22 Aug 2017
New Punjab museum tells story of Partition
BY Alice Davis
It’s 70 years since the UK government dissolved the British Raj and created the independent nations of Pakistan and India. Now, for the first time, there is a museum where visitors can learn about what happened during Partition and learn about its legacy.
Partition, which was based on the division of the Bengal and the Punjab according to whether an area was predominantly Hindu or Muslim, was a huge and chaotic undertaking that upset the lives of many millions of people, caused mass migration, and remains controversial to this day.
The Partition Museum, which just launched in Amritsar in Punjab, 28km from the border with Pakistan, uses artefacts and memorabilia – such as photographs, archival materials and written documents – to tell the stories of those affected, many of whom experienced violent clashes which killed hundreds of thousands of people.
“If you look at any other country in the world, they've all memorialised the experiences that have defined and shaped them. Yet this event that has so deeply shaped not only our subcontinent but millions of individuals who were impacted has had no museum or memorial 70 years later,” Mallika Ahluwalia, CEO of the Partition Museum, told the Associated Press.
Ahluwalia led the creation of the museum, raising funds from private donations. The site, which is in the Town Hall, was provided by the state government.
The museum also includes multimedia experiences, including video interviews and oral histories with the survivors.
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