just a week ago, India Celebrated 75th year of independence but people often miss that independence and partition happened with each other, they are two sides of the same coin. The Partition had deeply affected hundreds and thousands of people, an effect that resonates to this day.
And, to commemorate the horrors of Partition, Kolkata will witness the arrival of the first virtual Partition Museum in the world on 24th August.
The Virtual Kolkata Partition Museum (V-KPM) is a collaborative project between the Kolkata Partition Museum Trust and Architecture Urbanism Research (AUR), an architecture firm. Both KPMT and AUR acknowledge the Partition Museum of 1947 in bringing together Dr. Rituparna Roy and Aurgho Jyoti through this online program.
Dr. Rituparna Roy, managing trustee of KPMT and a literary scholar of Partition, first thought of archiving the memories of Partition in 2007, when he visited the Peter Eisenman-designed Holocaust Memorial in Berlin. did.
She says, “Walking through those establishments and in the past I felt that there is no public monument of Partition. But, after another decade passed in 2016, I felt a strong desire to do it and first pitched the idea to an academic audience in Kolkata during a seminar.
Historians and litterateurs have always felt a strong Punjab bias when it comes to the study of Partition and many associate the horrors of Partition more with Punjab than Bengal, although over time such a thought process has slowed down. – Developing slowly. However, it must be remembered that in the context of partition, Bengal had a different trajectory than Punjab and was quite different even after that.
The Kolkata Partition Museum Trust with AUR will try to focus primarily on the Bengal side of the story, highlighting the experiences of Partition as well as its aftermath, but at the same time highlighting the similarities between West Bengal and Bangladesh. Will do Familiar living heritage.
Talking about how the process has progressed for the team, Dr Roy says, “It has been challenging and exciting, challenging as the museum work has been done virtually by a team as we were placed in different cities and continents. Yes, work can only be long distance.”
The great team working behind this project includes scholars like historian Anindita Ghoshal, cinematographer and architect Sayantan Maitra, Asmita Ray, Swagatlakshmi Saha and a few others. Professor Ananya Jahanara Kabir and oral historian and author of ‘The Footprints of Partition: Narratives of Four Generations of Pakistanis and Indians’, Anam Zakaria acted as content consultant for the team.
“During the pandemic, we were made to think about virtual resources, we didn’t know when we would come out of it and even if we would have land or money or space for a physical museum. We want a physical museum, but it will take time as we are a citizen’s initiative and we are growing organically,” mentions Rituparna.
He further added, “We are very excited and happy with the response we are getting. People have been very impressed with this idea of virtual museum.”
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