Monday Musings: The Partition Museum
Last year around the same time I had the fortune of visiting the holocaust museum in DC, USA. I was literally blown away by the visit – at multiple levels.
While one knows about the holocaust as an academic event, it overwhelms you to go through its build up and it’s unfolding through grim footages, photographs and stories on display in the various sections of the museum. Anyone who is a student of history will be amazed at the quality of the curation in this museum. A grim reminder right at the gates stares at you, shakes you and leaves you disturbed, reads like this – ‘’The next time you witness hatred, the next time you see injustice, the next time you see genocide, THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU SAW (TODAY)’’. As I came out of the museum, I could not help wonder if we in India would ever be courageous enough to create something like this for our own holocaust – the partition. I was wrong in my lament – because we do have something like this now called the Partition museum in Amritsar, housed in the erstwhile Amritsar town hall, a majestic colonial building made in red brick stone.
The partition of India, at both its borders – the western side and the eastern side, was a complex phenomenon. The views to it today in 2018 clearly are influenced heavily basis who is the narrator. Almost two third of the country who did not suffer from it or even witnessed it have a curiously clinical view to it. They are either indifferent to it because it happened to a very different people hundreds of miles away, even though they might be compassionate about it, they cannot really relate to it. Some may espouse high passions because it suits their political stance but do not have any personal grief from it. Some may identify with the pain as they can generally identify with any pain because they have an evolved sense of empathy. However all pain is different. It hurts differently. Grief is infinitely personal. Partition too many was personal, not a chapter in the history books.
Largely, but not strictly restricted it, People from the north, North West and the east have lived through the partition and its horrors. The upheaval, the distortion, the scars, the anger, the anguish is personal. It is felt through the stories told, the albums revisited, the diaries read and re-read. It is felt through the loss of family fortune – either to be permanently lost or through its redemption thereafter. The generations succeeding them have no choice but to stay invested in these stories. They will never know it how but they will own partition and its echoes in strange ways – as if it is family heirloom, passed from one generation to the next. Pain is a funny inheritance. You cannot wish it away.
Coming back to the partition museum, I must begin by saying that it is an incredible effort. The mere attempt is worthy of accolades. It has many sections to its credit – the build up of the voice for the partition, the mass human migration, the mindless genocide, the cruelty of the redrawing of the maps on paper, and finally the black humour of the division of many things fundamentally indivisible – like artists and art, sportsmen, army officers, museum artefacts et al. It has recordings of survivors, tales of separation, uprooting, alienation and the deeply debilitating impact of violence on the psyche of people who had the fortune of having survived. Some survive to die multiple times thereafter. Some die and are spared the pain.
I wish the museum had done greater justice to the voices from the Bengal side as much as it did for the Punjab side – although it’s quite understandable because the museum is in Amritsar. I also wish they had more stories from across the border from Pakistan – although again, it’s quite understandable because all stories are flawed as it tells only the narrators grief – never his own perpetration. The museum is based on a premise that we were the victims.
I wish that everyone – those who have a personal memory with the horrors of the partition as well as those who do not, visit the partition museum and remember the line that I mentioned is found on the walls of the holocaust museum – “The next time you witness hatred, the next time you see injustice, the next time you see genocide, THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU SAW (TODAY)’’. Just a look around and we know this is a grim and timely reminder.
Postscript - my eleven year old who accompanied me to the museum had a Yorker for me at the end of the trip – exactly the kind that children bamboozle you with. ‘’Dad – what would have happened if your grandpa would have chosen to go to Pakistan instead of staying India?”
www.gurucharangandhi.com||
www.mondaymusingsbyguru.blogspot.com
@musingsbyguruMonday
Last year around the same time I had the fortune of visiting the holocaust museum in DC, USA. I was literally blown away by the visit – at multiple levels.
While one knows about the holocaust as an academic event, it overwhelms you to go through its build up and it’s unfolding through grim footages, photographs and stories on display in the various sections of the museum. Anyone who is a student of history will be amazed at the quality of the curation in this museum. A grim reminder right at the gates stares at you, shakes you and leaves you disturbed, reads like this – ‘’The next time you witness hatred, the next time you see injustice, the next time you see genocide, THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU SAW (TODAY)’’. As I came out of the museum, I could not help wonder if we in India would ever be courageous enough to create something like this for our own holocaust – the partition. I was wrong in my lament – because we do have something like this now called the Partition museum in Amritsar, housed in the erstwhile Amritsar town hall, a majestic colonial building made in red brick stone.
The partition of India, at both its borders – the western side and the eastern side, was a complex phenomenon. The views to it today in 2018 clearly are influenced heavily basis who is the narrator. Almost two third of the country who did not suffer from it or even witnessed it have a curiously clinical view to it. They are either indifferent to it because it happened to a very different people hundreds of miles away, even though they might be compassionate about it, they cannot really relate to it. Some may espouse high passions because it suits their political stance but do not have any personal grief from it. Some may identify with the pain as they can generally identify with any pain because they have an evolved sense of empathy. However all pain is different. It hurts differently. Grief is infinitely personal. Partition too many was personal, not a chapter in the history books.
Largely, but not strictly restricted it, People from the north, North West and the east have lived through the partition and its horrors. The upheaval, the distortion, the scars, the anger, the anguish is personal. It is felt through the stories told, the albums revisited, the diaries read and re-read. It is felt through the loss of family fortune – either to be permanently lost or through its redemption thereafter. The generations succeeding them have no choice but to stay invested in these stories. They will never know it how but they will own partition and its echoes in strange ways – as if it is family heirloom, passed from one generation to the next. Pain is a funny inheritance. You cannot wish it away.
Coming back to the partition museum, I must begin by saying that it is an incredible effort. The mere attempt is worthy of accolades. It has many sections to its credit – the build up of the voice for the partition, the mass human migration, the mindless genocide, the cruelty of the redrawing of the maps on paper, and finally the black humour of the division of many things fundamentally indivisible – like artists and art, sportsmen, army officers, museum artefacts et al. It has recordings of survivors, tales of separation, uprooting, alienation and the deeply debilitating impact of violence on the psyche of people who had the fortune of having survived. Some survive to die multiple times thereafter. Some die and are spared the pain.
I wish the museum had done greater justice to the voices from the Bengal side as much as it did for the Punjab side – although it’s quite understandable because the museum is in Amritsar. I also wish they had more stories from across the border from Pakistan – although again, it’s quite understandable because all stories are flawed as it tells only the narrators grief – never his own perpetration. The museum is based on a premise that we were the victims.
I wish that everyone – those who have a personal memory with the horrors of the partition as well as those who do not, visit the partition museum and remember the line that I mentioned is found on the walls of the holocaust museum – “The next time you witness hatred, the next time you see injustice, the next time you see genocide, THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU SAW (TODAY)’’. Just a look around and we know this is a grim and timely reminder.
Postscript - my eleven year old who accompanied me to the museum had a Yorker for me at the end of the trip – exactly the kind that children bamboozle you with. ‘’Dad – what would have happened if your grandpa would have chosen to go to Pakistan instead of staying India?”
www.gurucharangandhi.com||
www.mondaymusingsbyguru.blogspot.com
@musingsbyguruMonday
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