Partition Museum

Last updated

Partition Museum
Partition museum logo.jpg
Logo
Amritsar 9125.jpg
View of Partition Museum
Partition Museum
Established25 August 2017 (2017-08-25)
LocationTown Hall, Katra Ahluwalia, Amritsar, Punjab, India
Coordinates 31°37′33″N74°52′43″E / 31.6258°N 74.8787°E / 31.6258; 74.8787
Type Museum
Collections1947 archives, oral histories
FounderThe Arts and Cultural Heritage Trust (TAACHT)
Chairperson Kishwar Desai
Owner Government of Punjab
Nearest parkingLimited
Website www.partitionmuseum.org

The Partition Museum is a public museum located in the town hall of Amritsar, Punjab, India. [1] The museum aims to become the central repository of stories, materials, and documents related to the post-partition riots that followed the division of British India into two independent dominions: India and Pakistan. [2] [3] The museum also focuses on the history of the “anti-colonial movement, the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, the Komagata Maru incident, the All India Muslim League and the Indian National Congress, and the journey of resilience and recuperation for women”. [4] The building wherein the museum is located in Amritsar was also “once the British headquarters and a jail”. [4] The museum was inaugurated on 25 August 2017. [5] [6]

Contents

History

Partition museum in Amritsar, Punjab Partition Museum 26 September 2018.jpg
Partition museum in Amritsar, Punjab

In 1947, British India was divided into India and Pakistan. The partition lines, drawn on a map by the British lawyer Cyril Radcliffe, divided the province of Punjab and Bengal into two parts on the basis of religion. As a result, millions of people found themselves on the wrong side of the border overnight. According to various estimates, more than 800,000 Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs were killed in the riots that followed the partition between August 1947 to January 1948. Additionally, more than 1,400,000 people became refugees.

The Government of Punjab founded this museum with The Arts and Cultural Heritage Trust of the United Kingdom as a way to memorialize those who were affected by the partition. [7] Therefore, the museum documents the catastrophic history of migration, loss of life and livelihood through testimonies of the first-generation partition survivors and their lived experiences.

Based on extensive oral testimonies from individuals who witnessed the partition, the experiences of their family members, and material memories (the various objects that individuals managed to migrate with - be it jewelleries, clothes, or cooking utensils), [8] [9] the museum provides a platform for the younger generations to know the aftermath of what has been dubbed as one of the cataclysmic events in the recent history of the Indian subcontinent. The museum acts as a reminder of not only the millions of individuals who lost their lives owing to violence as a result of the Partition of India but also one of resilience as many individuals despite finding themselves in challenging circumstances turned their lives around and contributed in their own ways towards the cause of nation-building.

Mallika Ahluwalia, the Managing Trustee and co-founder of the Partition Museum, has documented some of the notable stories of individuals in her book titled Divided by Partition, United by Resilience: 21 Inspirational Stories from 1947 (2018).

Collections

The museum is divided into fourteen galleries: "Why Amritsar?, Punjab, Resistance (1900-1929), The Rise (1930-1945), Differences (1946), Prelude to Partition, Boundaries, Independence, Borders, Migrations, Divisions, Refuge, and Hope". [10] With a "linear and chronological narrative" [10] structure, the museum seeks to provide a history of the partition and why it took place. In doing so, the museum focuses on the people's perspectives and their experiences of living through that time in history. These galleries comprise “oral history accounts, object biographies, photographs, music and audio, contemporary artwork, and various unique exhibits such as a jail cell, train platform, riot-hit house, metal saw, a well, hanging banners, refugee tent, and a tree of hope (paper leaves on barbed wire, a participatory installation)”. [10]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Partition of India</span> 1947 division of British India

The Partition of India in 1947 was the change of political borders and the division of other assets that accompanied the dissolution of the British Raj in the Indian subcontinent and the creation of two independent dominions in South Asia: India and Pakistan. The Dominion of India is today the Republic of India, and the Dominion of Pakistan—which at the time comprised two regions lying on either side of India—is now the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and the People's Republic of Bangladesh. The partition was outlined in the Indian Independence Act 1947. The change of political borders notably included the division of two provinces of British India, Bengal and Punjab. The majority Muslim districts in these provinces were awarded to Pakistan and the majority non-Muslim to India. The other assets that were divided included the British Indian Army, the Royal Indian Navy, the Royal Indian Air Force, the Indian Civil Service, the railways, and the central treasury. Provisions for self-governing independent Pakistan and India legally came into existence at midnight on 14 and 15 August 1947 respectively.

Events in the year 1947 in India. It was a very eventful year as it became independent from the British crown, resulting in the split of India and Pakistan. Many people died during partition and India became a democracy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy</span> Bengali barrister and politician (1892–1963)

Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy was a Pakistani barrister and politician. He served as the Prime Minister of Pakistan from 1956 to 1957 and before that as the Prime Minister of Bengal from 1946 to 1947 in British India. In Pakistan, Suhrawardy is revered as one of the country's founding statesmen. In Bangladesh, Suhrawardy is remembered as the mentor of Bangladesh's founding leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. In India, he is seen as a controversial figure; some hold him responsible for the 1946 Calcutta Killings, for which he is often referred as the "Butcher of Bengal” in West Bengal. In India he is also remembered for his performance as the Minister for Civil Supply during the Bengal famine of 1943.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Radcliffe Line</span> Boundary of the Partition of India

The Radcliffe Line was the boundary demarcated between the Indian and Pakistani portions of the Punjab Province and Bengal Presidency of British India. It was named after Cyril Radcliffe, who, as the joint chairman of the two boundary commissions for the two provinces, had the ultimate responsibility to equitably divide 175,000 square miles (450,000 km2) of territory with 88 million people.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Direct Action Day</span> 1946 period of violence between Muslims and Hindus throughout British India

Direct Action Day was the day the All-India Muslim League decided to take "direct action" for a separate Muslim homeland after the British exit from India. Also known as the 1946 Calcutta Killings, it was a day of nationwide communal riots. It led to large-scale violence between Muslims and Hindus in the city of Calcutta in the Bengal province of British India. The day also marked the start of what is known as The Week of the Long Knives. While there is a certain degree of consensus on the magnitude of the killings, including their short-term consequences, controversy remains regarding the exact sequence of events, the various actors' responsibility and the long-term political consequences.

The Partition of Bengal in 1947, part of the Partition of India, divided the British Indian Bengal Province along the Radcliffe Line between the Dominion of India and the Dominion of Pakistan. The Bengali Hindu-majority West Bengal became a state of India, and the Bengali Muslim-majority East Bengal became a province of Pakistan.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Baldev Singh</span> Indian entrepreneur and politician (1901-1961)

Baldev Singh was an Indian Sikh political leader, he was an Indian independence movement leader and the first Defence Minister of India. Moreover, he represented the Punjabi Sikh community in the processes of negotiations that resulted in the independence of India, as well as the Partition of India in 1947.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Saifuddin Kitchlew</span> Indian revolutionary and politician

Saifuddin Kitchlew was an Indian independence activist, barrister, politician and later a leader of the peace movement. A member of Indian National Congress, he first became Punjab Provincial Congress Committee head and later the General Secretary of the All India Congress Committee in 1924. He is most remembered for the protests in Punjab after the implementation of Rowlatt Act in March 1919, after which on 10 April, he and another leader Satyapal, were secretly sent to Dharamsala. A public protest rally against their arrest and that of Gandhi, on 13 April 1919 at Jallianwala Bagh, Amritsar, led to the infamous Jallianwala Bagh massacre. He was also a founding member of Jamia Millia Islamia. He was awarded the Stalin Peace Prize in 1952.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Punjab Province (British India)</span> Province of British India

Punjab was a province of British India. Most of the Punjab region was annexed by the East India Company in 2 April 1849, and declared a province of British rule; it was one of the last areas of the Indian subcontinent to fall under British control. In 1858, the Punjab, along with the rest of British India, came under the direct rule of the British Crown. It had an area of 358,354.5 km2.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Artistic depictions of the Partition of India</span> Overview about artistic depictions of the partition of India

The Partition of India and the associated bloody riots inspired many creative minds in the republics of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh to create literary/cinematic depictions of this event. While some creations depicted the massacres during the refugee migration, others concentrated on the aftermath of the partition in terms of difficulties faced by the refugees in both side of the border. Even now, more than 60 years after the partition, works of fiction and films are made that relate to the events of partition.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bhisham Sahni</span> Indian writer, playwright and actor

Bhisham Sahni was an Indian writer, playwright in Hindi and an actor, most famous for his novel and television screenplay Tamas, a powerful and passionate account of the Partition of India. He was awarded the Padma Bhushan for literature in 1998, and Sahitya Akademi Fellowship in 2002. He was the younger brother of the noted Hindi film actor, Balraj Sahni.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Government Museum and Art Gallery, Chandigarh</span> Museum in Chandigarh, India

Government Museum and Art Gallery, Chandigarh, is a premier museum of North India having collections of Gandharan sculptures, sculptures from ancient and medieval India, Pahari and Rajasthani miniature paintings. It owes its existence to the partition of India in August, 1947. Prior to the partition, much of the collections of art objects, paintings and sculptures present here were housed in the Central Museum, Lahore, the then capital of Punjab. The museum has one of the largest collection of Gandharan artefacts in the world.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Punjab, India</span> State in northern India

Punjab is a state in northern India. Forming part of the larger Punjab region of the Indian subcontinent, the state is bordered by the Indian states of Himachal Pradesh to the north and northeast, Haryana to the south and southeast, and Rajasthan to the southwest; by the Indian union territories of Chandigarh to the east and Jammu and Kashmir to the north. It shares an international border with Punjab, a province of Pakistan to the west. The state covers an area of 50,362 square kilometres, which is 1.53% of India's total geographical area, making it the 19th-largest Indian state by area out of 28 Indian states. With over 27 million inhabitants, Punjab is the 16th-largest Indian state by population, comprising 23 districts. Punjabi, written in the Gurmukhi script, is the most widely spoken and the official language of the state. The main ethnic groups are the Punjabis, with Sikhs (57.7%) and Hindus (38.5%) as the dominant religious groups. The state capital is Chandigarh, a union territory and also the capital of the neighbouring state of Haryana. Three tributaries of the Indus, viz., Sutlej, Beas, and Ravi, flow through Punjab.

The 1947 Partition Archive is a 501(c)(3) non-profit oral history organization in Berkeley, California, and a registered trust in Delhi, India, that collects, preserves, and shares first-hand accounts of the Partition of India in 1947.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">1947 Amritsar train massacre</span> 1947 massacre in Amritsar, India

One of the largest train massacres occurred at Amritsar in Indian Punjab, on a railway train carrying Muslim refugees during the Partition of India on 22 September 1947. Three thousand Muslim refugees were killed and a further one thousand wounded. Only one hundred passengers were uninjured. These murders demonstrated that railway carriages provided very little protection from physical assault. After several such attacks on Muslim refugees by Sikhs armed with rifles, swords, and spears, the Government of Pakistan stopped all trains from the Indian Punjab to the Pakistani Punjab at the end of September 1947. The Sikh Jathas, which were ruthless, led the attacks for ethnically cleansing the Eastern Punjab of its Muslim population. Earlier in September, they had massacred 1,000 Muslim refugees on a Pakistan-bound train near Khalsa College, Amritsar. The violence was the most pronounced in the Indian East Punjab. Sir Francis Mudie who had become governor of the West Punjab in mid-August 1947, noted that a quick succession of attacks on refugee trains headed west to the border from Amritsar and Jullundur districts in East Punjab, India, between 21 and 23 September 1947 included one on a train aboard which every occupant was killed.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Partition Horrors Remembrance Day</span> National memorial day on 14 August for the victims of the Partition of India

Partition Horrors Remembrance Day is an annual national memorial day observed on 14 August in India, commemorating the victims and sufferings of people during the 1947 partition of India. It was first observed in 2021, after announcement by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

<i>The Lost Homestead</i> 2020 non-fiction book by Marina Wheeler

The Lost Homestead: My Mother, Partition and the Punjab is a book by Marina Wheeler, published by Hodder & Stoughton in 2020. It focusses on the author's Sikh mother, Kuldip Singh, known as Dip, and traces her life through the partition of India in 1947 and her life with the British journalist and broadcaster, Charles Wheeler.

Lala Avtar Narain Gujral was an Indian politician from Punjab and the father of I. K. Gujral, the 12th prime minister of India, and artist Satish Gujral. He represented the non-Muslim population of West Punjab in the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan for a few months.

The Kolkata Partition Museum is an initiative dedicated to documenting the Partition of India from the Bengal perspective. Dissimilar to the Punjabi context, the Bengal province had been divided twice: once in 1905, and then in 1947. The aftermath of the second partition, as recorded by many historians, unfolded distinctly in postcolonial Bengal vis-à-vis Punjab. Not only was the impact long-drawn and can be witnessed even 75 years after the Partition, its affect can also be seen in the neighbouring states of Bengal and the rest of the country owing to refugee resettlements spread out to as far away states such as Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh. The idea behind the Kolkata Partition Museum is to preserve and present the vanishing memories of partition, to emphasise both the "rupture and continuities between West Bengal and Bangladesh – in terms of language and literature, food, fabric, and the performing arts – and to encourage collaboration between them." The museum aims "to do so by involving public participation in its programs and gearing all its activities in a way that makes it more accessible and interesting to the public at large."

The Partition Museum is a public museum located in the Dara Shukoh Library Building on Lothian Road, Old Delhi, India. Much like its counterpart in Amritsar, this museum aims to bring forward the people's history preceding and succeeding the Partition of India in 1947. The museum was inaugurated on 18 May 2023 by the Delhi Education Minister Atishi, who hails from a family of Partition survivors as well. This is India's second museum dedicated to preserving the stories of individuals or families that witnessed the partition of India.

References

  1. Kaur, Usmeet (25 October 2016). "Country's first Partition Museum: A story of pain and resurgence". Hindustan Times. Retrieved 6 January 2019.
  2. "Partition Museum curates online events to allow visitors to sneak a peek into the pages of history". The Tribune. 12 September 2020. Retrieved 13 September 2020.
  3. Bhatia, Arjun (2017). "Partition Museum Project: Creating a refuge for the memories of Partition" (PDF). LSE Blogs.
  4. 1 2 Gite, Veidehi (27 April 2023). "Amritsar's Partition Museum, which was once the British Headquarters and a jail, conceals more surprises than you can fathom". Outlook India.
  5. Menon, Parvathi (3 December 2015). "Amritsar's Partition museum to relive a generation's sacrifices". The Hindu. ISSN   0971-751X . Retrieved 6 January 2019.
  6. "Walk down memory lane at Amritsar's Partition Museum". The Indian Express. 17 August 2017.
  7. "Partition Museum, India". The Partition Museum. Retrieved 6 January 2019.
  8. Biswas, Soutik (27 March 2017). "How a jacket and a briefcase shaped a partition love story". BBC.
  9. Malhotra, Aanchal (2018). Remnants of a Separation: A History of the Partition through Material Memory. HarperCollins. ISBN   9789353022952.
  10. 1 2 3 Zabi, Syeda Arman (2020). "Difficult Heritage in Museums: India's first Partition Museum". In Bounia, Alexandra; Hendrick, Catharina (eds.). Studying Museums in Qatar and Beyond. Doha, Qatar: UCL Qatar. pp. 129–152.