Translating Museums: A Counterhistory of South Asian Museology (UCL Institute of Archaeology Critical Cultural Heritage Series) (Volume 9)

Shaila Bhatti's immersive study of the Lahore Museum in Pakistan is one of the first books to offer an in-depth historical and ethnographic analysis of a South Asian museum. Bhatti thus presents an alternative example of visitor experience and museum practice to that of the West, which has been the dominant museological model to date. This examination of the Lahore Museum's objects, staff, and visitors (past and present) provides an informative case study that reveals local perceptions and uses of museums in non-Western societies to be fraught with social, political, and cultural implications and appropriations. Through Lahore, Bhatti examines the history of exchange between Britian and South Asia and advances our current understanding of what constitutes postcolonial museum interpretation and its public. Cover 1 Half Title 2 Title Page 4 Copyright Page 5 Table of Contents 6 Dedication 10 List of Illustrations 12 Note on Translation and Transliteration 14 Abbreviations 16 Acknowledgments 18 Prologue 20 Lahore 20 The Lahore Museum: Ajaib Ghar 23 Comparative Museologies 27 Museological Narrative 29 1. Museums in Translation: The Birth of the Museum in Colonial India 34 The Ajaib Ghar 34 Museumisation of Colonial India: Making India Visible 52 A Central Museum for Punjab—A Baradari, an Exhibition, and a Jubilee 54 Baradari 55 An Exhibition 57 The Jubilee Institute 69 The Lahore Museum in Indian Hands 75 Imperial Museum Spirit and the Trinity of the Lahore Museum 78 2. Colonial Mementos to Postcolonial Imaginings: The Transformation of the Lahore Museum 84 A National Narrative for the Ajaib Ghar 84 Partition and Pakistan 87 Splitting Mementos 93 Curators/Caretakers 93 Ejaz Ali 95 Collections/Objects 98 The Chandigarh Connection 100 Trapped by the Colonial Shadow: Decolonising the Lahore Museum 102 The Islamic Gallery 105 The Independence Movement Gallery 107 The Postcolonial Prescriptive: Personalities and Ideologies 113 3. Museum Archons: The Habitual Discourse of the Lahore Museum 118 The Material Archive 118 The Lahore Museum’s Museology 120 The (Un)Socialised Museum: Habitual Discourse and Museopolitik 126 Global Consciousness 126 Pakistani Museums/Museology 128 Habitual Praxis and Discourse 132 Educating Heritage 136 Tours, Texts, Lectures, and Quizzes 139 Guided Tours 139 Texts 141 Lectures 141 Museum Quiz 142 Archival Allure 143 4. Visiting the Museum: Curiosity about the Ajaib Ghar 146 Wandering Visitors 147 Refusal of the Colonial Gaze 153 The Zoo of Objects 158 The Subjective Museum 161 Vernacularising the Lahore Museum 163 What Class of Visitors? 164 Pseudocurators 168 Familiar, Attractive, and Wondrous 169 History and Cultural Heritage, but Not My Identity 183 5. Nokta Nazar of the Lahore Museum’s ‘Audience’ 190 Attractions and the Museum Spirit 191 The Museum ‘Eye’ 195 South Asian Scopophilia 199 Darshan/Dekhna 199 Nazar 201 Corpothetics 204 Interocular 206 ‘Museums of Everyday Life’ 208 The Everyday: Television 209 The Imaginary: Cinema 212 The Novel: Bazaars 215 The Enduring: Saints’ Shrines 219 Have Museums Ever Been Modern? 225 Epilogue 228 Glossary 234 Notes 240 References 280 Index 292 About the Author 302 A Counterhistory of South Asian Museology