2

MATERIAL FANTASY

The Museum in Colonial India KAVITA SINGH

absolute nexus between knowledge and power, this approach seems to leave no room for a gap between the colonizer’s intention and effect; there is nothing that is provisional, or improvised, or not dictated

Introduction

by a predetermined design. But, as Gyan Prakash

It is generally assumed that the great

says, “To fall prey to [colonialism’s self-description]

knowledge-producing project of the British empire

is to suggest that the exercise of colonial power

was primarily one of control. We understand that

produced only mastery, that British India’s history is

by surveying and mapping lands, by conducting

nothing but a record of submission ....”1 Instead of

censuses, and by collecting and classifying specimens,

retelling the history of the colonial museum as an

the colonial power was able to take hold of its

illustration of a conscious and knowing knowledge-

possession with a more than military might. We

power nexus, in this essay I will suggest that there

have also learned that, in this dynamic of knowledge

was a different and fuzzier relationship between

and control, what was being effected was not just

intention and accomplishment. I will rely not only

knowledge for control, but knowledge-control; where

on the confident and self-congratulatory statements

scientific and Enlightenment forms of knowledge

made by museum directors, but also the more erratic

displaced other ways of knowing the world and

histories of their institutions, to delineate a career for

established themselves as the best, indeed the only,

the colonial museum that is full of interrupted plans

way to study and describe reality.

and retrospective justifications, where grand projects

If the “total knowledge” that this project sought

face a chronic lack of funds; and where museum-

remained a chimerical idea, the information it did

makers struggle not just with the colonized populace,

collect was a physical entity, harboured in files, letters,

but with their own authorities. Further, I hope to

sketches, maps, specimens, artefacts: all of which

show the power of local responses to reshape the

needed to be kept, ordered, and preserved; and we

idea of the museum: through local politics that stood

recognize that Victorian Britain devoted considerable

in the way of the metropolitan dream; or a jubilantly

care and resources in developing institutions that

resistant, ineducable public; or competitive claims,

would house and support this physical corpus of the

from unexpected quarters, to owning the knowledge

ever-growing body of knowledge. We recognize that

that the West was marking as its own. For if, as

the Archive and the Museum are places where this

Thomas Richards says, the Imperial Archive was

knowledge-fantasy congeals to take physical shape.

primarily a fantasy,2 then others too had the power to

The above paragraphs summarize, if they also caricature, the Foucauldian frame through which we tend to study the colonial museum. Believing in the

dream, or to dispute the dream. But the first question we must ask the colonial museum in India is how it comes to be located within

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1 Case full of broken hands, collected from Sahr-i-Bahlol. From the ASI Frontier Province Album, 1914–15. Courtesy Archaeological Survey of India, New Delhi.

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were built up gratis: as the Board’s announcement said, “It is not our meaning that the Company India. If the colonial knowledge-project was meant

should go into the expense of forming a Collection

to “take away” knowledge of India to empower the

.... But Gentlemen might chuse gratuitously to lodge

colonizer, why was it building, and hoping to build,

valuable Compositions ....”3 What was acquired was

so many museums in India? Whom, within the colony,

kept in storage for many years, until a retired official

would these museums address?

persuaded the Company to appoint him “Librarian” to the Repository in 1801. Over the next 78 years

In the Company’s Keep: Museums in India

the India Museum had an erratic history in which the

before 1857

zeal of some scholars and officials was pitted against

As one would expect, the very first museum of

the resentment of Company bureaucracy that had to

India was indeed one that “took away” knowledge

provide space, manpower, and finances to support the

and treasures of India under the sign of colonial

growing accumulation of objects. The India Museum

control. This earliest museum was the India Museum,

functioned – inadequately staffed, inadequately

which the East India Company maintained in its

housed, and inadequately publicized, according to

headquarters in London. Born out of the collections

some observers – until 1879 when, with the demise

sent back by East India Company officers who had

of the East India Company, the museum too was

developed scholarly enthusiasms beyond the line

dissolved and its collections distributed amongst

of duty, the Company’s India Museum started as a

several London institutions.4

motley collection of scientific samples, manuscripts

The India Museum’s dispersed collections are

and antiquities, curiosities and military loot, which the

today the core of the Indian material in the British

Company Board agreed to house. These collections

Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the

2 Buddhist and Hindu sculptures in a gallery modelled in the “Middle Eastern Islamic style” at the East India Company’s India Museum, at the Company’s headquarters at Leadenhall Street, London. From The Illustrated London News, March 6, 1858.

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British Library (including the India Office Collection). If this important collection could have had such an accidental beginning and such a provisional life, one would not expect the careers of the museums set up on Indian soil to be much different. By the time the Mutiny/Uprising of 1857 brought Company rule to an end in India, there were museums in Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay, all capital cities of British presidencies. It would appear that the East India Company was greatly invested in gathering, organizing, and storing knowledge, since it sponsored museums in all the principal cities in its dominion. Yet a closer look at the histories of these institutions suggests that the first museums of India were not, in fact, intentionally conceived by the colonial power, but were rather foundlings thrust upon it for its care. The three venerable museums in Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay were not started by the government, but by amateur scholars functioning within its realm. What is now the Indian Museum in Calcutta was begun by the Asiatic Society; the Government Museum in Madras owes its origins to the Madras Literary Society; and the Victoria and Albert Museum (now renamed Dr Bhau Daji Lad Museum) in Bombay was likewise started by a circle of private individuals. In each case, when the

an Encyclopedia Indica, a place where all knowledge

collections built by these private societies became

about India could be lodged.6 But if we consider

unwieldy, they appealed to the government to take

that the museums were the depositories for groups

them over and maintain them. Yet only the Madras

with wide-ranging interests, it is natural that these

Literary Society succeeded in having its museum taken

collections should be not “encyclopedic” but varied

over by the Company-period administration in 1851;

and even hotchpotch. Museums of this time would

the Asiatic Society, which made its appeal in 1814,

have some botanical specimens, some zoological

had to wait till 1865 for the governmental take-over,

ones (including living animals which had to be de-

and the museum in Bombay was taken over by the

accessioned as they died), some sculptures, books

municipality only in 1886. Thus the Madras museum

and inscriptions, some manuscripts, a few “economic

is the only museum in India that the Company

products” and ethnographical specimens, not to

supported during its rule.

mention curiosities like hair balls from the stomach of

What was in these museums? The ambitious statements made by museum keepers who asserted that the museum would “serve as an illustrated

3 Economic Court in a 19thcentury exhibition. Botanical products such as corn cobs and fruit form the decorative framework within which serried rows of rectangular samples – probably also of botanical resources – are seen. Unidentified photographer, c. 1883. Courtesy the Alkazi Collection of Photography.

a goat, or the skull of a thug, all jostling for space on the shelf. When the government stepped in to give

record of the accumulated knowledge of India”5 are

support to these museums, it did not necessarily

taken today as evidence of their intention to create

give direction. Witness the appeal of the Madras

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The institution of the museum acquired new valency in the race to exploit the potential of Indian government for the public to gift specimens to its

design. Both governments took action to collect

newly taken-over museum:

high-quality artefacts from India, preserve them in

In the extension of a Museum of this

museums, and set up art colleges contiguous to the

nature every person may have it in

museums where artists could learn by consulting the

his power to aid, and every point of

museum collections. If the Government of Britain

information, and every specimen that may

bought up Indian and Oriental objects from the Great

be sent will be acceptable.

7

Exhibition to stock its new Museum of Ornamental

Starting with a bewildering array of items

Art (est. 1852, eventually to become the Victoria and

gathered by the scholarly societies, rapidly expanding

Albert Museum), provincial governments in India set

through an acquisition policy that welcomed every

up at least nine museums to showcase local crafts,

item as long as it was free, we might take the idea

and developed plans for many more.10 While the

of the museum’s self-proclamation as an Encyclopedia

DSA set up the South Kensington School of Art and

Indica as a retrospective justification of its tentative

Design in London (est. 1857; this eventually became

and non-disciplinary beginnings. Couple this with the

the Royal College of Art), between 1850 and 1875

reluctance with which Company support was given to

the provincial governments in India set up art schools

museums – or the tenacity with which it was withheld

in Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, and Lahore.11

– inevitably, we must alter our perception of the

The British government hoped that by studying

museum’s centrality in a colonial knowledge-power

Indian objects in museums, British manufacturers

nexus.

would improve their design; the Indian government hoped that huge orders for Indian goods would

The Raj: Museum Economies

soon be rolling in for Indian craftsmen to fulfil. Both

It is after the transfer of power to the British

governments were thus engaged in similar actions

Crown that we begin to see the emergence of

at the same time, but with opposed and competitive

something like a coherent museum policy for India.

intentions, for the benefit of different circuits of the

It is well known that in the Great Exhibition held

economy. Each government saw its own domain as

in London in 1851, British products were reviewed

the producer, and the other as the market for its

unfavourably for their poor design; by contrast,

produce. In the end, as we all know, British industry –

Indian craft products were hailed as models of good

with its mechanized production and biased tax regime

design and taste. The appreciation of Indian crafts

– won over the only advantage that was left to India,

at the Exhibition suggested immediate economic

the advantage of cheap labour. At the time, however,

possibilities – but perceptions of these possibilities

the Raj museum makers wrote confidently of the

were split along the fissure between the colony and

economic miracle that was about to come to India

the metropole. On the one hand, the Government

via their museums; today, we read their optimistic

8

of India saw the possibility of capturing a global

proposals with the foreknowledge that their project

market for Indian products; on the other hand,

will fail.

the Government of Britain set up the Department

44

Museums set up in the first 50 years of

of Science and Art (DSA) – reputedly the largest

the Raj era were primarily Economic or Industrial

bureaucratic apparatus in the country9 – to harness

museums whose remit was to collect samples and

Indian and Oriental design to improve the quality of

information about any item or process in India that

British-manufactured goods.

had a potential use. Minerals and metals which could

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be mined; rocks, which could be used for building material or crushed for gravel; soil, different types of which could support different crops; timbers; flowers

ones. And in fact, the government’s detailed plan for

whose essences yielded perfume or medicine; grains

a fully expanded Museum–Art School–Exhibition sector

and legumes and fruits and vegetables; insects which

envisioned the whole country as a network supplying

produced silk or honey or wax or dye … nothing

exhibitions-in-the-making. The scheme drawn up by

was without economic possibilities. The museum was

the government intended to place a School of Art in

the place where a sample of each resource would be

every province; it would be the school principal’s task

displayed, along with maps showing their occurrence

to survey and collect every pattern and design of every

and charts describing techniques for their extraction.

art manufacture in his province. Designs approved by

But these museums demonstrated not just the raw

him would be included in the provincial museum and

materials present in India but also the craftsmanship

each design would be given a registration number.

that was available to transform them into products.

A duplicate collection of all the objects from all the

A typical display in these museums might juxtapose a

museums, bearing the same registration numbers,

lump of ore with a filigreed necklace, or a sample of

would be kept in a museum in London, and also

timber with a carved chair.

published in widely distributed catalogues. Anybody

The new Utilitarian purpose of museums in

who wished to buy any of these objects would simply

India was stated thus by the government department

have to send an indent quoting the registration

responsible for them:

number. Whole exhibitions could be swiftly ordered

The main object … is not the gratification

by these means; if time was very short, the provincial

of occidental curiosity, or the satisfaction of

museums could ship off their own collections to an

aesthetic longings among foreign nations,

exhibition, for the museum could always re-stock by

but a development of a trade in these

ordering fresh examples of the same goods from the

products, whether raw or manufactured,

nearby artisans.13 And once the large orders did come,

rough or artistic.

12

artisans would not be able to let their standards drop, because their new work could always be compared

Sample Rooms of Empire

with the original samples held or documented by the

If the museums were the point where artefacts

museum.

were collected to form an inventory of available craft

Never fully realized, this scheme remained

skills, art schools were the point where these skills

a dream for the most part. It was in essence a

could be disciplined and adapted for international

precocious fantasy for a mail-order business, with

tastes, and international exhibitions were the

India as the Manufactory, and the Government as

marketing opportunity that formed the third point in

the Department Store. As the official who drew up

this triangular relationship. From the 1860s onward,

this scheme noted with no small satisfaction, “It will

the Government of India began vigorous participation

be seen … that the already existing museums will

in international exhibitions, expecting that Indian

be called upon to fulfil a new function, that of trade

products and raw materials would attract orders

museums, or to put it more simply, sample rooms.”14

throughout the world. It was the exhibition’s promise of profits and trade that drove the governmental engine to invest

Monuments in the Museum When one visits the august Raj-era museums in

in the apparatus of art schools and museums:

India today, one sees scant traces of the institutions

permanent institutions in the service of ephemeral

I have described above. Seldom does one encounter

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4 Carved screen on rear wall of Sidi Sa’id’s Mosque, Ahmedabad, 1572 CE. Photograph: Sushil Sharma, American Institute of Indian Studies, Gurgaon.

a Gallery of Economic Botany with its cataloguing of

antiquities that we value today. But these were not

timbers and carving styles; instead one sees hall after

the prime focus of the museums or the reason for

hall filled with imposing, intricate, ancient sculpture.

their establishment. They held no promise for the

In this essay I choose to speak about things one no

rejuvenation of the Indian economy. Instead, they

longer sees, and remain silent about the things one

made a troublesome claim upon the government’s

does see.

resources, and were received with less enthusiasm

This is because it is not my intention to write an 5 (opposite) “Carved Cabinet from Ahmedabad” exhibited in the “Bombay Court” of an unidentified exhibition, c. 1883. The upper section of the cabinet imitates the famous 16th-century carved screen in the window of the Sidi Sa’id Mosque in Ahmedabad. Historical references found in 19th-century crafted objects, such as this one, are evidence of the efforts made by art schools to “improve” the tastes of the native craftsmen. Courtesy the Alkazi Collection of Photography.

46

than we would imagine.15 For instance, when the

account of the colonial museum simply to “explain”

Amaravati sculptures now in the British Museum were

the avatar it has taken today – how the museum

shipped to London they lay unclaimed in a dockyard,

in Calcutta came to possess the Bharhut railing, or

and then in a coach-house, for seven years;16 and

why the museum in Madras has so many sculptures

when the Begum of Bhopal offered to dismantle

from Amaravati. This kind of account would suffice

a gateway from the Sanchi stupa and gift it to be

if one were tracing the histories of these objects;

placed in a museum in London, her offer was politely

but if one is writing the history of the institution,

refused.17

it becomes necessary to show that these museums

That the Government of India had a duty to the

were profoundly different institutions 120 years

monuments within it, that the government should

ago. It is true that even while administrators were

establish a permanent institution and invest in their

collecting crafts and expecting museums to serve the

care, was a battle bitterly fought and perpetually

economy, they did acquire the great collections of

lost by the passionate amateurs who were the

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early archaeologists of India. If the history of Indian archaeology up to the 1880s seems dominated by certain forceful personalities – Alexander

monuments in the world”.21 As an extension of this

Cunningham, James Fergusson, Henry Hardy Cole – it

philosophy, loose objects that needed to be protected

is because these enthusiasts caused the field and its

from theft or the weather were no longer to be

apparatus to come into existence by the sheer force

taken away to the metropole but were now to be

18

of their personalities. And if the prime archaeological

housed at museums built at the site, removing and

institution in India is called the Survey – a verb, and

yet not removing the object from its context. The

not an Institute – a noun, it is because from 1861 to 1901 the Archaeological Survey was an activity rather than an institution – consisting of an occasional series of expeditions to examine, document, and retrieve monuments out in the field. For these early archaeologists, “saving” the antiquities they discovered was effected by transporting enormous quantities of movable objects from find-spots to the India Museum in London and (after the India Museum’s demise) to museums in Indian cities. These objects were being saved not just from the elements, they contended, but from the Indian people, who were bound to plunder them for building materials, or destroy them in iconoclastic acts.19 Since, in their view, the native Indian could not understand the proper worth of ancient artefacts, their place was in museums and repositories close to the scholars who would study them. To protect and maintain Indian monuments in situ was unimaginable in the 19th century; it would have required a different sense of the connection between ancient monuments and contemporary Indians, and it would have demanded an investment from the government that was beyond anybody’s dreams.20 It is at the start of the 20th century, with the arrival of Lord Curzon as Viceroy (1899–1905) that the turning point came. Under him the Archaeological Survey was reorganized into a permanent institution that had a duty to not just study but to protect the monuments of India. And these were to be protected in situ. Curzon famously reconfigured the relationship of British authority to Indian monuments as the duty of a civilized power towards the “greatest galaxy of

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actions were carefully supervised by the British. Inevitably, the close association between the site museum was an important Curzonian innovation

government of British India and the Indian Princes

which ensured the end of the era when museums

resulted in an emulation of Victorian progressivism

in faraway cities could expect to acquire hundreds

and social engineering within the Princely States.

of artefacts after every excavation. Instead, in a turn

In the late 19th century, many Princely States built

anticipating nationalist sentiment, site won out over

hospitals, sanitation systems, colleges and universities

museum as the land was seen as having a special

to mark their entry into enlightened modernity.

claim to the monuments found upon it.

Museums were another emblem of enlightenment that gained currency in the Princely States at this

Outside the Raj but Near It: Museums of the Princely States

time. Most of the turn-of-the-century museums

Adjacent to the Raj regions, and deeply

established in the Princely States followed the model

intertwined with them, were the Princely States of

of the Economic museums in the Raj regions. Further,

India – some 266 kingdoms, covering 40 per cent

the Princes frequently hired Europeans to make and

of the territory that would eventually become the

run their museums. Were these museums merely

India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh of today. Managing

derivative institutions of a mimic modernity? Or did

to evade annexation by the British through treaties

the Princely States in any way alter or extend the

and promises of cooperation, the Princely States were

Raj’s Economic-museum paradigm? I look briefly

nominally independent though most of their political

at two important museums of Princely India, the

6 General view of the excavation underway at Sarnath, 1904–06. The sculptures visible here were eventually accommodated in the Sarnath Museum, the first Site Museum established by the Archaeological Survey of India, UP Album Vol. 6, 1904–06. Courtesy Archaeological Survey of India, New Delhi.

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Jaipur Museum and the Baroda Museum and Picture Gallery, to gain a sense of what these museums were and what they meant within the emergent field of

Indian craftsman’s alleged propensity to deteriorate,

museums in India.

the Jaipur galleries seem to want to inspire the

The moving force behind the Jaipur Museum – sometimes called the Albert Hall and formerly the Jeypore Economic and Technical Museum – was the remarkable Colonel Thomas Holbein Hendley, Chief

craftsman by showing him the wider possibilities of his medium.23 When Rudyard Kipling visited Jaipur, he rhapsodized about the Museum:

Surgeon of Jaipur, who was also a great enthusiast

Hear this, O Governments of India, from

of Indian “art industries”. Hendley persuaded

Punjab to Madras! The doors come true

the Maharaja of Jaipur of the economic utility of

to the jamb, the cases which have been

museums and exhibitions, and was asked in 1880 to

through hot weather are neither warped

make a museum for Jaipur.22

nor cracked, nor are there unseemly

The galleries in Hendley’s Jaipur Museum,

tallow-drops and flaws in the glasses

completed in 1887, seem to have been the usual

.… These things are so because money

round of arts-by-industry with galleries for metalware,

has been spent on the Museum, and it

pottery, wood-carving, and textiles. But these galleries

is now a rebuke to all other museums

collected not just locally made items, but international

in India, from Calcutta downwards … a

examples as well. For instance there was Persian

Museum … built, filled and endowed with

metalware and Japanese and Chinese porcelain

royal generosity – an institution perfectly

in the relevant sections. Unlike the Raj museums’

independent of the Government of

desire to hold samples of good design to arrest the

India....24

7 View of a gallery in the Sarnath Museum, the first Site Museum to be set up by the Archaeological Survey of India, UP Album Vol. 16, 1911–12. Courtesy Archaeological Survey of India, New Delhi.

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because he was not subservient enough to them.26 When Sayaji Rao instituted the Baroda Museum Kipling’s close attention to the museum’s

surveying the state’s resources, where its citizenry

grew up in a museum. Rudyard’s father, Lockwood

were treated as economic objects. In the 1890s it

Kipling, had been Principal of the Mayo School of

widened its pedagogic remit by adding the sciences

Art and Curator of the Lahore Museum. When the

and a children’s section, addressing its citizens as an

son ruefully compares the Jaipur Museum with the

educable public; and by the 1920s with the addition

museums of British India, and finds the British-run

of the Museum’s fine art sections it addressed its

museums wanting, he is no doubt venting some of

visitors as an enlightened audience, capable of

his father’s spleen at having had to function with

enjoying the high civility of good art.27

limited funds and excessive bureaucracy. Here then

Although I would hesitate to draw too straight

is the Indian Princely State, hiring British men to

a line between Sayaji Rao’s larger and more pressing

make a British institution upon the native soil – and,

political concerns and the career of his Museum, it is

improving upon the original, to the extent that

significant that it is in around 1910–11, when Sayaji

its excellence becomes a “rebuke” to the British.

Rao’s guarded acts of resistance towards the British

Ironically, while British officials and museum keepers

were reaching their peak, that his Museum underwent

draw up grand plans for the kind of institutions they

its most ambitious expansion.

would like to make, it is the “royal generosity” of a

Towards the end of 1910, Sayaji Rao

native prince that allows the full flowering of a British

commissioned a popular London art critic to purchase

conception. In its time, the Jaipur Museum was hailed

for him a collection of European art.28 The result was

as the finest museum in India.

“the best collection of old masterpieces of European

If the Jaipur Museum improved upon the Raj

painting … in Asia”,29 with originals by Veronese,

museums by being better built, better fitted, and

Caracci, Zurbaran, Fragonard, Constable, and Turner –

better maintained – “the same but better” – the

to name just a few artists in the collection. Before the

Baroda Museum displayed a deliberate and even

collection was shipped to India, the Royal Academy

audacious desire to exceed any museum in British

in London borrowed some works for an Old Masters

India even in its conception.

exhibition; the Victoria and Albert Museum put

Under Sayaji Rao Gaekwad III (r. 1875–1939),

the whole collection on show, and the art journal

Baroda was known as a progressive and modernizing

Connoisseur printed the entire catalogue. By the time

state. Embarrassingly for the British, this Baroda ruler

this collection reached Baroda, the most prestigious

was often more progressive than the government

art institutions of London had already ratified its

of British India (for instance he introduced free

value.30

universal education in 1906) and a discussion in

50

in 1887, it began by following a Raj-type model of

furniture and fittings is unsurprising, for he practically

What is most significant about Sayaji Rao’s act

British Parliament even suggested that the colonial

of making this collection is not just that Sayaji Rao

government emulate this native state’s reforms.25

was sufficiently steeped in Enlightenment values to

It seems as though the Maharaja embarked on his

appreciate European art. It is not even that he had

most radical reforms precisely as his relationship

the means at his disposal to make these works his

with the British government deteriorated. Sayaji

own. It is that he alone in India invested in purchasing

Rao’s espousal of the good governance practices

the best European art and then gifted this collection

recommended by the British stood as a reproach

to his public. For all the claims made by the British

and a challenge to British attempts to unseat him

about the superiority of Western over Eastern art, on

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the one hand, and their professed desire to educate and civilize Indians, on the other, they nowhere attempted to give their Indian citizenry access to high

been common enough to a European audience, but

European culture. Once again, a reformist maharaja’s

would ring rather differently in colonial ears. The

generosity exposed the half-heartedness and

very arrangement by “nation”, which encouraged

insincerity of colonial progressivism.

audiences to compare and give rankings to different

Although the critic who had assembled the

European countries, punctured the myth of an

collection had wanted to arrange it in strictly

aggregate European culture whose superiority over

chronological order to show a singular line of

Eastern culture was absolute. As a scholar archly

progress through European art, the second British

observes, through the deployment of this collection,

expert who actually wrote the catalogue and

“Sayaji Rao made European culture a specimen in an

installed the collection in Baroda broke it up into

Indian-controlled museum.”33 Sayaji Rao’s purchase of

“national schools” such as “Italy”, “the Netherlands”,

a large European art collection at this time should be

31

“France”, and “Britain”. The catalogue followed

read not as a slavish imitation of European practices,

the Victorian practice of assigning a moral value to

but as a competitive gesture of collecting Europe.

the work, and by extension, to the age and nation that produced it. For instance, the writer praised the old masters of Italy and the Netherlands, found

Viewers and Wanderers in the Museum The British colonial museums we have so far

France to be the leader in modern art, and denigrated

seen seem designed to serve two specialist interests:

the art of Germany.32 This approach might have

of the administrator, who hoped to make “sample

8 Albert Museum, Jeypore, by Gobindram Oodeyram, c. 1900. Courtesy www.harappa.com.

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Condemned to having a large but illiterate audience, keepers complained of how visitors came rooms” that would garner export orders and thus

to be entertained by jugglers and singers in the

stimulate the economy; or of the antiquarian, who

grounds, and then swarmed all over the museum,

collected inscribed stones and potsherds to construct

rushing through carefully arranged galleries full of

a learned account of ancient Indian history.

rare things only to stop and shriek out the names

The museum’s site and architecture attracted the

of what was already familiar to them – clay models

lay public. It was usually part of a new and planned

of fruit, or stuffed figures of common animals and

colonial extension of the city and was situated in a

birds.37 Theorists have told us of the way working-

park, or was part of a complex that included botanical

class audiences in Victorian Britain were awed into

garden and zoo. Some of these parks had bandstands

better behaviour by the museum’s fine building and

with weekly concerts. Entrance to the museum was

watchful guards; the museum visitor’s body re-enacted

kept free or at nominal cost. The museum buildings

Victorian ideologies of evolutionism and progress

were usually attractive, and sometimes flamboyant,

in its disciplined itinerary through the succession of

structures. In some cases smaller, jewel-like buildings

galleries.38 On the other hand, the Indian audience

were themselves the museum’s prime exhibit.34 To its

seemed to come not to be educated but to celebrate

audiences, the beauty of the museum’s building and

itself: to eat and drink and be entertained in the

environs held out a promise of pleasure and diversion,

fine grounds and foyers, to ignore the lessons the

rather than industry and education.

museum was trying to give, and to notice what the

Into these inviting settings, the crowds streamed.

museum showed only when it allowed one to take

The Indian Museum, Calcutta, and the Victoria and

pleasure in recognizing oneself.39 It would be going

Albert Museum, Bombay, claimed over 800,000

too far to speak of this as the audience’s resistance to

visitors in 1913; these were the largest museum

disciplinary power; but certainly we may think of it as

35

attendance figures in the world. Madras claimed

a robust immunity to it.

over 400,000, and Baroda, 300,000 visitors each year. Particularly large numbers arrived on feast days – in

After the Raj: A New Museum for a New

Madras on Kannul Pongal, the Museum would receive

Nation

up to 70,000 visitors. Many of the museums arranged

India after the outbreak of World War I,40 and the

ladies who kept purdah; on these days the watch and

chief event in Indian museum-making in the first

ward staff was exclusively female.

half of the 20th century was the introduction of the

The museum keepers’ pride in the large numbers

Curzonian archaeological site museums discussed

who visited was moderated with disappointment

above. But already, in the way these site museums

in the quality of this audience. Perhaps due to the

mark the presence of the great monuments rising

paucity of other grand yet freely accessible public

everywhere out of the Indian soil, they anticipate

spaces in the colonial city, the museum soon became

that ultimate paean to soil as bounded territory, and

a place for the poorer, lower-caste Indians to visit

history as local heritage: a National Museum.

on festivals and holidays. The presence of enormous

It was inevitable that the coming of

subaltern crowds marked the museum as a place of

Independence would demand the founding of at

lower-class amusement, which in turn, the keepers

least one more museum, this one to inaugurate the

believed, kept the better class of native away from

postcolonial era in the cultural life of the new nation.

the museum.

52

Few major museum projects were taken up in

for zenana days every month for the convenience of

36

Today the National Museum stands prominently in the

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ceremonial heart of New Delhi’s capitol complex, and its galleries present the history of Indian art through a succession of masterpieces. It is here that we see Indian artefacts celebrated as proofs of a continuous and continuously high civilization. Once again, however, a closer study of the institution’s history brings surprises. In its location, building, and organizational structure, it turns out that the National Museum brings to fruition a colonial plan for an Imperial Museum on the very same spot; and the initial collection with which the Museum was inaugurated was gathered not for the National Museum but for a great exhibition of Indian art in

9 Exhibits from The Art of India and Pakistan, on view at the Durbar Hall of the Viceregal Palace (Rashtrapati Bhavan) in New Delhi, Winter, 1948–49. From the Archive of the Photo Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India.

London. The National Museum turns out to have colonial roots. New Delhi was built as a new capital for the British in India, and the city’s heart was planned for imperial pomp and show. Its centrepiece was Kingsway, a ceremonial avenue that swept down from the Viceroy’s Palace, past a vast formal park, to terminate at a memorial for the Indian soldiers who

of scholars before the War, the project was revived

had died loyally fighting British battles. At the halfway

by them after the War in 1945, only to have it taken

mark of this avenue was a crossroads; and in the

over by the Foreign Office and British art officials. By

four quadrants marked by this, New Delhi’s architect

this time, the inevitability of India’s Independence,

Edwin Lutyens had planned to build four institutions.

and the creation of Pakistan, was clear for all to see;

These were to be a Records Office and War Museum;

with the groundwork already done years before, this

a Medical Museum; an Ethnological Museum; and

exhibition could be mounted expeditiously and serve

an Imperial Museum. The institutions around this

as a gracious gesture of a colonial power welcoming

hub would simultaneously house and symbolize the

its former colonies into the comity of nations. The

knowledge of India that had been accumulated by the

Exhibition of The Art of India and Pakistan was

Raj over two centuries.

held in the Royal Academy from November 1947 to

Of these four institutions, the only one to be

February 1948 and it brought together an enormous

built as planned was the Records Office, the National

collection from British and Indian collections both

Archives of today. The other projects were postponed

public and private.

due to the outbreak of World War II and the resulting

When the Indian loans to the Exhibition were

paucity of funds. But planning for these museums

shipped back to India in 1948, it was decided –

continued intermittently, with committees meeting

reputedly on the recommendation of the new Indian

and discussing the Imperial Museum, its purpose and

Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru – to give Indian

organizational structure, as late as 1946.41

audiences an opportunity to see the assembly of

Another project affected by the War was the

masterpieces. A temporary exhibition was arranged

proposal of the Royal Academy, London, to host an

in the Viceroy’s Palace (now Rashtrapati Bhavan)

exhibition of Indian Art in 1939. Initiated by a group

in the winter of 1948. The fortuitous collation of

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the particular histories of the institutions we become able to compare what the museum says, with what masterpieces from private and public collections all

the museum does. The gift that this brings us is the

over India proved to be an opportunity too rich to

recognition that even this presumed locus of absolute

resist: and soon Prime Minister Nehru and Education

authority was an arena of improvisations.

Minister Maulana Azad were mooting a plan to hold these objects permanently for a new National

NOTES

Museum to be built at the site Lutyens had earmarked

1

Gyan Prakash, Another Reason, Science and

for his museum complex. The government “appealed”

the Imagination of Modern India, Princeton University

to the lenders to surrender their objects for this new

Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1999, p. 19.

and prestigious project.42 Published accounts of the founding of the

2

“From all over the globe the British added

information about the countries they were adding to

National Museum have tended to end at this point,

their map. In fact they could do little more than collect

with the Nation exercising its absolute prerogative

or collate information, for any kind of civic control was

over its cultural heritage, rendering the private

out of the question.” Thomas Richards, The Imperial

ownership of these things as an irrelevancy to be

Archive: Knowledge and the Fantasy of Empire, Verso,

brushed aside. These accounts do not pursue the

London, 1993, p. 3.

story to record the anger and resentment that this

3

India and Bengal Dispatches, March 16, 1777,

action caused. Nor do they follow the National

quoted in Ray Desmond, The India Museum 1801–79,

Museum’s history another four years into the future,

HMSO, London, 1982, p. 5.

by which time most lenders, whether private, princely, or provincial museums, have successfully wrested their objects back from a Centre which regretfully realizes it

4

For a detailed history of this institution, see

Desmond, op. cit. 5

T.H. Hendley, “Indian Museums”, Journal

has no legal claim or jurisdiction over them. We leave

of Indian Art and Industry, Vol. XVI, No. 125, 1914,

the National Museum now in 1952, nearly emptied

pp. 33–63, see p. 45.

of the collection with which it had announced its

6

See for instance, Tapati Guha-Thakurta, Ch.

foundation. The government is realizing for the first

2, “The Museum in the Colony: Collecting, Conserving,

time that it may need to purchase objects to fill the

Classifying”, in Monuments, Objects, Histories:

halls of the grand building it is planning to erect, for

Institutions of Art in Colonial and Postcolonial India,

other, older museums have refused to participate in

Columbia University Press, New York, 2004, pp. 43–84.

the national dream.43

7

Notification dated August 14, 1851, signed

by H.C. Montgomery, Chief Secretary to the Governor,

In this abbreviated account of the museum in colonial

Fort St George. Quoted in Dr A. Aiyappan, “Hundred

and newly postcolonial India I have not attempted

Years of the Madras Government Museum”, in Madras

to survey the field. Instead, I have tried to engage

Government Museum Centenary Souvenir, published

with it dialogically, presenting both known and

by Principal Commissioner of Museums, Government

unknown facts about selected institutions. If my

Museum Chennai, (reprint) 1999, pp. 1–58, see p. 6.

shifting perspective defamiliarizes many well-known

54

8

Although the Great Exhibition took place

institutions, it also, I believe, offers us the opportunity

during the Company’s rule, the elaborate apparatus of

to go beyond historical clichés fostered by those “self-

museums, art colleges, etc. to improve Indian crafts,

descriptions of mastery” issued by the museums or

promote their manufacture, and make them easily

the governments themselves. By attending closely to

accessible for trade, was instituted only from the 1860s

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onward, gathering momentum in the late 1880s after Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee in 1887. 9

See Arindam Dutta, The Bureaucracy of

Beauty: Design in the Age of its Global Reproducibility,

14

Ibid., p. 4, para. 16.

15

Elsewhere, I discuss at greater length the

Routledge, New York and London, 2007. This is a full-

way the colonial administration’s valuation of Indian

length study of the Department of Science and Art and

“art” was the precise inverse of our hierarchy of values

its impact upon design in the British empire.

today. Today’s “craft” objects were the prime focus,

10

“Economic” or “Technical” museums were

while antiquities were seen not as art but as a source of

set up in the second half of the 19th century at Faizabad

information about the past. See Kavita Singh, “Museums

(1867); Delhi (Municipal Museum, 1868); Calcutta

and the Making of an Indian Art Historical Canon”, in

(Economic Museum, 1872); Madras (Victoria Technical

Shivaji K. Panikkar, Parul Dave Mukherji, and Deeptha

Institute Museum, 1887); Rajkot (Watson Museum,

Achar, eds., Towards a New Art History: Studies in Indian

1888); Poona (Lord Reay Industrial Museum, 1890);

Art, D.K. Printworld, New Delhi, 2003, pp. 333–57. 16

Bezwada (Victoria Jubilee Museum, 1894); Lahore (initially

Upinder Singh, The Discovery of Ancient India:

set up as the Technical Institute in 1864, renamed Jubilee

Early Archaeologists and the Beginnings of Archaeology,

Museum in 1894, now called the Lahore Museum);

Permanent Black, New Delhi, 2004, pp. 259–60.

Bhavnagar (Barton Museum, 1895); Trichinopoly (Natural History Museum, St Joseph’s College, 1895). And of

17

Ibid., p. 201.

18

This early history may be gleaned from:

course, the great Indian Museum in Calcutta was taken

Upinder Singh, op. cit.; Dilip K. Chakrabarti, Archaeology

over by the government, and given a new building, and

in the Third World: A History of Indian Archaeology

its collections expanded by amalgamation with the items

since 1947, D.K. Printworld, New Delhi, 2003; Tapati

collected for the Calcutta International Exhibition of

Guha-Thakurta, Monuments, Objects, Histories, op. cit.;

1883–84. I am excluding, in this list, the museums set

and Sourindranath Roy, The Story of Indian Archaeology,

up in Princely States by or under the influence of British

1784–1987, Archaeological Survey of India, New Delhi,

Residents, as I will deal with the subject of Princely State

1961.

museums in a separate section of this article.

19

Despite the narratives of native ignorance

Dates of establishment for these schools are:

or religious prejudice that threatened monuments, the

Madras School of Art (1850); J.J. School of Art, Bombay

chief threat to these monuments seems to have come

(1851); Calcutta School of Art (1854); Mayo School of

from the temptation to reuse ancient stone as a building

Art, Lahore (1875).

material, by public projects initiated by the colonial

11

12

Secretary to the Home Department, “Note on

state. Nayanjot Lahiri describes entire temple complexes

Arrangements for Exhibitions”, the National Archives of

being reduced to rubble by railway contractors who

India, File 1882: Home Department Public Branch A July

needed gravel to lay their railway tracks. This is quite

188 no. 157: Subject: distribution of business between

apart from the damage done by the early archaeologists

the Home and Revenue Departments.

themselves whose digs often took the form of clumsy

13

E.S. Buck, “Note on the exploitation of Indian

treasure hunts. See Nayanjot Lahiri, “Sanchi: Destruction,

Art-Manufactures in connection with the Museums and

restoration, restitution” in H.P. Ray and Carla Sinopoli,

Exhibitions, Provincial and International”, September

eds., Archaeology as History in Early South Asia, ICHR

3, 1881. National Archives of India, File 1882: Home

and Aryan Books International, New Delhi, 2004.

Department Public Branch A July 188 no. 157: Subject:

20

Although Henry Hardy Cole, who was Curator

distribution of business between the Home and Revenue

of Monuments, 1881–83, did argue forcefully for just

Departments.

this, he was well ahead of his time.

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28

Space does not permit a full treatment of this

institution’s history, but it is interesting that the drive 21

See Thomas Raleigh, ed., Lord Curzon in

Baroda Museum had begun collecting Asian “fine art”,

Macmillan, London, 1906, p. 192.

purchasing important examples of painting and sculpture

22

T.H. Hendley, Report on the Jeypore Museum

from China, Japan, Mongolia, and India. When European

1888–98, Calcutta, 1898; Giles Tillotson, “The Jaipur

art was finally presented, it was one of several world

Exhibition of 1883”, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society,

civilizations.

Vol. 14, 2004, pp. 111–26. 23

This brings the Jaipur Museum close to the

29

Hermann Goetz, Handbook of the Collections,

Baroda Museum and Picture Gallery, 1952: quoted in

purpose of the metropolitan museums set up by the

Gulammohammed Sheikh, “A Rich and Varied Fare”, in

DSA: British manufacturers had the opportunity to study

Saryu Doshi, ed., A Royal Bequest: Art Treasures of the

artefacts from across the world in order to learn from

Baroda Museum and Picture Gallery, IBH, Bombay, 1994,

their designs.

pp. 20–29, see p. 24.

24

Rudyard Kipling, Letters of Marque, quoted in

30

The history of this collection is traced and

S.F. Markham and H. Hargreaves, The Museums of India,

analysed in Julie F. Codell, “Ironies of mimicry: the art

Museum Society, London, 1936, pp. 8–9.

collection of Sayaji Rao III Gaekwad, Maharaja of Baroda,

25

Manu Bhagavan, “Demystifying the ‘Ideal

and the cultural politics of early modern India”, Journal

Progressive’: Resistance Through Mimicked Modernity

of the History of Collections, Vol. 15, No. 1, 2003, pp.

in Princely Baroda, 1900–1913”, Modern Asian

127–46.

Studies, Vol. 35, No. 2, pp. 385–409. This discussion in Parliament is mentioned on p. 392.

31

This was the work of E. Rimbault Dibdin,

an art critic and director of the Walker Art Gallery in

Sayaji Rao’s troubled relationship with the

Liverpool. He wrote the catalogue of the collection and

Raj reached its nadir when his behaviour at the 1911

travelled to Baroda in order to supervise the installation

Durbar (for the coronation of King George V) caused

of the galleries. This was done in 1921; for nearly ten

a sensation. The Gaekwad was accused of publicly

years the collection had lain in storage in Britain due to

disrespecting the royal couple, through lapses in

the First World War.

26

protocol. Film historian Stephen Bottomore, however,

32

For instance, Codell quotes Dibdin’s withering

studied Durbar footage to find that the Gaekwad’s

comment on German art: “the Teuton genius has,

behaviour was not very different from that of other

with rare exceptions, been more active in adapting and

princes. It seems that the Durbar controversy was

rendering sterile the conceptions of other nations”. See

manufactured by British authorities. Sayaji Rao’s

Codell, op. cit., pp. 138–39.

popularity, progressivism, and outspokenness made the British government extremely insecure and the secret

33

Codell, op. cit., p. 141.

34

This is certainly true of the Albert Hall

service spent years trying to find evidence of sedition

Museum in Jaipur whose carved pillars and doorways

against the Gaekwad, so that he could be removed

testified to locally available skills. The master carvers were

from the throne. See Bhagavan, op. cit., particularly the

even asked to “sign” the pillars they made by carving

section on the 1911 Durbar, pp. 399–408, where he

their names onto them. Hendley, “Indian Museums”,

discusses Bottomore.

p. 56. Similarly, the Mathura Museum was an elaborately

27

56

to collect European art followed four years after the

India: Being a Selection from His Speeches as Viceroy,

It is also relevant that the Curators of the

carved sandstone building housing antiquities from

Baroda Museum were almost always Indian or German,

the time of Kanishka “down to the Victorian period,

but not British.

which would be illustrated in perfection by the building

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itself”. J.Ph. Vogel, Archaeological Museum at Mathura, Indological Book House, Delhi and Varanasi, 1971 (1st ed. 1910), p. 3. Vogel is here quoting F.S. Growse, under

researcher on a project co-directed by Saloni Mathur and

whom the Museum was established in 1881.

myself excavated fascinating material on the history of

35

Hendley, “Indian Museums”, p. 56.

36

This impression was voiced by Dr Vogel of

the National Museum.

the Mathura Museum, at the Conference of Orientalists in 1911. See Government of India, Conference of Orientalists including Museums and Archaeology Conference held in Simla July 1911, pp. 117–18. 37

Markham and Hargreaves, op. cit., p. 61.

38

Tony Bennett, Ch. 7, “Museums and Progress:

Narrative, Ideology, Performance”, in The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics, Routledge, London and New York, 1995. 39

For a fine discussion of audiences at museums

and scientific exhibitions in India, see Gyan Prakash, op. cit., Ch. 2. 40

The Prince of Wales Museum, Bombay,

founded 1921, is an important exception. 41

A committee, under the chairmanship of Sir

Maurice Gwyer, Vice-Chancellor of Delhi University, was appointed to make detailed plans for a Museum of Art, Archaeology and Anthropology. The Gwyer Committee submitted its report in 1946. When the National Museum was set up in 1949/50, its departments and organizational structure were as envisaged by this committee. See Government of India, Report of the Gwyer Committee Central National Museum of Art, Archaeology and Anthropology, New Delhi, 1947. 42

For a detailed account of the transition from

London Exhibition to germinal National Museum, see Tapati Guha-Thakurta, op. cit., Ch. 6, “The Demands of Independence”. For an interpretation of the museum as installed in its building in 1961, see Kavita Singh, “The Museum As National”, in Geeti Sen, ed., India: A National Culture?, Sage, New Delhi, 2003, pp. 176–96. 43

National Archives of India, File No.

f 51-14/50 D III 1950 National Museum of Art, Archaeology and Anthropology – Purchase of Art Collections for Ministry of Education. I would like to express my gratitude to Vidya Shivadas, who as a

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