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Abstract

Museums serve various educational purposes and aim to impart knowledge, foster learning, and promote cultural understanding. The specific lessons taught by a museum depend on its focus, collection, and mission.
In post-independence India the museum played an important role in the construct of a national identity and to foreground the “ancient culture of a young state” (Singh, 2002). The nation state is a sum of various people and it has come to be recognised that a national museum in creating the national culture mainstreams certain cultural strands. This invariably leaves out of the national museum space local/minority cultures. With India being a nation of religious and ethnic diversity this leads to alternate histories and memories being materialized through museums here.
Punjab, a state in northern India, has a rich cultural and historical heritage that is reflected in its museums. There are around fifty museums, both Government and non-state, in Punjab. This paper looks at the narrative of nationalism, identity and past that are imagined in the museums here and examines the “politics of museums” in this border state that has seen turbulent periods in its distant and recent past. In Punjab the role Government and non-state museums play in the construct of the nation-state that is more inclusive of the distinct identity of the Sikh religious minority or not and the centering of Sikh identity in contemporary India are studied. The different types of government museums, central or state, their selection and significance for this border state and the museum’s role in and power to influence identity and culture is examined.