Of museums, history and memory

Rarely, if ever, have I written a self- referential essay. However, I had occasion to visit the Te Papa Tongarewa, the National Museum of New Zealand. My leisurely stroll through the museum enabled me to peruse the exhibits with some care.

Obviously, in an advanced industrial society, it came as no surprise that the museum was well appointed, that it had an excellent gift shop and that the signage was clear and helpful. One can, of course, find similar infrastructure in other parts of the world. What was striking, however, was the painful honesty of the exhibits. Many advanced industrial societies still struggle to come to terms with the more unsavoury aspects of their past. They elide over some of the more distressing elements of their history, they glorify the achievements of specific individuals and groups and attempt to efface memories that are less than pleasing.

My long afternoon at this museum left me convinced of the redemptive power of coming to terms with a nation’s past warts and all. At this museum there was no hint of an attempt to sanitise the more unpleasant aspects of European settlement in New Zealand, no air brushing of its role in aiding the nuclear tests of its allies in the Pacific during the early Cold War years and no avoidance of issues that had caused social discord in the country ranging from the decriminalisation of homosexuality to its opposition some towards the apartheid regime in South Africa.

Producing such a candid account of the nation’s early beginnings to its later struggles could not have been an easy task. Obviously, this was the result of careful deliberations, the deft utilisation of academic knowledge and a determined quest for fairness in the depiction of the country’s past and its subsequent evolution.

What lessons, if any, does this museum dedicated to the history of a country which is geographically larger than the current United Kingdom but with a population of a mere four and half million inhabitants have for a civilisational entity with over a billion people such as India? Indeed some may consider this comparison to be both laughable and indeed chimerical. However, if one sets aside the critical question of scale for the moment it is possible to still draw several meaningful inferences from the portrayal of the past in New Zealand.

At the outset, India lacks a similar museum. The National Museum in New Delhi, painful though it may be to state, is antiquated, poorly curated and in a state of near bedlam. These matters, of course, are subject to fairly quick restoration with better administration and a suitable infusion of funds. Indeed plans are now underway to move the entity to a larger setting and presumably with more modern infrastructure.

What is sorely lacking however is a clear, authoritative and compelling account of the country’s rich, varied and extraordinary past. This should not, of course, involve the valorisation of particular periods and the denigration of others. Nor should it omit the history of difference and discord between communities or ignore the terrible costs that British colonialism imposed on the country. Yet it should not exaggerate or adumbrate on how particular historical epochs were known for unhappy social or cultural practices. Above all, it should not seek to privilege the status of a particu- lar religious group over others, not to deliberately distort the fraught history of Muslim conquest and settlement in the country or fall into an earlier habit of the crude periodisation of India’s past.

None of this, obviously, will be easy. Already the writing of Indian history has become an intellectual battleground. Historians of differing intellectual persuasions have vastly divergent views of the country’s past. Nevertheless, a gifted and imaginative set of curators can provide the public of a sense of historical debates, competing arguments and alternative accounts. Such an effort is of no minor significance. Despite its mostly unwavering commitment to democratic institutions and practices India has, sadly, been witness to no dearth of social discord and indeed bursts of horrific ethno- religious violence.

Consequently, any account of the nation’s past that seeks to deliberately stress or highlight fractures and differences could dramatically affect the views of an emerging generation and contribute to further social disharmony. This, of course, is not a veiled plea to fashion an anodyne account of contentious periods of the country’s history. Instead it calls for a fair- minded attempt to represent the past with as much judiciousness that those who study it can possibly muster. It also demands that the presentation of the history remain open to new discoveries, evidence and knowledge and not seek to impose an order that removes discordant elements.

Unfortunately, in the recent past, there has been a tendency to shut down debate, to censor contrary views of historical accounts and figures and to forcefully impose the views of particular groups and individuals. Such a propensity is not merely anti- intellectual but does the country’s complex and fascinating history a serious disservice. A tiny country with a heterogeneous population that had not treated its native inhabitants with the greatest decency as it witnessed the arrival of European settlers has squarely confronted its shortcomings. There is little reason why India, which has a robust intellectual tradition of debate and argument, cannot do the same and more.

The writer holds the Rabindranath Tagore Chair in Indian Cultures and Civilisations at Indiana University,

Bloomington