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Shri Mahavir Jain Aradhana Kendra
www.kobatirth.org
Acharya Shri Kailassagarsuri Gyanmandir
Museums in Gujarat - New Directions
Prof Dr. V. H. Bedekar *
AU states in India have their own departments of Archaeology, Archives and Muscums. Gujarat is no exception. But there is an important difference. It was the state of Gujarat which organised an independent Department of Museums in India. This revolutionized the museum development. It underlines the realization that museums are not mere collections or treasure houscs for passive enjoyment. Muscums have to play significant role as institutions for gencral, visual, interdisciplinary, visual cducation. Such cducation can be most effective as informal and lifc-long cducation. Hence muscums required special attention. A confined department saddled with work related to Archive Archacology and Museums would not casily do justice to the needs of modern muscums. This becomes obvious when we find that Archacology in itself demands vast funds to take care of monuments scattered all over Gujarat. Besides, after losing important ancient and pre-historical, protohistorical sites in Pakistan, it became urgent to investigate sites in Gujarat for discovering cvidence of links between prehistory and history. In short it was a wisc decision on the part of Icaders and administrators of Gujarat to sct up a separate Department of Muscums.
Gujarat can boast of relatively large number of museums. They represent all categories of muscums. Kutch Muscum is the oldest, established in 1877. Unfortunately it became a victim of great carthquake in January, 2001. Its devastation has taught many lessons to muscologists in planning appropriate buildings for muscums. Many museums were established before Independence. They represent the cultural world views of the dominant socially powerful communities. Many of them were based on the colonial models of muscums. This is evident in their collections of ethnology. Kutch Muscum was followed by Watson museum in Rajkot and (1888) Winchestor muscum in Surat in 1890, Baroda Muscum in 1894, Bartan Muscum, Bhavnagar in 1895, Junagadh Museum in 1901, Lady Wilson Museum, Dharampur in 1928, B.J. Medical College Muscum, Ahmedabad, in 1946, Jamnagar Museum of Antiquities, in 1946, Darbar Hall Museum in Junagadh in 1947. These pre-independence muscums in Gujarat tell the story of people and their preoccupations. Museums in those days were considered as treasure houses. They succeeded on focusing on the variety of workmanship and human skills. But they remained silent about the socio-economical situation of the individuals or groups who were continuing their traditional occupations. In very few displays there was reference to the context. Visitors were not shown with visual material or with audio recordings, the living cnvironments of the workers, or the processes. Only the finished end-products were on display. There were no interviews of the actual * Ex. Professor and Head, Dept. of Museology, M.S. University of Baroda, Baroda
ulos. Elulrais - elsel.-4d.-Bal., 2001.8
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