A Jodhpur museum with a formidable collection of brooms that tells the story of gender, class and caste; another in Bengaluru that showcases 400 human brains, some of which you can touch (on request); and a ‘Conflictorium’ in Ahmedabad that explores the history of conflict in Gujarat and has ‘The Sorry Tree’ on whose branches you can tie apology notes. India’s museums — big or small, eccentric or iconic, unexplored or popular — have now been brought together under a digital umbrella by Sahapedia, an online resource on heritage, culture and the arts.
Conflictorium in Ahmedabad.
The Mapping Museums Project began with a repertoire of 100 museums last year and today includes over 250 museums on its website museumsofindia.org. Another 600 will join in the course of this year.
Heritage Transport Museum, Gurgaon.
On a cool winter morning, Sahapedia’s South Delhi office is abuzz as the team discusses its plans to redesign its website into something easier to navigate and with more complex features.
Sahapedia’s founder and executive director Sudha Gopalakrishnan tells me how it all began. “We were struck by the fact that there are so many museums that are not known in India.” So a well-oiled network of museum professionals and researchers fanned out across more than 20 cities to visit and document as many as they could.
Friendly portal
For Sahapedia’s founding member and secretary, Vaibhav Chauhan, it was born “out of personal frustration.” Says Chauhan: “I have a three-year-old daughter and I take her to museums. There is hardly any information about what different museums have.”
HAL Aerospace Museum, Bengaluru.
The idea started off as an app before it grew into something much bigger. “I launched an app collating the museums in Delhi. However, as it had limitations of scale, we turned our focus to a website.” The plan is to grow organically, he says, and in its third phase, the portal could become transactional as well, with services like ticket bookings and even an e-museum shop. As of now, the cheerful, neatly designed website gives you a city-wise listing of museums, photogalleries, information on timings, and a helpful events calender that includes walks and exhibitions.
Sulabh International Museum of Toilets, New Delhi.
So I learn that the Auto World Vintage Car Museum in Ahmedabad has India’s largest collection of vintage cars, with more than a hundred that include Rolls-Royces, Mercedes, Bentleys and Chryslers. You can even hop in for a ride for ₹500. Housed in a quaint, crumbling palace on the outskirts of Jaipur is the Turban Museum where you are told the difference between the turbans worn by a Sodha Rajput groom and a Kalbelia groom from the snake-charmer community. The colourful collection has been sourced from across Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat, and includes factoids about how the material used changes with seasons, festivals, communities and family occasions: a phalguniya is worn in spring and the bright ‘chunri’ pattern at marriages or births. In Shillong, entomologist Dr. S. Sarkar has collected his iridescent specimens of butterflies and beetles from across the world at the Wankhar Entomology Museum, now managed by his daughter. Gurgaon may be overrun with malls, but also has the Vintage Camera Museum and the Heritage Transport Museum. Delhi, meanwhile, has no dearth of museums, and among its quaintest is the Kitchen Museum at the Rashtrapati Bhavan museum complex, with silver cutlery, crystal glassware, fruit stands, and crockery and furniture designed by English architect Edwin Lutyens.
Wankhar Entomology Museum, Shillong.
Engaging people
Given the dismal state of some of our State-run museums, museumsofindia.org could well be the shot in the arm they need, bringing the idea of these spaces back into popular imagination. “Very rarely do we think of them as places for public engagement. We think of them as places for dead objects. So helping people discover these resources has been fantastic,” says Sahapedia’s programmes’ director, Neha Paliwal. The idea behind the project was also to help smaller museums and private collections get more visitors. “It’s also a space for museum professionals to feel there is a network where they can support each other and exchange ideas.”
One of the challenges, says project coordinator Lakshmy Venkatesh, is convincing some of the larger museums to see the benefits of being on a digital platform and getting the necessary permissions to document their space on the website. “Some of them fear that if we put out their details and photographs, people won’t bother to visit them.”
But Sahapedia’s closely-knit team of over 40 single-minded heritage professionals is not deterred by such hurdles. “We are brazen when we feel something needs to be done. We stick our neck out,” says Sudha.
Neha Bhatt is a freelance journalist, lover of cakes, chai, bookshops and good yarns.
