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
K AVITA S INGH
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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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