in pp. 132–47.
21 A. E. Coombes, Reinventing Africa: Museums, Material Culture and Popular Imagination in Late Victorian and Edwardian England (New Haven: Yale UP, 1994); S. Mew, Rethinking Heritage and Display in National Museums in Ghana and Mali (PhD diss., SOAS, University of London, 2012), <https://isidore.science/document/10670/1.j84xwt>.
22 Gov. of India: Ministry of Education, ‘Memorandum for the Standing Committee of Parliament on Education’ in Establishment of a National Museum of Art, Archaeology and Anthropology- Preparation of a Graduated Scheme, File: Progs., Nos. 51–50, 1950, n.page (New Delhi: National Archives of India).
23 Gov. of India: Ministry of States, Proposal to Establish a Central National Museum in Delhi, File: Progs., Nos.4-L, Serial No. (1)–(104), 1949 (New Delhi: National Archives of India). The details can be found in the notice dated 16 March 1949.
24 ‘The Indian Union’ or ‘The Union of India’ is employed here to refer to the political entity of India that came into being with its independence from Britain and was territorially constituted by the princely states and provinces that either voluntarily joined India after the India-Pak Partition or were acceded by persuasion and/or force.
25 Gov. of India: M/O States, Proposal, the DGA's note dated 16 March 1949.
26 The former princely states, once acceded to the Indian Union, were permitted to form unions of states. The rulers of covenanting states in each union were to elect an administrative head from amongst themselves for the title of Rajpramukh, meaning the ‘Chief of Kings’. The title of Rajpramukh and the institution of privy purse were strategies devised to keep the erstwhile monarchs appeased within the newly formed nation-state. The title of Rajpramukh was abolished in 1956.
27 Gov. of India: M/O States, Proposal, draft note by the DGA dated 20th April 1949.
28 Ibid., N.P. Chakravarti's note dated 16 March 1949 and Rajpramukh of Saurastra's letter dated 5 May 1949.
29 Ibid., Responses from a number of princes during May-June 1949.
30 M.S. Pillai, ‘A Patron of Sedition,’ in False Allies: India's Maharajas in the Age of Ravi Varma (New Delhi: Juggernaut, 2021), pp. 208–99.
31 D. Hardiman, ‘Baroda: The Structure of a Progressive State,’ in People, Princes and Paramount Power: Society and Politics in the Indian Princely States, ed. by Robin Jeffrey (Oxford: OUP, 1979), pp. 107–35.
32 Gov. of India: M/O States, Proposal, Letter dated 28 May 1949 from the Kaiserbagh Palace, Dholpur to the Secretary, M/O States.
33 Ibid., Correspondences dated January 1950, 20 April 1950, 22 December 1950 respectively.
34 Ibid., The D.G.A.'s letter dated 23 September 1949.
35 Gov. of India: M/O States, Question of acquiring a set of Gupta Gold coins in the possession of His Highness the Maharaja of Bharatpur for the National Museum of India, File: Progs. Nos. 4(46)-P/49, Serial Nos. (1)–(8), 1949, Correspondences in January 1948 (New Delhi: National Archives of India).
36 Gov. of India: M/O States, Proposal, the DGA's letter dated 16 March 1949.
37 Gov. of India: M/O States, Bringing back Gupta period coins belonging to H.H. the Maharaja of Bharatpur from the British Museum, File: Progs. Nos. 2(6)-L/50, Serial No. (1)–(24), 1950, Correspondences during February 1951 (New Delhi: National Archives of India).
38 V. P. Menon was the Secretary of the Ministry of States in independent India (1947–1951). Known as a diplomatic genius, he played a crucial role in the integration of over 565 princely states and accession of rebelling territories into the Union of India. He acted as the mediator for the acquisition of the Gupta coins from the ruler of Bharatpur. Maulana Abul Kalam Azad was a leading personality of Indian independence movement, an Islamic theologian, a social reformer, and independent India's first Minister of Education. He was a spokesperson of Hindu-Muslim unity and, by and large, enjoyed the goodwill of Indian Muslims. It is with his intervention that the ruler of Bikaner complied to donate to the NM (See the letter dated 7 September 1949 in M/O States, Proposal to Establish Central Museum).
39 Gov. of India: M/O States, Proposal, correspondences during August 1949.
40 MacKenzie pp. 242–43.
41 Gov. of India: M/O States, Proposal, the letter dated 7 May 1949 from the Rajpramukh of Rajasthan to the Secretary, M/O States.
42 Ibid., the letter dated 14 March 1950.
43 Ibid., the letter from the Office of Regional Officer and Advisor, P.E.P.S.U. to the Joint Secretary of the M/O States.
44 Gov. of India: Ministry of States, Appeal Issued to Certain States/Union for the Donation of Certain Exhibits Lent Formerly to the Government of India, to the Central National Museum, File: Progs. Nos. 4(13)-L, Serial No. (1)–(48), 1949 (New Delhi: National Archives of India).
45 Nizam, the ruler of the principality of Hyderabad, wanted to stay independent of the Indian Union. Hyderabad was annexed into the Union in September 1948 through the military action code-named Operation Polo.
46 S. Mathur, India by Design: Colonial History and Cultural Display (Hyderabad: Orient Black Swan, 2011), pp. 133–64.
47 Ibid., p. 157.
48 Ibid., p. 159.
49 British Museum, British Museum Return of the Buddhist Reliquaries to the Indian Government (1961), File No. 99/355/ 02 (Kew, London: National Archives).
50 Hughes, Sarah, ‘The British Museum in Print: From National to Universal Museum,’ in Simon J. Knell et al., pp. 193–204.
51 Knell et al., p. 8.
52 Gov. of India: M/O States, Starred question No.602 by Shri. R. K. Sidhwa Regarding Historical Museums in India, File: Progs., Nos. 19–53, 1950, National Archives, New Delhi. The details can be found in the document titled “Circular Regarding Statues, Edicts, Monuments Memorizing the British Conquests etc. in India” dated 12 Dec 1949 (New Delhi: National Archives of India).
53 Ibid., The Director General of Archaeology N. P. Chakravarti's letter dated 11 March 1950.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Rose Sebastian
Rose Sebastian is an assistant professor in English at Bharata Mata College, Kochi, Kerala, India. She holds a PhD in Cultural Studies from the English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad and her thesis was titled ‘The State Museum in India: Nation, History and the Politics of Display’. She was a Charles Wallace Fellow to the U.K. and has carried out case studies of museums in France, UK, Cambodia, Sri Lanka and Nepal.