The people’s history

Museum view. Pic/The Partition Museum

Seventy-Five years ago, as India gained Independence from the rule of Great Britain, the Subcontinent was also partitioned into post-colonial nation-states. The Partition Museum was established in 2016 as a people's museum, to document this historical event that resulted in forced mass migration and impacted people across regions and generations. True to its aim to become an archive of oral histories, documents, footage, memories and expressions, the Amritsar-based museum has called for submissions that explore and thereby unravel what freedom in post-colonial South Asia means to participants. Shreya UK, assistant project manager, tells us, "As the world's first museum on the Partition of the Indian Subcontinent, we felt it was important for us to critically engage with what these 75 years mean for the everyday people of South Asia. How do they remember their past, navigate their present and aspire for the future? How do they understand, contextualise and actualise the idea of ‘Independence' since 1947?"

Shreyashi Bagchi and Shreya UK

Shreyashi Bagchi, assistant curator, notes that the submission call is a part of their ongoing practice of making and furthering a people's museum, and building a platform for these voices and stories. The call was put out a month ago for Partition-related poems. With an overflow of entries, they've extended the deadline to June 24 and expanded the theme to ‘unravelling, questioning and reimagining freedom in post-colonial South Asia'. Submissions can take the form of stories, poems, essays, comics, photo essays and videos, and will be published on the museum's soon-to-be re-launched blog. They explain, "We realised there is a need for a space that enables creative and critical engagement with one's personal histories." And so the museum is currently working towards building a blog as such a space to explore and understand South Asian pasts, presents and futures. They're focused on the process of building the platform to ensure an engaging and collaborative project.

Speaking about the importance of the endeavour, Bagchi says, "The museum offers a platform for people to tell their stories in their language, the way they remember it, and the way they want the world to remember it. It makes history plural, and hence more dynamic, accessible, inclusive and democratic. This is why documenting, archiving, and preserving people's expressions and experiences is so crucial."

Last date: June 24
Log on to: @partitionmuseum or partitionmuseum.org
Email: social.partitionmuseum@gmail.com (for submissions)