Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Manav Sangrahalaya (National ... - IGRMS

Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Manav Sangrahalaya 287
movement within and between these themes. This conceptual approach was
adopted by the Executive Council and S. Navlakha was engaged to detail this
approach into a report for discussion.
Navlakha’s report (1994) stressed the need for presentation of multiple
perspectives eschewing a privileged epistemology including non-privileged voices;
to describe not only past but also present; not only others, but also ourselves; to
decentralize, destabilize and decolonize essentialist and reductionist narratives of
culture; to transcend cognitive and non-cognitive fact value distinctions, and to
offer a dialogical, relativist, open ended view of culture. The report warned against
mixing culture and biology in the depiction of evolution, and suggested description
of different culture-scapes, based on literate and pre-literate modes of subsistence,
as synchronic rather than chronologically fixed points. The report also stressed
the need for putting the historic periods, specially the last two three centuries,
and mostly, the 20 th century in the context of intellectual history of mankind,
with a focus on modernity, ancient literary civilization (India), oral traditions,
architecture, settlement and livelihood styles, and relationships with environment,
on community structure, socialization and distribution patterns and on aesthetic
value and creative expression.
A comment on this report was about the difficulty of translating abstract
ideas into three dimensional realities and about the need to carryout the task as
an in-house exercise. The INC-ICOM National Chapter meet held in the Museum
in 1994 together with several members of the Governing Committee suggested
updating the concept and programme content, and the 18 th meeting of the
Executive Council desired the Director, IGRMS, K.K. Chakravarty, to detail the
ideas of the concept and display.
Chakravarty, in his initial notes pointed out that until then (1994) the
discussions on the concept was confined to the Museum’s task of indoor and
outdoor exhibitions, and not explored the ways and means whereby the major
objectives of the RMS Samiti to be achieved, apart from the exhibitions. He
stressed the need to look into tangible and intangible elements of traditional
knowledge systems including solution for problems of health, nutrition, man’s
relation with plants and animal, and to take exhibitions and salvage initiatives to
remote parts of the country. The IGRMS should widen its spectrum of activities
to demonstrate simultaneous validity of various cultures; the aesthetic quality of
local resource based traditional architecture, technologies, arts, crafts and the ecofriendly
conservation practices cherished and transmitted by the communities.
The IGRMS, through its display and field programmes, should caution the people
against unprecedented destruction of ecology. It should propagate the ability of
folk and tribal communities to recognize, codify, classify, present and use their
knowledge in harvesting the natural resources; their instinct to respect the tone
and rhythm of nature and their perception of community rights and obligations.
It should play a catalyst role between rural communities and the different academic