SKILL ENHANCEMENT COURSE (SEC) Archives and Museum

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Transcript of SKILL ENHANCEMENT COURSE (SEC) Archives and Museum

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Under Graduate Course

SKILL ENHANCEMENT COURSE (SEC)

Archives and Museum

Contents

Unit 2 Lesson-1 : Contribution of Western Scholars Documentation and Management of Indian Heritage Vikash Kumar Singh

Lesson-2 : History and Development of Archives and Museums in India Rohan

Editor: Sh. Prabhat Kumar

SCHOOL OF OPEN LEARNING UNIVERSITY OF DELHI

5, Cavalry Lane, Delhi-110007

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Unit 2

1. Contribution of Western Scholars Documentation and Management of Indian Heritage1

Vikash Kumar Singh Assistant Professor (History)

Deshbandhu College University of Delhi

The study of ancient and medieval Indian classical texts, language and art in the modern scientific manner, emerged only about two centuries ago. The rediscovery of the ancient and rich artistic tradition of India began only in the late 18th and 19th centuries, during the period of British colonial rule in India. It is then that the process of retrieving, conserving and understanding the nuances of the culture of the colonized people - their scripts, languages, religions, texts, art and archaeological remains - commenced in earnest. In order to assess the contributions made by western scholar’s in studying, documenting and management of Indian heritage, one needs to look into individual as well as institutional efforts that were made in pre- independence India as well as independent India. While one assesses the contribution of individuals and institutions it also becomes imperative to contextualise their contributions in order to understand the impact of personal biases, prejudices, political inclinations and compulsions etc. on the study, documentation and management of Indian heritage.

The Years of 1784-1870 (Orientalists)

The intellectual environment, which made the study of Indian civilisation possible and gave birth to archaeology, is associated with the name of Sir William Jones. On January 15, 1784, under the initiative and guidance of Sir William Jones, the Asiatic Society, for enquiring into the history, antiquities, arts, sciences and literatures of Asia, was founded in Calcutta. The establishment of the Society provided a great fillip to Asian studies. In 1788, a journal called Asiatic Researches was started and, in 1814, a museum was established to house the objects collected by the workers of the Society. Indian archaeology is most indebted to Sir William Jones. He established linkages between Chandragupta Maurya and Alexander the Great providing Indian archaeology with its first positive date. In 1788, Charles Wilkins, a close associate of Jones, unlocked the mysteries of the Gupta as well as the Kutila scripts and laid the foundation of epigraphical studies in India.

In 1800, Lord Wellesely deputed Francis Buchanan to survey Mysore. In 1807, Buchanan was again deputed to survey the topography, history and antiquities of Bengal. For the next eight years, Buchanan surveyed the districts of Dinajpur, Rangpur, Purnea, Bhagalpur, Patna, Bihar, Shahabad and Gorakhpur. Though his report was never published, 1 Vikash Kumar Singh, PhD Research Scholar, University of Delhi. Sachin Chauhan, PhD Research Scholar, University of Delhi.

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what little of it was made available in 1838 by Montogomerie Martin gives an idea of the keenness and accuracy of his observations.

It was the remarkable James Prinsep, who was the presiding genius of the early period. His deciphering of the Brahmi script was his most important contribution and this paved the way for further progress in understanding India’s heritage. It was his genius and labour that helped archaeology to free itself from antiquarian and literary affiliations, James Prinsep, assumed the direction of virtually the entire field of archaeological work in India. Prinsep was essentially a man of science and he brought precision to his task and the scientist’s mastery of factual details, which enabled him to march from discovery to discovery. Initiatives taken by Prinsep were not only in making new finds, but in subjecting existing discoveries to an interpretative analysis, such as the exploration of the stupas in Afghanistan, particularly the historical site of Begram, which brought to light for the first time the names of the Graeco-Bactrian and Indo-Scythian dynasties, of whom no previous historical records existed at all. The required conservation of a stone pillar in the Allahabad fort, which had ancient inscriptions, attracted his attention and the work of preserving it was undertaken.

It was under Prinsep that the task of translating original material from the authentic records of ancient Hindu dynasties of the Southern Peninsula was completed and they were published. The pattern of research, which Prinsep created may be found in his Indian Antiquities (London, 1858), a posthumous edition of his historic, palaeographic and numismatic essays. In both, the collection and reading of inscriptions and coins, Prinsep’s mantle fell upon Cunningham’s shoulders, but many others were also inspired. Thus Lieutenant Bret made a thorough record of the West Indian cave inscriptions, and it was the interest aroused by the publication of his Historical Researches (Bombay, 1847) and Fergusson’s early work on the coins, which led to the formation of the Bombay Cave Commission in 1848 to investigate the history of the caves and undertake their preservation. He found the caves of Udaygiri and Khadagiri near Bhubaneshwar in Orissa occupied by bairagis or wandering mendicants, but once observed that a few picnic parties from Cuttack or Puri and pilfering by a few would-be antiquarians did more damage to these caves than these bairagis.

In North-West India and Afghanistan, Charles Masson, whose real name was James Lewis (1800-1853), but who travelled throughout present-day India, Pakistan and Afghanistan under the assumed name Charles Masson after deserting his post with the British East India Company in 1827, recorded many sites in these areas, visiting the great mound of Harappa for the first time in 1826. The fruits of his work are contained in his notes to the Bengal Asiatic Society and in Asiana Antiqua (London, 1841) where he contributed a description of the sites (mainly stupas) he had excavated, while H.W. Wilson wrote a study of his coin finds and ancient geography. Masson’s discoveries at Begram drew the attention of scholars to the astonishing Indo-Greek coinage and “opened a new page in the history of Greek art. Many others deserve mention: Alexander Burnes, Jean-Baptiste Ventura, Court, and Gerard Lake all collected coins and recorded sites in North-West India and

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Afghanistan. Captain Cautley discovered the remains of a large settlement of Behat near Saharanpur. His excavations are among the earliest in India to be applied to a non-monumental site.

Art and architectural remains received some attention as part of the regional surveys undertaken to understand the geography, history, customs, languages, literature, and folklore of a people. Important work emerged from individual initiatives such as those of Colin Mackenzie (1754–1821). Working with a team of draftsmen and learned Indians or Pundits, Mackenzie acquired translations of inscriptions and manuscripts and had detailed maps and drawings of some southern Indian sites prepared. His efforts at documenting the Amaravati stupa and site are of particular art historical significance. Several traditional Indian scholars played an important part in the colonial project of recovering India’s past but were usually assigned subordinate roles. The study of written sources to interpret varied aspects of cultural history, however, remained more or less detached from the object- or monument-centric approach to Indian art and architectural history.

Beyond Early Attempts

In the late eighteenth and through a major part of the nineteenth century, the study of Indian heritage grew out of a keen and unrelenting interest in Indian antiquities – as curiosities, as admirable ‘handicrafts,’ as mysterious ‘monstrosities,’ and above all, as ‘artefacts’ or sources of past histories of a country then colonized by the British. These objectives set the tone for and determined the methods adopted in the study of Indian archaeology and art history during the nineteenth and early decades of the twentieth century. Despite the marked colonial bias, this period is crucial to the formal inception and institutionalization of art history in India. Art and the Interpretation of India’s Past Survey, Documentation, Archiving and the potential of the visual artefact in comprehending India’s past was well-appreciated by the British antiquarians of the nineteenth century, even as steps were being taken during the period to understand Indian history and culture through written records.

Among those who pioneered a methodological study of Indian architecture, James Fergusson (1808–1886) is well-known for his systematic study of Indian architectural history and Alexander Cunningham (1814–1893) is remembered for laying the foundations of Indian archaeology. Both believed in the superiority of Western aesthetics, techniques, and canons, and categorized the material remains of India’s past within colonial constructs. The shared genesis of the modern disciplines of archaeology and art history in nineteenth century India and the circumstances and motivations that determined the early framework of Indian art history are discussed by Upinder Singh and Gautam Sengupta.

Of Cunningham’s numerous publications mention must be made of the first volume of the corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum containing inscriptions of Asoka, ancient geography of India, etc. The significant discovery that Cunningham made in 1872-75 was the proto-historic site of Harappa. The extensive ruins at Harappa had attracted his attention in the year 1853 and again in 1856, but he made the first excavations only seven years later. He did not

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recognise the importance of relics found by him till Sir John Marshall showed these to be those of a great proto-historic civilization. In her contribution, “Archaeologists and Architectural Scholars in Nineteenth Century India,” Singh draws attention to little-known aspects of Cunningham’s important contributions to Indian art and architectural history. In doing so, she also focuses on the place accorded to art historical issues in the activities of the Archaeological Survey of India during the latter half of the nineteenth century. Cunningham is better known for his emphasis on excavations, field and archival documentation systems, and for prioritizing inscriptional and numismatic data A History of Art History: The Indian Context over the evidence of art and architecture. Yet, for Cunningham the scope of archaeology was very broad, and included many different aspects that could help to illuminate the study of the past. He documented and wrote about a large corpus of monuments in his capacity as Archaeological Surveyor (1861-1865) and as the first Director General of the Archaeological Survey of India (1871–1885). Singh’s intensely researched work reveals insightful details about subtle shifts in Cunningham’s contextual understandings of early Buddhist sculpture and architecture. These can be detected in his observations on the art remains at Bhilsa Topes, Bharhut, and Bodhgaya – all Buddhist sites on the trail of the Chinese traveller, Xuan Zang, whose writings held a special fascination for him. The gradual emergence of disciplinary boundaries between archaeology and architectural history in an atmosphere of conflicting interests, ideologies, political motivations and priorities, and the academic debates that were symptomatic of the larger preoccupations of the period are revisited and candidly analysed by Singh.

Distinct in approach from Cunningham, James Fergusson, with a clear focus on architectural history, attempted to understand Indian architecture in a global context and through the comparative method.11 This is apparent in his History of Architecture in All Countries (1867) and Historical Enquiry into the True Principles of Beauty in Art, especially with reference to Architecture (1849). His passion for arriving at general principles, processes, criteria, and canons of architecture through extensive surveys and illustrated records has rarely been matched. He documented and attempted to ‘read’ the monument to its last detail, treating it as a ‘fixed’ and hence the most reliable source of cultural interpretation. His focus was on the artistic and technical processes of its making, and on the period and region styles. He did not consult texts and inscriptions, yet he evinced interest in Indian mythology and religion, as is evident in his Tree and Serpent Worship... (1868).

Although culture-specific and textured readings of Indian architecture were alien to him, his observations convinced him of the integrity and rationale of ancient and medieval Indian architectural forms and ornament. According to him, Egyptian, Classical Greek, and Indian architecture represented ‘true’ styles as opposed to the ‘imitative’ styles seen during the revival of the Classical and the Gothic in Europe. Fergusson’s macro surveys and comparative approach were full of insights. Lithographs, drawings, and finally photographs greatly aided in generating more precise documentation – far beyond what the ‘picturesque’ aquatints and sketches of William Hodges and the Daniells of the preceding century had achieved.

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But beyond his empathy for Indian architecture, Fergusson was an avowed believer of the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon vis-a-vis the Asian. He adopted racial (Aryan – non-Aryan) and religious (Buddhist–Hindu–Jain– Muhammadan) classifications for art periods and styles, which have had a persistent presence in Indian art historical discourse. He was also convinced of the progressive degeneration of Indian art, the best being represented by ancient (Buddhist) art. The yardstick for judgement was always ‘Western’ and the cultural context of the monument was in many ways lost to him.

Fergusson’s approach was continued by his successors, James Burgess, Henry Cousens, Alexander Rea, A.H. Longhurst, and Percy Brown, to name some of the notable architectural historians. It may be recalled here that in categorizing Indian art and architecture, Cunningham had adopted a time-based classification, terming the periods as ‘IndoGrecian,’ ‘Indo-Scythian,’ and ‘Indo-Sassanian’ that none-the-less reflected his prejudice about the derivative nature of Indian art.

As mentioned earlier, the most glaring omission in much of the Orientalist writings was the neglect of Indian texts and contexts in interpreting Indian art and architecture. This had resulted in some odd and obviously incorrect speculations about the origins and derivations of Indian architectural forms, such as the ‘origin’ of the Indian temple from the Buddhist stupa.

Upinder Singh and Gautam Sengupta have touched upon several larger issues pertinent to the formative years of Indian art history – the intimately allied nature of the disciplines of history, archaeology, and art history; the political compulsions of academic research in the colonial period; issues concerning the ‘region’ versus the ‘nation;’ the conflict between ideology and training of the early ‘native’ scholar; Western assumptions of the derivative nature and gradual decay of Indian art; and the differing academic priorities and ideological tensions between Alexander Cunningham, James Fergusson, Jas Burgess, J.D.M. Beglar, and others.

At a less obvious level, tensions arising from the politics of disciplinary priorities and personal ambitions prevailed amongst the Orientalists too, as is demonstrated in U. Singh’s paper through a careful reading of Beglar’s personal remarks on a copy of Fergusson’s book of 1884. In a larger context, it reveals the academic politics that shaped the relative institutional importance accorded to archaeology vis-a-vis art and architectural history. Even though Fergusson, Burgess, and other contemporary architectural historians had paid attention to ‘form’ and ‘style’ in Indian architecture, Indian sculpture and painting did not gain favour as ‘fine art’ until the early decades of the twentieth century and were considered useful mainly as visual records of the (‘debased’) customs, manners, religious beliefs, and other aspects of India’s past. Indian sculpture was viewed through the lens of a classical Western standard epitomized by the Greek arts of antiquity. The lack of ‘realism’ or ‘naturalism,’ the absence of a sense of perspective and proportion, the many heads and multiple arms of divinities, animal-headed gods, explicitly sexual scenes on temple walls, and such other representations evoked several derogatory responses to Indian art. While figural

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sculpture was severely criticized, abstract patterns and architectural ornament were rated highly as representing the finest traditions in handicrafts, meant to be carefully documented and emulated in British industrial design and manufacture.

Age of John Marshall

The period after Cunningham’s departure till the arrival of Lord Curzon did not see much fanfare as part of the process of documenting, managing and conserving Indian heritage was concerned. However, Sourindranath Roy saw the arrival of Curzon as heralding “the dawn of a new era” for Indian archaeology as he foresaw an increased government responsibility.

Some of the initiatives that were introduced included: bringing the princely states under the purview of regional surveyors, the passing of Ancient monuments preservation act 1904. Besides Marshall played a crucial role in the institution of two scholarships – one for Sanskrit and other for Persian and Arabic for training Indian scholars in Indian archaeology.

In his pioneering work D.K Chakrabarti has talked about how the various excavations and explorations that were taken up in this period were scattered across regions and cultures. While excavation, restoration of Buddhist sites continued the discovery of Indus Valley Sites saw the shifting of primary focus on these new unexplored sites.

Archaeological surveys under the leadership of Sir John Marshall established the antiquity of India’s civilisation by pushing back the then existing earlier dates by another 3,000 years. Marshall’s surveys included Buddhist sites, monuments of the Indo-Greeks and the cities of the Indus civilisation. It is said, he left India 3,000 years older than he found her.

The outcome of his survey projects brought out a large set of cultural dimensions. During Marshall’s time many of the locations of cultural importance had been exposed through the contributions of his predecessors, especially Sir Alexander Cunningham, the founding father of Indian archaeology. Marshall's noteworthy contributions are the detailed reporting of his fieldwork, which included both explorations and excavations. For instance, Mohenjodaro and the Indus civilisation (three volumes), monuments of Sanchi (two volumes) and Taxila (three volumes) are still considered works that reveal the potential of archaeological operations in reconstructing the past. Marshall's findings and studies exposed a more ancient urban civilisation about which there was no historical awareness till then. Thus it was he who founded the scientific study of archaeologically supported historiography in India.

Besides the aforesaid activities, he laid the foundation stone for Taxila Museum in 1918 and also introduced the programme of cataloguing and conserving ancient monuments and artefacts. Even a casual look at the Marshall collections of photographs of monuments and ancient settlements, currently available in the Oriental Museum, Durham, can act as a very important tool to appreciate the setting of monuments in their natural environment and the significant relationship between the monument and its neighbouring ecology, which is disappearing because of the recent rapid urbanisation.

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It was not just the Director General Sir john Marshall but the work done by his peers many of whom he himself recruited that a gave a distinct colour and strength to this period. Men like J F Fleet, Henry Cousens, D R Bhandarkar, Alexander Rea, H Hargreaves, Theodore Bloch, M A Stein, Daya Ram Sahni, Rakhal Das Banerjee, M S Vats, N G Mazumdar who were masters in Indian studies provided strength and solidity to the period between 1902 and 1944.

The establishment of National Archives in the late 19th century and its subsequent expansion during the 20th century too played a huge role in the documenting and management of Indian heritage. Though established in 1889, the National Archives under the supervision of Prof. G W Forrest took to examining, transferring, arranging and cataloguing records of all the Departments and to organise a Central Library in place of various Departmental Libraries. After G.W. Forrest, the work at Imperial Records Department (IRD) progressed well under S.C. Hill (1900), C.R. Wilson (1902), N.L. Hallward (1904), E. Denison Ross (1905), A.F. Scholfield (1915), R.A. Blaker (1919), J.M. Mitra (1920) and Rai Bahadur A.F.M. Abdul Ali (1922-1938) who were scholars as well as Records Keepers in their own right.

Dr. S.N. Sen, who succeeded A.F.M. Abdul Ali and held office till 1949, gave an overall orientation to the activities of Imperial/ Records Department/ National Archives of India. For the first time, records were thrown open for bonafide research in 1939 and by 1947 all pre 1902 records were available for consultation. A Conservation Research Laboratory (CRL) was established in 1940 to conduct research into problems relating to conservation which was Dr Sen’s visionary contribution. Training in Archives Keeping was introduced in 1941 and in 1944, a scheme of Post War Re-organisation of Archives offices in India was laid down by the Indian Historical Records Commission. In 1947, the Departmental Journal, The Indian Archives came into existence; which contained research papers on source material of modern Indian history, conservation of documents, records-management, reprographics, archival awareness and all other allied aspects of functional archives.

Conclusion

The study, documentation and management of Indian heritage was not the prerogative of a selected few but required the efforts and contributions of a range of personalities and Institutions. The entire exercise was thus dependent on personal biases, prejudices, political ideologies and cultural underpinnings of individuals as well as institutional apparatuses. An analysis of the study, documentation and management of Indian heritage is thereby a complicated and multi-layered task which ought to be undertaken with utmost attention. The factors influencing this process thus have to be carefully quantified and contextually situated so that one is able to understand the role and significance of time and space in the study, documentation and management of Indian heritage.

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References

Chakrabarti, D.K., (1988), History of Indian Archaeology: The Beginning to 1947, Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers: New Delhi.

Chandra, Pramod, (1983), On the Study of Indian Art, Harvard University Press: Massachusetts.

Chandra, Pramod, (ed.), (1975), Studies in Indian Temple Architecture, American Institute of Indian Studies: New Delhi.

Dhar, Parul Pandya, (2011), Indian Art: Changing Perspectives, D.K. Print World Ltd: New Delhi.

Ghosh, A., (1960), Indian Archaeology, Dept. of Archaeology/GOI: New Delhi.

Mitter, Partha, (1977), Much Maligned Monsters: History of European Reactions to Indian Art, Oxford University Press:UK.

Prakash, Ravi, (2013), ‘The Journey of Indian Archaeology: From Antiquarianism to Archaeology under British Rule’ South Asian Journal of Tourism and Heritage (SAJTH), January, Vol. 6, No. 1, pp. 136-144.

Singh, Upinder, (2009), ‘Alexander Cunningham’s contribution to Indian Archaeology’ in Archaeology in India: Individuals, Ideas and Institutions, edited by Gautam Sengupta and Kaushik Gangopadhyay, Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers: New Delhi.

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2. History and Development of Archives and Museums in India Rohan

Assistant Professor Maitreyi College Delhi University

Remnants of the past help us reconstruct history of the land and in turn it creates the legacy on which the nation’s heritage is built. The keeping of the records, therefore, becomes an important edifice of nation building. It would not be an exaggeration to argue that both archives and museums – the places where the records are maintained in textual and relic forms respectively – help structure a narrative of ‘collective’ history of a community. There is a popular belief that an archive and a museum are pivotal for historians to write the history of the land, however it is equally important for sociologists, ethnologists, anthropologists and allied disciplines of social sciences. In this chapter we would see how these archives and museums were conceived? Whether they underwent any significant change, particularly in context of India? And, how did they play a role in reconstruction of the past?

Archives

The origin of the word can be traced back to the Greek word archeion meaning which belongs to the office. The root word here is arche which has a number of derivatives and a number of meanings making the horizon of an archive way bigger than one could imagine. Arche means: 1) the first cause: the beginning, the origin; 2) first place: power, sovereignty, realm, kingdom, empire; and 3) magistracy office. From the first definition is derived the Greek word archaios which means ancient and old; and from here we get the words like archaic and archaeology. The second of derivatives gave the Greek word architekton which means chief builder; and from here we get architecture and archbishop. The third set of derivatives we get archeion that gave us the word archives. In due course of time the term evolved and reached Romans who called it archivium in Latin from where comes the French word l’archive (sing.) and later les archives (pl.). The collective sense of the word was adopted into English and thus was derived the word archives. Once it became part of the English lexicon a lot many derivatives were born out of it. For instance, Sir Henry Jenkinson who was the Deputy Records Keeper of England from 1947-1952 used it in singular form to denote a single document. Dr. Roscoe Hill who was the Chief of the Division of Classifications of the US Official Archives in Washington from 1941-1946 suggested a lot of derivative terms from archives, such as – archive = depository; archives = the records in an archive; archivalize = to consign a record to an archive; archivology = the science of administration of the archive.

To qualify as an archive, it needs to have three things: the records, the physical structure or building to house those records, and an administrative machinery that is involved in maintaining and servicing them. The National Archives of India is British styled red and

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brown stone building, the records housed inside and the office of the Director of Archives of Government of India put together. By this definition even the furniture and tools kept in the archives become records. In modern times, thus, the definition is restricted keeping the archivist rather than the archive at the centre of the definition. For an archivist an archive is an organised body of records created or received by a government agency, institution, organisation, family or individual and preserved by that agency or its legitimate successors as evidence of its organisation, functions, policies, decisions, procedures, operations or other activities or because of the information data contained therein. This definition is quite narrower than what it meant half a century ago. For us, an archive is anything that is part of the past. An old manuscript, a copper plate, diary, letters, inscriptions of important persons without concerning the matter of the record. But again, we know that archives don’t include everything. So, if the archives are all records why certain records don’t make it to the archives? That brings us to another pertinent question – are all records archives?

What qualifies as ‘record’? Etymologically speaking, ‘record’ is derived from the Latin word recordari that means ‘being mindful of’. The root word is cor which means ‘heart’ in Latin. The Romans believed that the real place of memory is our heart and thence the phrase, ‘to learn by heart’. A record thus becomes something that is committed to writing in order to preserve the memory of fact or event of the past. That increases the dimension of what can qualify as record, from – books, manuscripts, cartographs, diaries, photographs, recordings, microfilms or any other document.

The first such person to give some clarity on this was the celebrated Italian archivist, one of the pioneers of systematizing the science of archive administration and the father of Italian archival, Eugenio Casanova (1867-1951). While serving as the Director of the State Archive of Rome he made two distinctions between archival records – current records (archivio corrente) and non-current or the second records (archivio di deposito). The former was easy to define but there were troubles defining the second because it was arbitrary and differed from one archivist to the other.

The second attempt in this regard was made by Philip Coolidge Brooks (1906-1977), an archivist at the National Archives and Records Services and later the Director of the Harry Truman Library. He came up with his famous concept, “The Life History of Records”. It was conceived as a diagram wherein at one farthest end is kept all elements that create records and on the other end is the archives. Between these two points would be the systematic treatment divided in stages through which a record will pass and finally end up in the archives.

First Stage (Currency Stage): To see whether it is of use in day today administration for the purpose for which it was originally created.

Second Stage (Semi-Currency Stage): Of their being ‘recorded’ either with or without an indication of how long should they be kept, their re-examination after a stipulated period and weeding out of the valueless material. If the agency does not weed it out and so it retains its

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purpose. However, they are semi-current files and is not that active both in terms of usage in ancillary service and otherwise.

Final Stage (Archival Stage): The semi-current files become practically non-active. They are no more of ephemeral interest for the administration and now they are ready to be finally transferred to central archives for ‘indefinite retention’.

The first attribute of an archive, is therefore, the relationship it has with a creating agency. The archives of a particular agency reflect the policy, function, organisation and transactions of that agency alone; and from this fact is derived the first major principle – the archive of a given creator in no circumstance be intermingled with those of another creator. The second attribute of the archive is its official character, meaning thereby, that the product or by-product of the transaction have legal effects; giving the second principle - the archive must remain under the custody of a curator and his legal successor to ensure that no tampering has been done with them from outside and they are acceptable as a valid piece of evidence of transaction in the court of law. The third attribute is the uniqueness of the archive therefore qua record may not be repeated anywhere else. The transaction between the agency and the archive is a never-ending process and with it the records grow naturally. Each new file is connected to the preceding piece of record and the former is explained only with the help of the latter. The sequence therefore is pivotal to record keeping because if the sequence is lost the story is lost or worse the story gets wholly inaccurate. Thence, the original order of records in no circumstance be disturbed, changed or tinkered with. The sanctity of the original order is the fourth attribute of an archive.

These four principles distinguish an archive from a museum where in the latter the collections are isolated events and they are arranged in some sort of logical order and the arrangement is determined as they grow and not afterwards. The museum doesn’t have the official character or relationship with the creating agency nor are they unique. They may be rare but not necessarily the only one until something new is unearthed.

Bernard Cohn in Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India maintained that beyond military and economic transformations the British embarked upon the cultural transformation of India and that was possible through the masterly display of the relics from the past that included both textual as well material culture of the sub-continent. Knowledge, after all, as Foucault puts it irrevocably linked to power. Not all the records of the Indian past were important for the imperialists. As discussed above it is the agency that decides the nature of the archive, and here the agency was the imperial power under the empress of Great Britain. The Dharmaśāstras were not a constituent for the imperial archive that was set up in Calcutta as Imperial Records Department (IRD) in 1891. The religious texts of India that the imperialist labelled ‘mythical’ ‘poetic’ and ‘philosophical’ didn’t complement the British imperial vision of colonial empire and hence they didn’t attest as records. In other words, the history and the beginning of archives in India has a colonial legacy which didn’t represent the culture, heritage, story and life of the native Indians. To

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understand what qualified as records under the imperial agency one has to understand the objective behind creating IRD.

The National Archives of India

With the shift of the capital from Calcutta to Delhi in 1911, IRD too shifted to its new home and was re-christened The National Archives of India (NAI) on 20th August 1947. A section of historians believes that the purpose of creation of such department of records was to ease out administration of the natives. However, scholars like Partha Chaterjee and Sabyasachi Bhattacharya argue that creation of archives was based on a larger colonial discourse of orientalism and question of race since the commissioning of state sponsored archival projects date back before the establishment of IRD in 1891. These projects had the ontological power in providing the assumption about how India would be portrayed in the world. The first investigative project began in Bengal in the 1770s. They called it ‘enquiries’. It had a set of question that they sought answers to – Who collects the revenue? How is it assessed? The objective was to find the nature of the ownership rights over land and wealth in India. These enquiries helped them to understand that the king is not the owner of the land rather the ownerships over a piece of land could be with many and among them zamindars are the most powerful. That explains why the British pushed for diwani rights in Bengal rather than becoming nawabs themselves after the defeat of the Nawab in the battle of Plassey in 1757. In other words, the land settlement process of the British began the process of collecting “customs and local histories” only related to the information pertaining to land tenure. The findings of the enquiries constituted settlement reports that were produced district to district basis that in turn culminated into the creation of the agency of the British Census office that would provide important records to the IRD/NAI in the later run. The second set of records came from what we may call as ‘civilising mission’ projects. Several imperialist scholars like Alexander Dow, Robert Orme, Charles Grant, Mark Wilks, James Mill and James Tod began to write about the people and the peopling cultures and tradition of the country. What was before now part of the memory of natives were being codified in the form of written records. Neeladri Bhattacharya in The Great Agrarian Conquest argued that how the memory that preceded history were codified that gave rise to three segregated yet interconnected agencies of modern India – thana, survey (with maps and revenue records) and legal system. He further argues that the information collected through these projects helped transform ‘rural India’ into ‘village India’. In other words, the creation of villagescape as the smallest unit of India was created so as to bring uniformity and ease to administrative control, revenue collection and maintaining time to time records of the populace of the colony. All these were to become the records of the archives later. The third set of records came through travel reports and surveys. The first survey of importance was by James Renell in 1765. From there on many successive surveys were undertaken from surveying the flora and fauna to draw imaginary lines on the land to find the highest peaks of the Himalayas. This also gave the first set of surveyors in India – James Renell, William Lambton, Colin Mackenzie, Alexander Cunningham and Francis Buchanan Hamilton. The findings during these surveys that were

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penned made their way to the archives later, however the relics called the ‘antiquaries’ paved the way for – The Archaeological Survey of India and the Museums. The last set of bulk of records came from surveillance. For instance, a Thagi and Dacoity Department was created in 1835. The first task, therefore, in front of them was to gather information on the practices of those communities who killed for rituals, particularly the travellers. The records that came down to us from such department to archive constructed the ethnographic profiling of India on which the notion of criminal tribes and castes were based even after the independence of India in 1947. The other institution was the policing system and later the introduction of fingerprinting by William Herschel and Francis Galton. The plethora of information that were collected with the primary objective of easing out administration marked the first stage of the archives in India. Therefore, even though IRD was established in 1891 it had records from 1748.

The first phase, thus, from 1748 to 1891 was marked by an administrative logic but it must be seen in connection with the rising wave of nationalism is Europe since 1848 that made the use of archives furthermore pivotal for not only administrative interests but to give the populace a sense of belongingness to their collective history. One can understand the importance of archives while drawing an analogy from India - the archival destruction had the same bearing as the temple destruction had in medieval centuries. Archives were a symbol of nationalist fervour that had taken shape in Europe since the eighteenth century. In the post-war treaties, one would find ‘archival clauses’ wherein clear terms and conditions were laid for the transfer of records and archival debts after the war was over. The archive was equated with the state and thus during wars taking over the archives was portrayed as purifying or freeing or cleansing the archives from the servitude to the state. By the nineteenth century, ‘archival clauses’ were in every post-war treatises because for the others who saw archives as institution of servitude to the State, for the State it symbolised the edifice of their past to be preserved for life in the name of nationalism. This marked the beginning of the second phase in the history of archives in India as well.

Archives too were undergoing significant change. Until the nineteenth century, the medieval records and royal charters alone qualified to be considered as ‘historical records’. However, with the rise of nationalism, the definition of historical record for a state change significantly. It paved the way for historians who were conscious of the necessities of the records for constructing a history that cannot be challenged. For them records were the only facts and facts generated truth and the abode of the truth was the archives. These set of historians were called the ‘Positivists’ who made archives holier than thou because it was source of writing the ‘absolute’ history of the state. This consciousness came down to India as well and thus the second marked the emergence of an archival consciousness, thanks to the Positivists, that gave the house of administrative records an intellectual value and in turn made the edifice that must be protected at all cost. However, India was a colony back then and so the imperialists were aware of the role of the archives was not only in redefining the past but also to define the future. In the second phase, therefore, K. M. Panikkar maintained that the colonial cultural projects transformed by tinkering and denigrating the existing

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epistemic structures of the Indian society. In other words, IRD began working as a tool to hegemonize the colonial intellectual structures.

The colonial articulation of power was spatially articulated in the confines of the archives where its own subjects were denied intellectual rights. The agencies who decided on the records were silent about the Indian side of the records. In other words, an Indian could find about India only from whatever the official records of the British had to tell. The assertion made by Foucault in that the facts are culturally constructed which is decided upon the state to ensure that power remains with it is true in this context.

The founding of the NAI, therefore, depicts the process of facilitation of the construction of knowledge of colonization done through archives. It also presents a history of silence where several indigenous structures were questioned, curtailed and demolished in order to present a linear history of India. Positivists who saw archives as repositories of facts produced the history of the elites, colonists and the state in isolation and later popularised it as the history of the masses. The other major issue was the grammar of the archives. An archives keeps textual records and so a vast sections of sources were denied the status of records. For instance, most of the religious and philosophical texts were rejected because it came down from one generation to the next orally and that their translation would be far from being sanctimonious like the records maintained by the modern agencies. Sana Aziz gives an example one such attempt that reveals the motives of the colonialist furthermore. She mentions about the translation of Hedaya (12th century text of Hanafi School) into English for the native Muslims by the order of Warren Hastings. By choosing a particular text, she argues, that the imperialists were codifying the belief as much as they were bringing fixity to the way of life of the natives. Selection and translation of the text ensured two things – fixity to the text for the natives and agglomeration and preservation of records that were convenient for them to maintain. An attempt to validate a history of the natives using their texts selectively while calling the rest of the sources ‘mythical’ and ‘poetic’ led to the development of what we may call ‘State Attested’ sources for writing the history of the natives.

The third significant step towards the development of NAI was the regulation of the archival records. Since, most of the curators were not trained archivists the functioning of the archives was based on rules that were retained by the Governors one after the other. Any significant change in the attitude of the successor governor was also reflected in the longevity of the importance of certain documents for record keeping in the archives. Also, the Indian scholars who knew the vernacular languages were not given the role of prominence in the matters of collecting, corroborating and deciding what could be made into a record for the archives. Rama Mantena gives an important example in this regard: Colin Mackenzie who is famously known for his Mackenzie Collection in the NAI for the extensive collection of inscriptions and epigraphical records from South India died in 1821. While alive, his one of the closest associates and a great linguist Kevali Venkata Lakshmaiah helped him find and translate most of the collected works. After his death he could have been the best person to have succeeded him to carry the work forward, however he was succeeded by H. H. Wilson

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and William Taylor who had little familiarity with the South Indian languages. Their biases were so strong towards Mackenzie’s work that they declared the collection “non-historical.” On the contrary, these two successors used the Mackenzie’s Collection to prove the natives are so uncivilised that they are incapable of distinguishing between truth and falsehood. Perhaps, that is how such collections were shelved almost at the end of the building premise which even today is followed verbatim without realising the what we follow is an impression of the colonial design of segregating Indian history into history, non-history and myth. Similar issues were faced while addressing the idea of sexuality and gender relations in ancient India. Ruby Lal argues that for the British it was a sign of oriental backwardness and thence the absence of documents that explored the issues of gender, body and masculinity from the pre-British times. It was therefore the attitude of the archivists and record keepers that also justified what would qualify as ‘authentic’ facts of the land.

How does one deal with this absentia? Ruby Lal suggests that one can create their own archive. That brings us to an important notional understanding that an agency can also be an individual and the archive thus can also be ‘Private’. In colonial India, the rajas and nawabs maintained their own state archives. For instance, we have Patiala State Archives maintained by the Maharaja of Patiala and the Raja of Travancore also created a State Archive of his state pre-independence. Once freedom movement gained ground individuals also began to create their own archival collections depending on the ideology that they followed. One could see a lot of sections within an archive, for instance P. C. Joshi collection in Modern India Archive, Jawaharlal Nehru University and Tagore Collection at Viswa Bharati, Shanti Niketan. One can also make an archive on their own today. Ruby Lal extends her suggestion by taking an example of collecting marriage invitations or marriage advertisements to trace the genealogy of the customs of arranged marriages in different states of India. Ruby Lal describing the inherent bias in the NAI takes example of Dyce Sombre, the first ever Anglo-Indian Prince and Asian to join the British Parliament in the nineteenth century. In all the documents of the archives he is declared a ‘lunatic’ and thus he had to undergo a prolonged legal battle to claim his property of Sardhana (near Delhi) that would have come down to him from her foster mother, the famous Begum Samru (called Begum Sombre in archival records). The records of the archives are replete with he being a ‘lunatic’ and the legal battle that followed for the claim over the property, however the records mention nothing about him as a parliamentarian, issues concerning race and even his existence as the legal inheritor of the property of Begum Samru. According to Edward Said since the colonists thought they already enough about the natives as they saw them preserving their practices would burden the bureaucratic with unnecessary excesses. Therefore, one finds an absence of indigenous knowledge from the colonial archives. One such reference can be made to the absence of Madrasa Rahimia, the focal point of Islamic intellectualism of eighteenth-century Delhi in the archives. We find their references in details in the contemporary Persian and Urdu literatures and yet they find no official mention in British records. Another example of absentia and the erasure of a significant attribute of pre-modern Bengal was the infamous Inam Commission of 1828. Almost, the same time when Persian was replaced by English as the official

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language of correspondence by Lord Bentinck. The commission was set up to resume the ma’afi land grants that were given to the educational institution to maintain the native scholastic traditions. Sana Aziz argues that it practically destroyed the native education set up as the said grant was not recognised by the British bureaucracy. Consequently, Hunter in his famous Hunter Commission recorded that “between 1828 to 1846 a panic was created among the Mohemadans that left a bitter legacy of hatred,” and subsequently a cause of the growing discontent whose zenith was reached during the Revolt of 1857. The knowledge of the destruction of the Mohemadan education system would have been lost had the history of the native education system be written on the basis of colonial archives alone.

The third phase began to take shape post-1857. Although there was no direct inclusion of native material in the archival records, however while describing the state of affairs to the Secretary of State a lot correspondences mentioned about the issues discreetly. Such correspondences that were once rare had become a norm once the power shifted hands from the Company to the Crown. These correspondences were preserved in the Oriental and India Office Collection in British Library. The collection constituted of Board of Commissioners for the Affairs of India (1784-1857) and India Office Records (1858-1947). Post-independence several archival exchanges between NAI and the India Office brought the copies of these correspondences in the micro-film. The digital archiving, thus, marked the third phase of evolution and development of the archives in India.

The fourth stage began with declaring the archives as the part of the Central List of the Seventh Schedule of the Indian Constitution. With this began the linking of the several state archives which were once mostly the private collections of the princely states. This process was completed with the establishment of several regional archival offices in Bhopal (1956), three record centres in Jaipur (1977), Pondicherry (1979) and Bhubaneshwar (1996). Authority-ship over all the premier state archives was established in this phase. The importance given to NAI as an edifice of national treasure can be surmised by the fact that it finds mention from the first Five Year planning onwards. From almost no financial outlay to a corpus of Rupees 802.69 crores in the VIII- Five Year Plan was given to the NAI. From the First to the Seventh Plans concentrated on building our cultural institutions and establish cultural relations with the neighbouring nations. The exchange of records from the India Office, Britain was part of the same extension programme. From the Fourth Plan onwards awareness of our heritage was made an intrinsic part of the Central Education Curriculum both at school and university levels. Various modern India institutions like The Akademies became the agencies for supplying the new forms of documents that were to be turned to become the records of the post-Independence India. This included the targeting of tribals and other regional communities at large. The Sixth Plan focused on the interlinkages of various cultures with the Education at various levels. By the Seventh Plan, thrust was given to the documentation of contemporary creativity, their documentation and preservation. Institution like ASI, Museums, Tribal Arts, Oral Traditions were given funds to sensitize the youth. INTACH and NCSM were allocated funds to conserve, preserve and document the tangible and intangible heritage and popularising Science and Technology among students

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respectively. The process of unlearning and relearning completed its full circle in the Seventh Plan where the National Education Policy gave emphasis on the growth of child’s personality in tandem with the promotion of inexpensive material culture of India. CCRT and several cultural centres became operational during this plan. The promotion of modern Indian regional languages was also a pivotal component in the NEP of 1986. Under the Eight Plan, a lot of emphasis was given to the preservation of the tangible heritage of India (that we would see in the section on Museums). In the post-Independence phase the archives had been unleashed from the colonial hegemony and was converted into the edifice of nationalism.

The emphasis on the revival of archives got reflected in the establishment of A School of Archival Studies in 1976 that even today offers one year diploma course and several short-term courses with an intension to create archivists, preservationist, curators and conservationist of the archival records. Since the NAI holds records that has legal sanctity in any court of law, the functions of NAI are backed by a legal system that has evolved parallelly with it. The notification under the title Historical Records Rules was formulated in 1970. By 1982, all non-current records where given access to any adult Indian Citizen defined by the Constitution of India. The Public Records Act of 1993 gave legal accession of records to NAI of Central Government Offices, PSUs, Union Territory administration, statutory bodies, commissions and corporation. The Public Records Rule of 1997 further strengthened the legal accession and management of NAI.

The fifth stage of development was marked by the process of digitization of records. Many projects were taken to document and conserve what may have been lost otherwise in various states. For instance, the government of Uttar Pradesh gave financial assistance for the documentation of the local and regional records pertaining to the Revolt of 1857. One of the prominent historians involved in this mammoth’s task was S.A.A Rizvi. This project could document several such pivotal pieces of the event of revolt that would have been lost otherwise. For instance, the Queen Victoria’s proclamation of 1857 that transferred the power into the hands of the Crown was a piece of archival records under British India. However, very few knew that Begum Hazrat Mahal, the queen of Awadh, who was sent to forced asylum to Nepal after the revolt wrote point by point rebuttal of this proclamation. Since, the rebuttal was almost lost in the Urdu documents this project was able to revive it from oblivion. Many weekly, monthly and bi-annual magazines and papers in regional languages were preserved in the form of several projects of NAI. The case in point is the famous Urdu paper Jam-i-Jahan-Numa has been preserved by NAI whose cataloguing still awaits as we speak. In the 125th year of NAI, i.e., 2017 NAI launched its e-portal Abhilekh Patal. This marks the beginning of digital accession of the millions of records kept at the archives. A joint partnership with the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology is helping the digitisation process that is regulated by the Centre for Development of Advance Computing (C-DAC). The history and development of NAI that has its beginning in colonial legacy is moving towards a more people-oriented and research friendly structure. Despite that a lot of efforts is required to make great leaps in that direction.

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Museums

The origin of the word can be traced back to Greek word museion which means the temple of the Muses, the Greek goddesses protecting the arts and sciences. The history of the first museum construction dates back to third century BCE when Ptolemy I founded the great museion of Alexandria. However, there have been evidences of collections of antiquities from seventh century BCE Assyria, Northern Iraq. The famous Assyrian ruler Ashurbanipal collected 30,000 cuneiform tablets in his personal library. The famous tablet of the “Epic of Gilgamesh” was housed in his library. Today, the cuneiform tablets are to be found in the British Museum while the famous library of Alexandria was lost due to the burning of the city of Alexandria by Julius Caesar in 48 BCE. The Romans were known to keep relics and conserve them as medallion of their antiquity and cultural advancements. The Villa of Papyri that had been rediscovered in eighteenth century; the library of Emperor Trajan, the library of Celsus and the great library of Constantinople hold testimony to the claim.

In India, the idea of conserving the relics was part of the politico-religious structure. In South India we find many Viragals (Hero-stones) that were to be found in various districts of the ancient kingdoms. Similarly, several Meykritis and Prasaśtis were found across India where the feudal lords and kings would give details of their might, territorial extent, their patron gods and the cultural achievements of the rulers respectively. Also, we find several relics in the form of stone, cave and pillar inscriptions that give references to the administrative and economic aspect besides the religious affiliation of the kings. Another important feature had been the state patronization of temples whose walls and the inscriptions engraved either in the precinct or near the gates of the temple acted as a relic of art, information and architectural advancements of the time period. The temple, therefore, were the sites of ancient relics that also acted as a museum of a kind. The Buddhist stupas were the house of the relics of Buddha and the Śakti Pithas were similarly the relics of the Mother Goddess Devi had the same social objectivity as that of a modern museum, only that it manifested a sense of religiosity in ancient India. Considering these structures had similar social objectivity one can find the traces of museology, in theory, back to third century BCE itself.

The ancient and medieval literatures are replete with terms like Alekhyagriha, Vithi, Citraśala et.al. that refer to the galleries housing paintings, sculptures and terra-cotta objects. If the engravings were done on stones and Kalhaṇa, the first historian of India, claims to write the history of kings in his Rājatarangiṇi one can surmise that there was some sort of preservation of olden relics used to write history that began almost millennium before his age. By the twelfth century CE, the Saṅskṛt plays Pratimā of Bhasa and Naisadhivacaritā of Śriharśa mention about mobile and permanent exhibition galleries attached to the royal courts. We also had audio-visual shows in medieval period in the form of kathaks who would go to different region to tell and enact the stories of gods like the Cherial Scrolls of Warangal; Chitrakathi by the Chitrakathi community of story tellers from Paithan (Andhra Pradesh) or Savantvadi (Maharashtra) or Pinguli (Karnataka); Tholubommalata, the famous

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flat leather show puppetry from Karnataka; Patachitra of Odisha; Kaavad Mobile Shrines of Mewar and Marwar by Kaavadiya Bhats and Phad of Mewar by Bhopas (the story-teller community) – are important component of the National Musuem of India today.

By the fourteenth century, Europe was witnessing the Renaissance or simply the revival of cultural and artistic legacies of Graeco-Roman antiquity. Renaissance was a culmination of Latin raritas (rarities) and curiositas (thirst for knowledge). The love for art objects, relics, antiquities and natural history necessitated the rise of a new organisation. The feudal system of Europe was transforming the social attribute of the seigneurie (rural lordship) towards a more urban social character; implying that a neo-elite of rich at the major trading entrepôts had led to a social change. The art of the royalty, that once included the Church and the King, was now being claimed to be the art of the elites and with this was coined the term ‘museum’ in the fifteenth century Europe which meant collection of mementos. With the development of archaeology in the eighteenth century many new relics and antiquities of the past were revived that added to the collection of these great museums of Europe. The classical age had paved the way to an industrial age wherein fresh new value objects were added to the realm of museums. This new phase was called the age of neo-classicism. A new class of industrial elites or simply the capitalist classes were the new entrants of the neo-elites and with their taste also changed the nature of museum across Europe. For instance, the American War of Independence (1776) and the French Revolution (1789) liberalised arts that reached universities through the education system. Nationalisation of museums, therefore, began. The first national museum of the world, the British Museum was created in 1753 whereas the first public museum in America came up in South Carolina in 1773. In 1793, the Palace of Louvre was opened to the public with christening itself to the Museum of the Republic. Unlike the archives, the museums, particularly after the 1793 transformation of the Louvre, was seen as a new public institution. A process of transforming of several other private collections and libraries were gradually opened for public display. The visual culture was now the domain of popular culture. One such Nationalised Museum was opened in Copenhagen, Denmark where Christian Jürgensen Thomsen took the charge of the chief antiquarian. As archaeology was unearthing a lot of artefacts belonging to the time even before history it was really a tough task to segregate them in the museum for public display. One fine day he decided to change the orthodox arrangement of displaying the objects according to the period they belonged to. Instead, he segregated the pre-historic object according to their material basis. To his surprise he was able to create a new method of segregation called Three Stage System where the artefacts were arranged into stone, bronze and iron. He later published his new system of classification in Scandinavian Antiquity in 1836. This system was well received in other quarters of Europe and soon a new system of classification of Stone Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age was adopted in academic writings, archaeological findings and museums. Harappan Civilisation is referred to as a Bronze Age Civilisation even today.

In North America, the development of museum took a different turn. Here it remained dependent on private initiative and committee services. In other words, here a concept of exhibiting the findings according to the themes or taste of a particular community began to

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gain ground. The museum movement of America paved the way for what was to be developed into showcasing artefacts through exhibitions with inter-connected exchanges among museums across the globe in modern times. By mid 1870s, USA alone had more than 200 museums that catered to various taste of the sponsors and target audience. For instance, Charles Wilson Peale, a musicologist, established the famous Peale’s Museum in 1786 that catered to music and musicians alone. Smithsonian Institution created their own museum in 1846. In London came the famous Victoria and Albert Museums that would house the largest collection of Indian artefacts, that includes the famous ‘Gateway of Gwalior’, outside India.

The forerunners of museum movement in India where the British enthusiasts who had the experience of museum from their own homeland. Also, looking at the profile of the first class of antiquarians and archaeologists in British India all of them were in the civil services and had little if not no knowledge of archaeology or museology whatsoever. Instead, the first wave of development in India was inspired by both the boredom and curiosity to the find the rarity of beauty in the realm of the ‘uncivilised’. In the beginning it was all a private affair. The Company neither grant funds nor was it interested to engage until the Great Game necessitated the demarcation of boundaries particularly towards the north-west frontier province. The first forerunners were, therefore, spies sent under the garb as surveyors of the land. In other words, surveying and finding artefacts was only a pre-occupation to keep an eye on the Russians and the French, and that was their full-time occupation. William Moorcroft, George Trebeck and Alexander Burnes were some noteworthy surveyors in the service of the Company who were engaged in espionage beyond the North-West Frontier Province and in due course discovered lot many things that was not on the official duty chart for them to recover. The beginning of artefact collections in India began with boredom in the service for being far from home, personal curiosity, a hobby and as a mere act of serendipity.

In the beginning the British rejected everything that was native. For them the Indian forms of art and architecture were rudimentary. Partha Mitter’s study has also shown that the British failed to understand the complex art, architecture and iconography of India until they had their first encounter with Buddhism. For the Victorians the period between second century BCE to first century AD – when the stupas of Sānchī, Amravati and Bharhut were constructed and the Gāndharā school of sculptures could have established a Greek influence of Asiatic classical age – marked the classical age of art and culture. To much surprise the ‘Saracenic’ architecture of the Islamicate age was seen more as a political symbolism of conflict between Islam and the West rather than representation of aesthetic beauty with the comingling of traditions.

Imperial Museum (Calcutta) and the National Museum of India (New Delhi)

In India, a museum is called Ajā’ib Ghar. Ajā’ib, a word borrowed from Persian, literally means ‘wonder’; and so ajā’ib or the Urdu word originated out of it ajēb meaning ‘strange’ give us ‘Wonder House or Strange House’ as the literal translation of Ajā’ib Ghar. The famous novel of Rudyard Kipling ‘Kim’ bridged the gap of introducing the West with a translation and Indians a concept of a museum. The first attempt at creating a museum in

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India is closely associated with the first orientalist attempt to understand, report, codify and document India. William Jones founded The Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1784 and within its campus was proposed the first museum in 1814. By the time 1814 arrived, H. T. Colebrook had become the fourth president of ASB who had given it a more concrete shape of an institution with its own library and a museum within the campus. The first phase of curious findings of an antiquarian was over and now a more serios endeavour was conjoined with curatorship. Archaeology was working hand in glove with the museum now. In fact, Tapti Guha-Thakurta argues that there was a close approximation of each other’s function – a museum collected, labelled and displayed while an archaeologist named, described and documented. The second phase began with a more organised system to bring order to the vast material found from across the sub-continent. However, the central motive was to collect and not display. The collection was meant for a small closed circles of Westerners who appreciated its value. The idea of public display of these artefacts was not yet on the charts. Of all the collections, India’s natural history got the attention of the British. The specimens of exotic and peculiar botanical and zoological subjects got their attention and also it required less of managerial skills. The growing interest in ethnology and natural history culminated to produce a new genre called The Company Paintings. The polarity towards the natural history was so much so that the first curator of this museum was Dr. Nathaniel Wallich, an amateur botanist by profession. The museum was soon divided into archaeological/ethnological and geological/zoological sections. More than archaeological findings, the geological findings found more audience. Soon the Museum of Economic Geology was separated under a new curator in 1856. Throughout the 1860s and 70s in Calcutta the museum remained largely under the domination of the botanists and naturalists. The demand of opening up museums on Economic Geology in Madras and Bombay led to the establishment of similar museums in 1851 and 1855 respectively.

Parallel to the development of natural history museum, the interest in the newfound love for machines and industries began to spread in the alleys of the museums. Commerce and aesthetics came together in this stage. India’s craftmanship, exotic regalia and designs now got to get space in the museums. However, there display was done differently through the ‘exhibitions.’ London’s Crystal Palace Exhibition, “The Great Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations” was organised in 1851. As Tapti Guha-Thakurta rightly pointed out, “Like the botanical specimens acquired in museums, the craft objects, too, would now be subjected to the same orders of identification, organization, and classification, according to a variety of schemes (period, place of origin, nature of the raw material, production process, style of design). The Great Exhibition inaugurated a pervasive trend of displays, collections, and publications in England and India, centered around the decorative arts of the empire.”

Exhibitions became an intrinsic part of the domain of the museum. The collections of the museums occasionally were shown in the exhibitions but the exhibition items gathered and grouped together for that purpose alone finally found the permanent place in the museums. The two stalwarts that shaped the course of museums in India were James Fergusson and Alexander Cunningham. The shift from natural history to archaeology and finally the shift

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from monuments outside the realm of museum to bringing the artefacts inside the museum was a long process of evolution. By the year 1857 there were twelve museums in the whole of the Indian peninsula. The dawn of the twentieth century was an era of awakening and great reforms. Lord Curzon revived the archaeological Survey of India with a view to surveying and exploring the relics of ancient Indian culture and also for opening the site-museums on important sites. Several site museums in places like Saranath, Pagan, Taxila, Mohenjadora and Harappa (now in Pakistan), Nalanda, were established in the early years of the existence of the department. Later a few more site museums came at Chamba, Jodhpur in 1909, Khajuraho and Gwalior in 1910 and Dacca (now in Bangladesh) in 1931. Dr. J.P. Vogel produced the first Directory of Indian Museums by supplying detailed information relating to each of the museums which were then thirty-nine in number, to the conference of Orientlists at Madras. In the year 1936 a grant was offered by the Carnegie Corporation, New York to make a survey of the Indian museums. The work was entrusted to Markham, M.P. and H. Hargreaves, former Director General of the Archaeological Survey of India, who visited all the existing museums in the country and brought out the Report on the Museums of India the first standard work of its kind. It includes one hundred and five museums which were taken into consideration for the above report.

The last fifty years have been significant for the growth of museums and the museums profession in India. There are more than 400 museums in India today. Although the archaeology and art museums are more in number yet, the museums devoted to specific subjects have also been developed to carry out their educational programmes in different fields of human knowledge. The Craft Museum, New Delhi, the Health Museum, Hyderabad and the Textile Museum, Ahmedabad are some of the examples of this type. The history and personalia museums, apart from archaeology museums, are very few and or recent growth. The Victoria Memorial Calcutta, for the British period, the Ravindranath Tagore Museum, Shantiniketan, the Gandhi Smarak Sangrahalaya, New Delhi, the Fort St. George Museum, Madras and the Nehru Memorial Museum at Tinmurti Bhavan in New Delhi illustrate this type of musuems. Owing to the rapid growth of technology and industry in the country the latest types, which have been developed recently, are the museums of pure and applied sciences, technology and industry. The Birla Industrial and Technological Museum, Calcutta, was established in 1959. The Central Museum of the Birla Educational Trust at Pilani lays more emphasis on agriculture. Similarly, the Visveswaraya Industrial and Technological Museum at Bangalore is another example. Similar Science Centers are being developed at Bombay, Patna, Bhopal and other places. A Museum of Man devoted to anthropology is being developed at Bhopal in Madhya Pradesh. A group of museums attached to the Forest College, Dehradun, having separate sections on silviculture, timber, minor forest products and entomology is another noteworthy addition. The Agriculture Museum, Coimbatore contains samples of geological formation, agriculture implements, soils and manure. There are various museums devoted to the Engineering and Medical Sciences as well. The children's museums and Bal Bhavans, although of later origin are of considerable significance. The National Museum of Natural History at New Delhi is an excellent example

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of its kind, although still in formative stage. A number of University museums are run under various departments as teaching centres of different disciplines. The museums, like all other social institutions have changed through times. They have changed in form, in function and in basic concept. A museum has now changed from a repository of objects to an educational agency. Its policy to collect isolable objects has changed and it now emphasizes to integrate an object and its social and natural networks with the visitor's experience. A museum is now no more a privilege for a few but it serves the society as a whole. Over and above this change a museum is today an active participation in the socio-cultural life of the community which it stands for. A general definition of museum on a broad international basis is given in Article of the Statutes of the International Council of Museums 1974. It says that a museum is a non-profit making permanent institution in the service of society and of its development, and open to the public which acquires, conserves, researches, communicates and exhibits for purposes of study, education and enjoyment, material evidence of man and his environment. The growing appreciation for culture, cultural tourism, impressive international exhibitions and huge promotional campaigns have provided extraordinary impetus to museum-movement and to world-wide popularity of museum as places for leisure and education. The museums have thus become a social phenomenon wherein the recreational and experiential functions are predominant. There have thus grown several kinds of museums, devoted to every field of knowledge and human experience. The diversified network of museum, such as the museums of archaeology, history, civilization, natural science, art, architecture, maritime and other scientific disciplines have grown throughout the world. Besides their typological differences, the museums have assumed diversified role also. Science Centre’s and youth museums in the United States, with the least collection centres and most educationally oriented sectors, are probably the fastest growing. The sophistication of interactive technologies allows visitors to engage themselves in personalized dialogue with the environment. The Ottawa based National Museum of Science and Technology is a good example. Similarly, the recently designed Biodome, the first museum garden dedicated to the environment at Montreal, is unique for its naturalistic ideas and architectural wonder. With the opening of the Centre Georges - Pompidou in Paris in 1977 a new era of art museum was started. With its interior spaces recognized in 1985, the centre Georges-Pompidou is the pioneer of the new trends in the field of museum-movement. We have come a long way from showcasing our heritage to adding heritage to the personality of a person either through education or casual visitation – after all what good a relic of our past be for if we don’t have access to it.

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