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| Installation In Amritsar Partition Museum |
Novelist, journalist Kishwar Desai, the driving force behind the first museum wholly dedicated to the
partition of India, told Hindustan Times “In the 50th year of Independence and Partition, I
started working on Manto’s stories for television. It was then that I
thought there should be a museum to Partition and it has taken me two
decades to translate this dream into reality,”.
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| Partition Museum, Amritsar |
The museum site in Amritsar is just 12 miles from the Wagah border
crossing with Pakistan, known for a daily military parade staged by
India’s border security force and the Pakistan Rangers.
The 17,000-square-foot space in a brick town hall building
donated by the Punjab government houses personal effects from families
affected by the forced migration, archival documents, and
never-before-seen works of art and photographs. It memorializes a bloody
chapter that began on August 17, 1947, when British officials announced
the hastily drawn border between the newly independent Hindu-majority
India and Muslim-majority Pakistan, leaving millions of people unsure
which country they were actually in.Some 20 millions were forced
to migrate across the border in either direction and uncounted thousands
died in clashes between Muslims and Hindus. Many more were raped or
beaten.
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| Mourning Enmasse By Satish Gujral |
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Urdu writer Saadat Hasan Manto is remembered as a brutally honest
chronicler of the violent divide. His family
home at Gali Vakilan in Amritsa was among the 40% houses burnt down in the
communal violence during Partition.As was Manto Acclaimed Indian painter, 91 year old
Satish Gujral's works are also influenced by the partition which he experienced first hand.Satish was born in Jhelum of undevided Punjab.His words resonated his artworks
when he said, “I spent eight months helping evacuate refugees along with my father,
and every hour, at every turn, I either saw a murder, or a rape, or some
other brutality.”
By establishing iself near the frontier
Partition Museum is reminding us the urgent need for reconciliation than ever before as opposed to the devides engineered by the politicians.
Source : Partition Museum Site, Wikipedia, Blouinartinfo
