*A partition museum*
2 Jan 2008, SALMAN AKHTAR http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/A_partition_museum/articleshow/2667150.cms The country needs a national museum of the partition of India. First and foremost, the partition is the deepest wound of modern, if not all, times in the country's physical-spiritual corpus. Amputation of the land, creation of boundaries between regions that culturally flowed into each other, migration of a stunning magnitude, displacement of masses and the cruel and ruthless bloodshed of innumerable citizens constitute the tapestry of this great human tragedy. Cities were changed forever, families torn apart and individuals' fates transformed beyond recognition. While the resilience of human spirit and the stabilising forces of democracy, free press, refugee relocation programmes and, above all, Indian secularism have helped heal this laceration to a reasonable extent, throbbing reminders of the pain remain. Scars tell the story of wounds, often in mute and sub-terranean ways. A sudden nostalgic pang for Lahore and Dhaka, an occasional shudder at the memory of slaughtered relatives, a peculiar curiosity about Pakistan and an equally uncanny ambi-valence about Bangladesh, and more recently the beginning of grief work through theatre and movies involving themes of partition are all evidence that the trauma is very much alive in the Indian psyche. To quote the great American novelist, William Faulkner, "the past is not dead; it is not even past". Secondly, such an institution will help the people of our country mourn the trauma of partition in a more meaningful way. Their agony, instead of lingering as a private island of pain, will now be open, shared and public. This, in turn, will facilitate the healing of wounds associated with the group trauma. Alongside such salutary impact upon partition survivors and their subsequent generations (who are unwitting recipients of their elders' trauma and related fantasies), a museum of this sort will become a national clearing house of information regarding what actually happened in 1947. Questions such as the following would find their answers spelled out in the galleries of the proposed museum. What were the forces that led to the partition of India? Who came up with the idea of Pakistan? Who were the prominent Muslims vehemently opposed to the vivisection of their motherland? How were the boundaries of west and east Pakistan (now Bangladesh) drawn up and by whom? What was the connection between partition and Mahatma Gandhi's assassination? What was Mohammed Ali Jinnah's ethnic ancestry? How responsible are the British for what happened? Why was the man who coined the name Pakistan denied citizenship in that country? And so on. The museum will thus have a double purpose. It will facilitate mourning and therefore healing. And it will make actual information regarding the partition available to the masses and thus dispel myths and distortions surrounding the tragedy. This will have a prophylactic effect upon the nefarious uses of the 'history' of partition, especially in its potential for fuelling ethnic and religious prejudices. Facts will begin to replace fabrications. Let me readily admit that arriving at 'facts' will be far from easy. History is one of the most difficult areas of human study. This is why it will require a multidisciplinary task force comprised of historians, political scientists, anthropologists, psychologists, scholars of religion, biographers, folklorists, archivists, poets, playwrights and film-makers to put their heads together day after day, week after week and month after month to figure out what information might be displayed in the museum. Needless to say that sculptors, photographers, graphic designers, lighting experts and architects of the highest calibre will be needed to give form to the content evolved by the team mentioned above. My faith in our people's imagination and creativity tells me that once this task is done we will have a new monument of healing, forgiving, learning and loving in our country. Do i need to say that this modern Taj Mahal of knowledge should be located in its inspiring and majestic capital, New Delhi? The writer is a psychiatrist and writer of Indian origin currently living in the US.
