ESSAY

Whose memory is it, anyway?

The Victoria Memorial Hall, Kolkata houses one of the largest museums in India. A ‘treasure trove’ though, it fails to attract serious viewers as the curatorial interventions are minimal and the current display looks anachronistic and redundant, says Oindrilla Maity.

The Victoria Memorial Hall has possibly made its appearance on the silver screen more than all the time the city of Calcutta has been featured in any film and has thereby become a public face of the city. With its remarkably vast Indo-European and curious ‘H’-shaped structure sprawling over 26 hectares of land, it continues to remind us of a race that has sustained the dominance of our colonial rulers for an uninterrupted span of 300 years. Conceived by Lord Curzon, the monolith is now a property of the Department of Culture, Government of India.

An introduction in its brochure reads:

The Victoria Memorial Hall that was opened in 1921 (by Lord Curzon) also serves as a museum where people could see before various exhibits in the form of pictures and statues of men who played a significant role in determining the course of pre independence India. While browsing through these exhibits, one will be able to trace the unrest that preceded Indian Independence and will be filled with pride to get a glimpse of their past especially in relation to the history of Calcutta. The Victoria Memorial Hall was conceived by Lord Curzon and he sure was a visionary at that as presently it is the finest and most prominent building and art museum of Calcutta, India, under the Department of Culture, Government of India. The Victoria Memorial, Kolkata (Calcutta) is the largest treasure trove in India, when it comes to a visual history of Calcutta. The Memorial houses a major collection of paintings, sculptures and manuscripts from the British period.”

Well, at this point, to be candid, I find it utterly confusing and contradictory when it comes to its collections and presentation. It might be the ‘largest treasure trove’ in Calcutta, but certainly not the concept of a sufficiently effective/equipped museum. Lack of proper planning and a reluctance to follow newer and more advanced methods have turned it out into a dumb and a fossilized chamber, which fails to communicate its purpose.

The pretext for building a memorial in the name of the Queen is a transparent one for a shrewd diplomat. But what appears strange is our being in a state of amnesia and triumphantly declaring the fact in a promotional write-up of the tourism department: “Huge amount of funds were required to build this stupendous monument but there were hindrance due to shortage of funds, eventually Lord Curzon raised money from the generous aristocrats and the people of India. The building turned out to be exquisitely beautiful being designed by Sir William Emerson. The then capital of India, and hence this was the only choice to be the destination for this marvelous creation.” This confirms that it was again the public money of our people that was poured into building a monument that would breath of the glory of a ruling class. A monument that would have in its exhibit the entire armory of the defeated barbarians that had been seized during the battle of Plassey to ensure to its subjects a glorious battle the rulers had fought against a race which is only ‘fit to be ruled’. A list of the gallery exhibits proves it even to a greater extent:

“The monument is the storehouse of memoirs associated with the Queen`s life as it has the three thousand five hundred articles that remind of the Queen Victoria. All these things are reminiscent of her lifestyle and time. Queen`s dresses are one of the special attractions in the museum. In the display are the Rosewood piano, the Whispering Gallery in the dome and numerous artillery weapons used in the Battle of Plassey. There are numerous galleries apart from the royal gallery, like the Kolkata Gallery displays the historical legacy of Kolkata. From the day when Job Charnock discovered Kolkata till the year 1911, the history is displayed.

The Nawab`s throne, medals awarded to Prince Dwarkanath Tagore by Queen Victoria, Ivory chair of Warren Hastings and the pistols used by him find a place in the gallery as display. The Victoria Memorial garden is spread on an area of 64 acres and is a very well maintained and much preferred place for spending time. Lord Redesdale and Sir David Prain designed the wonderful lush gardens. It abounds in Raj era statues like statues like the Queen with the star of India, of British luminaries like Lord Bentinck and Lord Ripon.”

True, then is the fact that our colonial rulers did some justice to eminent patrons such as Prince Dwarkanath Tagore. But what role does the art gallery have to play in such a process of glorification? It contains antique pieces of oleographs and portraitures in oil by the 19th c presses and artists. Does this, too, help in communicating the fact that “While browsing through these exhibits, one will be able to trace the unrest that preceded Indian Independence and will be filled with pride to get a glimpse of their past especially in relation to the history of Calcutta”?

Today the entire area skirted by a vast garden is more widely known for a lovers’ den and a fine picnic spot for visitors coming from the remote villages on weekends and public holidays. Well, we also have bands of foreigners too, coming to visit the sight in luxury coaches and become the soul point of interest to the others in the gallery, rather than the exhibits themselves. Today, when most galleries in the West fear that the labels attached to the exhibits might be too didactic for its spectators (this certainly points to the fact that they have a more receptive set of audience visiting regularly), museums in the city differ from them largely in the place that they hardly have the least possible data in the labels/ brochures associated with the objects. Although there have been newer additions in the recent times such as the Calcutta Gallery where attempts have been made to create convincing replica of a typical 19th c Calcutta street, certain details, (such as a weed coming out of a contemporary building, which is undoubtedly anachronistic an approach) seem too utopic to be believed in the context of its own time. Another fact, which largely became prominent after a recent visit two other companions from outside Calcutta proved even more problematic. The reproductions of the 19th c Bat-tala prints and typographs, Kalighat patas and other documents, no matter how sentimental I, being a Bengali might feel about them, failed to generate any sign of considerable interest in either of my friends, who I know to be extremely knowledgeable. This again adds to the dumbness of the museum, whereas, in the West, the problem has successfully been solved by the use of microphones and head phones, which act as live guides and needless to say, more verbal in communication.

The question, however, largely points to the fact – how far is the museum able to draw a more serious set of spectator? A lack of more enthusiastic/ knowledgeable spectators naturally does not impose any challenge to such institutions and this comprehensibly leads to one of the major causes of their deaths.