Anyone who grew up in the Calcutta of the 70s and 80s – a time when it was possible not to go cross-eyed looking into cell phones all day – has paid at least a few visits to the Indian Museum, the massive landmark on Chowringhee Road, close to Park Street.

Among the rituals of visiting the Indian Museum were: saying hello to the mummy (which felt almost like a sick relative taking it easy on his deathbed); staring – always in disbelief – at the insane size of the Stegodon tusks; unwrapping a sandwich on the lawns; peering at the countless exhibits as if we understood something about them when we really didn’t; watching students from the Government College of Art & Craft next door sit on the floor sketching the sculptures; and generally feeling smug that we had this extraordinary place to come to, where ancient Indian civilisation justified all the hype.

Over the years, perhaps in the 90s, the Indian Museum became a paradox – it became a repository of great knowledge visited only by those who couldn’t appreciate any of it. Much of middle-class Calcutta, now christened a provincial-sounding ‘Kolkata’, began to shun the Indian Museum, mainly because day-trippers of a certain sort began practically invading the museum. They arrived in busloads, their children ran screaming all over the place, they took over the lawns with their extended lunch-and-nap sessions, rubbed their hands over the exhibits… As if depressed, the Indian Museum became off-colour. There were plenty of amazing specimens in the dusty showcases and the badly-lit galleries, but hardly any visitors – barring a few foreigners who trooped in – who would show them some respect.

The bicentenary celebrations of the Indian Museum have changed all that – to some extent. The museum, called ‘jadughar’ in Bengali, a word that roughly translates to the ‘house of magic’, got a Rs 100 crore facelift fund from the Ministry of Culture, and reopened earlier this year after being closed for almost six months. The ‘new’ Indian Museum is an impressive sight, even though work is still going on in several areas of the massive museum complex; construction material and equipment are left higgledy-piggledy at those spots.

As you enter, on the right are four contiguous archaeological galleries: Bharhut Gallery; Gandhara Gallery; Long Gallery; Coin Gallery. A visitor could spend a few hours at these four alone.

The Bharhut gallery is dominated by the massive remains of the railings and gateway of the Buddhist stupa discovered in 1873 from Bharhut, near Satna, in Madhya Pradesh. The Gandhara Gallery displays Buddha statues from 1st century BCE (‘Before Christian Era’, previously known as ‘Before Christ’) to 2nd-3rd CE (‘Christian Era’, previously known as ‘Anno Domini’). The Long Gallery displays sculptures from various ages and various parts of India and countries close to India, all arranged in chronological order. The display and lighting here have got a makeover, bringing out the fine details of the magnificent sculptures. The Coin Gallery is fascinating, displaying currency from pre-Christian times to those minted during the British rule in India and everything in between. As part of the renovation, all replica coins here have been replaced by original ones.

On the left of the main entrance is the vertebrate fossil room. Here, the dominating feature is the massive skull and tusks of the Stegodon ganesa, a predecessor of the modern elephant, found near Shimla, Himachal Pradesh. This animal lived in the Pliocene epoch, which spanned a time period 5.3 million to 1.6 million years ago from the present age. This room has not yet got the spit and polish of the sculpture galleries, but the exhibits are breathtaking. It’s infuriating, however, to see careless parents letting their children sit on a Stegodon tusk and eating munchies. If there’s one makeover the Indian Museum very urgently needs, it’s in visitor discipline.  

The Egypt room on the upper floor gets the biggest crowds, thanks to the mummy and its sarcophagus, while relics in glass cases all around the room bring to life this near-mythical millennia-old civilisation.

Rooms on this floor contain invaluable collections of mammals, amphibians, birds and insects, though some are still in the semi-darkness that characterised Indian Museum for so many years. The crush of rowdy visitors means that a clever spiral model representing the geological ages has been put in a corner in a glass case when it deserves a central position in the human evolution room.

The unruliness of the Indian Museum visitors – some of them tried to climb the four-lion Ashokan pillar placed on the staircase landing – is astonishing. A remedy will need much more than a fund infusion from the Centre. One leaves the Indian Museum hoping that this institution, which led the way 200 years ago for the museum movement in this country, brings about not only a physical makeover for itself but also a transformation in the way visitors encounter its precious collection.

 

The information
Address: Indian Museum, 27, Jawaharlal Nehru Road (Chowringhee Road), Park Street area, Kolkata-700016, Tel: +91-33-2286-1702/2286-1699, http://indianmuseumkolkata.org

Timings: 10am-5pm (March-Nov), 10am-4.30pm (Dec-Feb). Closed every Monday and on national public holidays.

Entry: Rs 10 (Indians), Rs 150 (foreigners)