What’s missing in the new Humayun Museum of Mughal history? A key decade of India
An exhibit at the Humayun Museum
Rama Lakshmi | ThePrint
Media Source: The Print (India)
Date: 12 August 2024
Browsing through the newly opened Humayun Museum in New Delhi was surreal. It felt as though the last ten years hadn’t really happened in Indian politics. It lulls you into thinking that history is not the bitterly contested ground that it has come to be recently. The 16th century Mughal ruler, Humayun, was the son of Babur.…
Browsing through the newly opened Humayun Museum in New Delhi was surreal. It felt as though the last ten years hadn’t really happened in Indian politics. It lulls you into thinking that history is not the bitterly contested ground that it has come to be recently. The 16th century Mughal ruler, Humayun, was the son of Babur. And we know by now how dreaded and despised Babur’s name is in Indian public imagination. So, the Aga Khan Trust for Culture’s (AKTC) new museum in collaboration with the Archaeological Survey of India, and inaugurated by the Ministry of Culture, is truly a counter-intuitive curation. The museum is special because it is a storytelling museum and isn’t just dry and object-centric like the National Museum. It allows the visitor multiple entry points to the story of Humayun and the Mughals. It marshals miniature paintings, exquisite gilded manuscripts, artefacts, and archeological finds such as doorways, pieces of pillars, and screen windows. There is also an entire section devoted to the gilded copper finial that fell from Humayun’s tomb crown during a May 2014 thunderstorm. The story of how a new replica was made, and the old one restored, reflects a true labour of love by the Aga Khan Trust.