Description
The paper looks at how the global, national and local intersect in postcolonial museum spaces. Historical (re)constructions in European museums have consciously and deftly sidestepped direct allusions to colonialism. The paper focuses on the travelling exhibition, ‘India and the World: A History in Nine Stories’, a collaborative project between the British Museum (BM) and two museums in India (a state-run institution, the National Museum, New Delhi, and an unaided organisation, CSMVS, Mumbai) in 2017-18 to commemorate 70 years of Indian independence. Using objects from BM’s collection exhibited in Delhi and Mumbai, the exhibition crafted a narrative of India’s ‘shared beginnings’ that situated Indian history within global, cosmopolitan frames. The paper argues that such a (mis)framing, which sidesteps the imperial history behind these acquisitions, typifies the invisibility of imperialism within IR. It draws on public history, which trains its gaze on how history is located, experienced and interpreted at distinct sites such as the battlefield, the museum and the border. In what ways can public history inform ongoing debates on museum politics within IR? In this regard, how have South Asian interventions influenced postcolonial IR? In making a case for decolonising the study of international relations, the paper examines the hitherto underexplored interface between public history and IR.
