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Will the Nehru museum revamp help us rise above petty politics?

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Shaguna Gahilote
Shaguna GahiloteSep 03, 2015 | 20:55

Will the Nehru museum revamp help us rise above petty politics?

Reading about the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML) being revamped as a governance museum, brought back fond memories of working in the place. Also known as NMML or the Teen Murti House, this is where I worked with counterparts from the NMML's children's centre to organise the "Peace Across Border" workshop with school children from the subcontinent way back in 2011.

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When I'd first approached the organisation while working at UNESCO, I met the then director Mridula Mukherjee who introduced me to Jaya Iyer. Jaya, back then, was heading a team of young enthusiasts who loved to tell the story of the house, the life and times of Pandit Nehru, the freedom struggle and anything the audience would like to know. As a museum, the collection was not very impressive, the insides of the house pretty modest and a display which could have done with some revamping. But what stayed with me were the stories about the place and the time, that these young staff members would tell the numerous schoolchildren who would line up every day for a visit.

The Children's Centre had developed their own audience with detailed interactive exercises, which kept the children engaged till the very end of their visit. The tour itself was flooded with anecdotes and follow up exercises, like, how the Nehru surname came about, and if they were to get surnames like these, what would their (children's) surnames be. Why was the place also known as the Teen Murti House? Who lived there before the first prime minister occupied it? Why doesn't the current prime minister live there? Which prime minister gave up the house? What is caste system? Who were the prominent players in the freedom struggle? The children went back with food for thought, knowing much more than the exhibits displayed there told them, discovering India; all thanks to these young members who were specialist in their own fields. I was impressed to see them and thought to myself that Pandit Nehru also popularly known as Chacha Nehru would be pleased to see this daily sight. I also admired the vision of the NMML for encompassing and investing so much of staff to their children's division, only to be proven wrong a year later.

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Encouraged by the enthusiastic group I went on to partner on a number of programs with the NMML Children's Centre, the first was the peace workshop where 16-year-olds from Pakistan, Bangladesh and India came together, perhaps furthering the ideals of Panchsheel. This generation had never had any interaction with same age fellow students in neighbouring countries. They'd only heard about them. Mostly described as their enemies in newspaper and television reports. Their first reactions were, "how warm the people are to us", "how Delhi is just like Islamabad". And in about two days time, we could not differentiate between Indian and Pakistanis or the Bangladeshi students. They had mingled and become one.

The workshop was inaugurated by Shashi Tharoor, then an MP from Thiruvananthapuram, who spoke brilliantly on Tagore, addressing around 200 children from across the city (I am yet to get a copy of the recording for Tharoor as promised by the NMML). UNESCO that year was celebrating 150 years of Tagore, and we'd added 100 years of Faiz as a cross border theme for the workshop. The whole setting was, to say the least, heavenly. Peacocks would walk in and out of our sessions, which we would conduct in the outdoors. Tagore's poems where taught and sung under the tree behind the house, next to the grove, just like Tagore would have liked it. The outstation students stayed in the guards outhouses with their guardians, the building which has now been converted into the Children's Centre.

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Following the success of the workshop, we went on to co-organise the travelling literature festival - Ghummakkad Narain, Kathakar - the international storytellers' festival, workshops on Museum Education, teacher training programmes and internships, among others.

The Children's Centre itself had successfully organised Bal Mela's and reached out to students in the North-East and other parts of the country. However this stint of good luck was to run out soon and with the change of guard the next year, the Children's Centre and its team was the first one to be hacked. The NMML went back to being a place for the intellectuals, the children and their numerous programs limited to the bare essential. It was therefore good to read in the Economic Times (September 2, 2015), that the current Chairman Lokesh Chandra's vision for the revamp would focus, "To attract visitors, especially children, (the place has to be made attractive, relevant to contemporary times)."

That done, we perhaps need a revamp of not just the NMML but most other museums as well, on not just their display and design but also their conceptualisation. We need also to revamp the strength and capacity of the staff and the quality outreach to visitors including children. We need to revamp and rethink the use of these museums and other such cultural spaces. Radically.

Forever as culture or education practitioners we have complained about how these visits to the museums are more arduous for children than informative. Though they are built as places which should challenge the mind, they become places where discipline comes foremost, "walk in a queue, don't make noise, don't touch the exhibits", perhaps making only the bus ride to the museum or the lunch in the lawns, the best part of the visit for students. Enhancement of knowledge be damned! What would make a difference to these museums more than infrastructural improvement will be a passionate staff or volunteers who can transform the student and visitor experience.

While the NMML is being revamped, the iconic IGNCA's Janpath road building and lawns are being provided to house another museum for two freedom fighters. While I am all for museums, I believe just constructing a building and putting in exhibits does not make a sustainable model, we need to revisit these places and make them come alive by getting the right experts to work for the visitors.

We also need to revisit the "Digital India" dream espoused by PM Modi and see how these museums are not limited to the capital of India but can be accessed through virtual visits by students and general public alike, across the country and the globe. Why then would we need to focus on revamping old museums but virtually construct many more?

A part of the second Peace workshop was organised in the Shastri Memorial and that's another building that hardly gets any visitors and not enough passionate staff to bring the story of Shastri ji alive. We were lucky to be taken around by Shastri ji's son himself who had a treasure trove of stories from his childhood about Shastri ji and made the whole experience worth remembering for a life-time. We need to record these stories from historians, family members, people associated with these leaders and digitally and virtually make them available so that the experiences to the museums, both while sitting at home or walking around are enriching.

The other point to note is that while Pandit Nehru's contribution to the nation and the world cannot be denied or demeaned, revamping an iconic museum might be seen as a political vendetta. It cannot be denied that there is a section of society that feels there has been an overuse of the Gandhi-Nehru surname with roads, hospitals, airports, schemes, etc. being named after them and they feel that some kind of re-distribution needs to be done where other leaders can also be accommodated and their glorious stories be told to the future generations.

A valid point indeed, and it is indeed better to re-distribute than go the USSR way where the statues of Lenin were broken and done away with. However revamping the NMML to a governance museum does not somehow convince one about accommodation. A better idea would have been to pick up the notes of the Children's Centre which many years ago was telling the story of the National Struggle and talking about peace. The NMML could therefore elaborate about the freedom struggle, could house other freedom fighters, it could talk about the story of the building of a nation, about Panchsheel. Tell stories, where Sardar Patel and his work could stand beside Nehru's and tell the story of a unified India, and stories about Mohammad Ali Jinnah and Nehru, for children to discuss the peace process between India and Pakistan. If Nehru and Patel could work together to build this nation, I wonder why can't the keepers of their vision rise above personal and ideological differences and work to further their vision and this country, its future and its role in the region.

But revamping would mean fetching answers to the perennial dilemma: If we can challenge ourselves? Can we allow these museums to become places of stimulation, to discuss and challenge our ways of thinking? As Professor Krishna Kumar questioned in his book, Battle for Peace, why the Rajghat was given a "national monuments" status rather than the Birla House where Gandhiji died. Was it because the Birla House raised questions about his death and his life and works as against the Rajghat which talked about a life that was beyond life and death? Are we then ready to revamp our museums to challenge our thinking, will we then revamp the Birla house to also host the version of Nathuram Ghodse and allow discussion about the lives and death of both? Are we really ready for a revamp that goes beyond petty politics and actually serves the nation by bringing up a society that is aware, alert and ready to question and accept differences?

I hope, some day we can move into that ideal direction.

Last updated: September 04, 2015 | 15:10
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