Partition revisited: In Delhi, a new museum recalls haunting tales of India’s tragic past

“This tarnished light, this ashen dawn, this is not the dawn which we awaited…”

These lines from renowned poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s Subh-e-Azadi (The Dawn of Freedom) exemplify the mood of the newly-opened Partition Museum at the Dara Shikoh Library in Delhi.

Inaugurated by Delhi Education Minister Atishi within the Ambedkar University campus in Kashmere Gate on May 19 this year, the museum, according to Kishwar Desai, the chairperson of The Arts and Cultural Heritage Trust, is being referred to as the “people’s museum”.

“It is made through the memories, memorabilia that they carried across the borders,” said Desai, as she went on to describe the idea of the Museum as “a long-time dream”.

The museum, being people-centric, uses oral, visual and the aural medium to convey the stories of millions who crossed the border at the time of Partition, in 1947. Divided into seven galleries, it brings together personal experiences of eye-witnesses and survivors and “honours the resilience of those who lived through it”, according to the information available on display for the visitors.

Vineet Sharma, a resident of Karol Bagh, who visited the museum Tuesday, said, “Both my parents’ grandfathers were from Multan, which is in Pakistan right now, and both of them speak Multani fluently. I wonder how my grandfathers would feel when they visit the museum. They had actually seen the Partition.”

Desai pointed out the aim of the museum to be similar to that of the Holocaust memorial located in Germany, 9/11 memorial in the United States and the Apartheid museum in South Africa. “Our mission is to show the impact of the Partition on the ordinary people whom we have mostly forgotten, just like the Holocaust museum talks about (the Jewish victims),” Desai told The Indian Express.

Desai also shared that when one looks at their people’s or family’s histories, one finds them to be largely neglected and ignored, while remembering the well-known freedom fighters and politicians of the period. Terming the migration at the time to be a “massive event”, she claimed, “Lakhs of people, estimates say 20 lakhs, but even that is a gross underestimation, many more died and were lost than we even count today. And definitely more than 20 lakhs were forced to migrate.”

“It feels like people were treated just like Jews were, at the time of Holocaust in Germany,” said Sharma, an electronics engineer by profession, as he explored the galleries depicting stories of violence, displacement and trauma from the time.

An installation which celebrates material and intangible memories — an abstract mapping of real and liminal spaces, by Debashish Mukherjee, at the Partition Museum. (Express Photo by Chitral Khambhati)

Interviews of survivors, where they orally, share their narratives about the time — communal harmony before the Partition was announced, the mayhem and chaos following the announcement and the way they survived through these years on both sides of the India-Pakistan border, have been put up for visitors over television screens across the museum.

While changes in Delhi’s demographics through the time of Partition dominate the stories that the museum tells, it also offers distinct narratives of the event as experienced by different sections of the society, such as those faced by the Dalits.

“We wanted to have authentic documentation. There is a certain realism with which people talk about their histories, because they want people to know, after 75 years of silence, what they went through, and how much they suffered,” Desai added.

A visitor experiences the VR film, Child of Empire, at the Partition Museum, Delhi. (Express Photo by Chitral Khambhati)

Of the seven galleries, Rebuilding Relationships, built in collaboration with Project Dastaan, provides its visitors with a virtual-reality immersive experience. Project Dastaan aims at reconnecting the witnesses of the Partition to their childhood homes. One of its initiatives at the museum, Child of Empire, calls for visitors to experience the journey of two men — an Indian Hindu and a Pakistani Muslim, who migrated to the opposite sides, sharing their memories of the time, over a board game.

“A visitor experiences the film using the headset and the handsets, which act as interactive elements within the film,” described Himanshi, the Assistant Creative Producer at the museum. Experienced through the eyes of a seven-year-old child, the virtual reality offers a narrative of death, disease, loss and destruction during the time.

The galleries take visitors through distinct experiences of people from the time of Partition. While the sound of the train engine conveys the horror stories of trains packed with dead and dying, the refugee tent suggests the difficulties people faced — “relentless monsoon, diseases like cholera, the cold of winter, and lack of nutritious food and clean water” — while rebuilding their lives on both sides of the border.

The refugee tent suggests the difficulties people faced — “relentless monsoon, diseases like cholera, the cold of winter, and lack of nutritious food and clean water.” (Express Photo by Chitral Khambhati)

Before setting its footsteps in Delhi, the Partition Museum was inaugurated in Amritsar in 2017. “That marked the 70th anniversary of India’s independence and Partition,” described Desai. “To mark its 75th year, this building was offered to us under the ‘Adopt a Heritage’ scheme’,” she added.

Within the scheme, the heritage, natural and ancient tourist sites are adapted for reuse by upgrading and maintaining the facility.

“We had to do the illumination, gardens, maintenance and look after the entire structure, once the basic restoration was done.”

“Bureaucrat Manisha Saxena, who is now DG Tourism, suggested that just like the museum in Amritsar, there should be a museum here in Delhi as well,” Desai highlighted.

“There is one in Amritsar, but many are not aware of its existence, so I would suggest others also come here and understand how the British divided and ruled our country,” added Sharma.