Fwd: The Living Past

[Guest guest]

gandhara , YMalaiya <ymalaiya wrote:

 

The Living Past

 

As people-to-people contact becomes freer, the National College of Art and

Lahore Museum are picking up various strands of their past to gain a sense of

‘the Punjab’, writes Mini Kapoor

 

 

 

He sat in defiance of municipal orders, astride the gun Zam-Zammah on her brick

platform opposite the old Ajaib-Gher - the Wonder House, as the Natives call the

Lahore Museum. Who hold the Zam-Zammah hold the Punjab.

Those opening lines from Rudyard Kipling’s Kim naturally come to mind,

unbidden, as one turns away from Zam-Zammah’s traffic island and into the

leafy complex holding the Lahore Museum and its sister institution, the National

College of Art. Once the two were also bound in administrative unity, with

Rudyard’s father, John Lockwood Kipling, serving as curator and principal,

respectively. Walking through the splendorous galleries of these Mughal-Gothic

buildings it is tempting to feel companionship with Rudyard’s ghost, to

imagine him gaining apprenticeship in the various strands of subcontinental

identity in the midst of these artefacts of antiquity.

 

 

Today, another exploration of identity is being situated on the Mall in Lahore.

As people-to-people contact becomes freer, the National College of Art (the

erstwhile Mayo College of Art) and Lahore Museum are picking up various strands

of their past to gain a sense of ‘‘the Punjab’’.

 

‘‘Since the borders have opened we have had so many visitors from

India,’’ says Sajida Vandal, principal of the Art College. For the college,

she says this burst of contact between the two Punjabs has very special

significance. She and her husband Pervaiz Vandal are working a biography of the

first ‘‘native’’ principal of the college, Bhai Ram Singh, who hailed

from Amritsar and also assisted in designing two other Lahore landmarks,

Aitchison College and the High Court. In fact, they had completed the book when

a visit to India brought them in greater touch with their subject. ‘‘We

managed to trace his family in India,’’ she says. ‘‘We met his

great-grandsons and found a wealth of things. We had, for instance, not seen a

drawing by him. And we went through his original correspondence on various

matters.’’

Discovery is a two-way process, and Vandal notes: ‘‘India also woke up to

the fact that there’s someone from that part who had been forgotten by

history.’’

Months after independence came, the artefacts of Lahore Museum were

partitioned, with India’s share now placed in the Government Museum in

ChandigarhThe visitor too peels the layers, and adds depth to Lahore’s

self-discovery. ‘‘NCA had bought a property in the walled city,’’ says

Vandal. ‘‘It was meant to be an open house but we acquired it without

knowing much about it. One day a gentleman arrived, saying it once belonged to

his family. Then he revisited with some photographs of his family, which are now

hanging there. One night he went around the property talking about his family.

There was such a huge response to him. People are curious about their roots,

about family folklore.’’

In the neighbouring museum, too, a reconnect is beginning. Months after

independence came, the artefacts of Lahore Museum were partitioned, with

India’s share now placed in the Government Museum in Chandigarh. ‘‘There

is official interaction between the two,’’ says Humera Alam, keeper of the

Gandhara and Indus collection. Currently that contact is mostly limited to

research projects, but the Lahore and Chandigarh collections did come together

for a Sikh exhibition at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum.

However, for a true understanding of the museums of Punjab, one needs to go all

the way back to Papa Kipling. Hussain Ahmad, research coordinator at NCA, is

working on a post-graduate thesis on how an administrative unit was presented as

a cultural entity by the colonial government. His period of inquiry is 1848 to

1900, a time when John Lockwood Kipling played a pioneering role in presenting

Punjab to itself, in †" adds Ahmad †" taking art out of the family, in

introducing western modes of categorisation, etc. How the museum came to called

Ajaib-Gher may perhaps tell the Indian and Pakistani successor provinces of

undivided Punjab more than just the story of this building.

 

http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=73731

 

 

 

Start your day with - make it your home page

 

--- End forwarded message ---