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

Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Manav Sangrahalaya 277
for a closed circle. In Europe and in most colonial territories, museums and art
galleries began at a time when the people who controlled them had a contempt
for the masses’ (Hudson 1977: 7). Many of the museums developed in the western
world in the 18 th century had inherited this outlook, and remained as such for a
long. The ethnological museums ‘invented’ by European colonizers in the 19 th
century, in course of their expeditions to the rest of the world, had presented
their collection of objects as either curio-items, or as proof of emphasis that the
culture of colonized communities were ‘inferior’ or ‘peripheral’ to the technological
achievements of Europe.
The seventies of 20th century was a decade of crucial developments in the
history of museums and museology all over the world. This was the period when
independent countries, including India, began to settle down. New nationalism
and cultural identities began to emerge among the liberated countries. In the
newly independent countries, the role of museums began to firm-up during this
period as important cultural centers for asserting national and regional identities.
In the 1971 General Conference of the International Council of Museums
(ICOM) held in France (at Grenoble), an African delegate from Benin, made a
statement with considerable heat and vigour. ‘Museums’, he said, ‘were not
integrated into the contemporary world and formed no real part of it. They were
elitist, and of no use whatever to the majority of people; in all countries, they
were obsolete; and they ought to disappear so that the public money could be
spent to better purpose’. There were many takers of this passionate statement.
The conclusion reached at the 1971 ICOM Conference was that the social,
economic and cultural changes occurring in the world, particularly in many underprivileged
regions, constitute a challenge to museology. The future historians of
museums and museology may well decide that 1971 was the year in which it
became obvious that there would have to be fundamental changes in the philosophy
and aims of museums, and that the traditional attitudes were inadequate and
obsolete in demonstrating the contemporary relevance of museum. It was felt
that a museum should mould the consciousness of the communities it serves,
link together the past and present. However, there was no suggestions that existing
specialized museums should be closed down or abandoned, but, to meet the
social needs, it was felt that there should be a gradual change in the outlook of
curators and administrators, so that a steady progress towards ‘integrated museum’
might be ensured. Integrated museum approach meant a realization that it exists
to meet the needs of people, not merely to preserve what the French call the
patrimone, the national cultural heritage’. (Hudson 1977:15).
Birth of IGRMS: Initial Ideas and Concepts
The birth of ‘National Museum of Man’ in India was a sequel of these
developments. In the Calcutta session of the Indian Science Congress, held in
1970, Sachin Roy, President of the Anthropology and Archaeology Section,