Kishwar Desai's 'The Partition Museum Project' is one of a kind in the world

Kishwar Desai talks to Amrita Tripathi for SheThePeople.TV about a project that she is most passionate about, her brainchild — The Partition Museum Project. “This is the first Partition museum of its kind in the world,” she says, speaking at an exhibition that is on in Delhi till May 26.

Kishwar Desai's 'The Partition Museum Project' is one of a kind in the world

Seventy years since Partition, Desai says it’s time to have a repository, possibly the only one of its kind in the world. What is incredible is that it’s not just Partition-era photographs and letters on display, but also the living archive that the project is transforming into, having recorded about 120 oral histories so far. The trust running the project has access to over 1000 such oral histories, thanks to university archives across the world.

The Trust welcomes contributions, documents, oral histories and also funds to keep it going. You will find more information here,

The Arts and Cultural Heritage Trust

“The idea was to try and document that entire period of Partition, which has been neglected for many years. It’s going to be 70 years since Partition happened…"

"We also wanted to create a resource centre where anything to do with Partition was available to not just families but also researchers, scholars, and anyone interested in the history of Partition could find it all in one place.”

“An important point is: We thought that this museum should be one of healing and compassion so that when people look at it, there is no blame game, but an understanding of what people went through, because it was the largest migration in history, and we should do something about recording all of that.”

REMEMBERING PARTITION

“Since it’s already 70 years since Partition, that means that anybody connected tot it who has any memories to share with us, would be in their late 70s, their 80s, 90s — we don’t know how long they are going to be with us. So rather than allow those memories to disappear, it’s very important to capture them now.”