‘Compelled to Collect’: A sound historical account of how material heritage survived the Partition

Conversations on the Partition of 1947, its trauma, its memories and its legacy, especially through material culture, have gained momentum in the last decade or so (for instance, there are two Partition Museums in north India now). Mrinalini Venkateswaran’s Compelled to Collect: Museums and the Race for India’s National Past is timely, for it contributes to this conversation from yet another perspective.

The key questions addressed in this monograph are: how did objects and collections become essential to the nation-building during the Partition and the years following it? Who were the people who drove and participated in these processes? What context did they work in? How did they work? What motivated them and what were the results of their actions? The author particularly studies the collections in East Punjab, examining them not for their narrative value but for how they came into being. She traces the trajectory of important collections in East Punjab, including the government holdings (for example, the Government Museum and Art Gallery, Chandigarh), princely collections (such as those with the rulers of Patiala and Kapurthala).

Nationhood through art

In the first chapter, “Defining the Nation Through Contest and Collaboration,” the author notes that cultural issues between India and Pakistan were driven by a spirit...

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