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

288 Multiple Heritage: Role of Specialised Museums in India
and administrative institutions of the Govt. for providing local inputs into the
developmental plans.
Chakravarty’s notes were discussed in the Samiti meeting on 11 th June, 1997.
The members agreed that the objectives of the institution and the scope of its
activities were very much different, and much wider than those of a conventional
Museum. The members of the Samiti felt that the Museum should deepen its
initiatives in revitalizing and presenting the variety and plurality of local knowledge
systems and histories; in demonstrating the simultaneous harmony and diversity
of the Indian languages in creative expression; in stressing the multi-linear process
of bio-cultural evolution, away from the Euro-centric unilinear views; in
dissemination of the knowledge and information among students; in protecting
community rights, and in strengthening involvement of disadvantaged and
vulnerable sections of the society in the Museum programmes.
These resolutions paved the path for a major emphasis in spreading out the
Museum activities which were hitherto confined, more or less, to a configuration
of conventional museum, though not wanted as such. In this regard, the 9 th Five
Year Plan period (1997-2002) was a turning stage in the history of the IGRMS.
The ‘Outreach’ activities of the Museum surged out to different corners of the
country. The Government, by recognizing the role of IGRMS as a catalytic agent
for revitalizing various life enhancing community traditions, enhanced the financial
allocations of annual budgetary provisions considerably. The Museum established
direct contacts with different segments of folk and tribal communities in different
eco-climatic zones, and organized special thematic exhibitions on environmental
values and life enhancing traditions, and also interactive workshops to promote
the different traditional art forms and traditional knowledge systems of the
communities. The ‘Outreach’ activities of the Museum received further boost
during the 10 th Plan period (2002-07), in terms of increased financial support
from the government, to do more and more interactive community related
programmes. The Museum has continued to follow the twin-strategies of ‘taking
museum to communities and bringing communities to museum’, in order to translate the
new perception into action. Some of the significant achievements under this
programme were as follows.
Taking Museum to the Communities
To spread awareness on the importance of man-environment relations a new
traveling exhibition ‘Sacred Groves of India’ was created for circulation in different
parts of India. This exhibition depicts various methods adopted traditionally by
different communities in conserving bio-diversity. The exhibition travelled from
place to place from time to time. The Museum has simultaneously started intensive
field programmes among various community groups, to document, preserve, and
disseminate their eco-specific knowledge on management of natural resources.
A series of such interactions have generated rich data and artifacts, besides a