Aheli Moitra
In January 2014, the ‘Jaya He, GVK New Museum’ opened at Terminal 2 of Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport. The project aims to be a museum of ‘narratives’ that seek to ‘represent’ India.
Open only to folks who can afford a flight ticket, the art works created for the ‘New Museum’ form part of six thematic compositions by about 100 artists. The museum is awe inspiring in scale and dreamy sequences of the "country’s rich heritage” can pass passengers by in a jiffy unless otherwise planned. Couple of months back, a friend decided to make space to explore.
The photo he chose to send our way was of a Morung bed. Classified as ‘Furniture’ found in Naga territories along the Indo-Burmese border, timed at ‘early 19th century,’ the piece was restored by a scenographer who curated the museum. Much other Naga art and craft is used under the section ‘Thresholds of India’, sub section ‘India Silent Sentinels’, with Nagas becoming the only community to feature under ‘Northeast India’ (at least on its website).
The art works, whether shawl renditions or carved wood panels, have been recreated by non Naga artists. On the museum website, one description panel reads: “Historically a warrior people, the Nagas are a loosely related, fiercely independent group of tribes, frequently engaged in armed raids against each other who practiced head-hunting up until the end of the 19th century CE…”
Nowhere does it mention that much of the Naga artifact projected as ‘Indian heritage’ were burnt down by the Government of India’s armed forces since it invaded and occupied the Naga areas in 1956. According to Gen. (Retd.) Viyalie Metha, Kedahge of the Federal Government of Nagaland, on their 62nd Republic Day, more than 645 Naga villages were burnt to ashes. Some villages were burnt multiple times after people rebuilt them; even granaries, whose doors are now being cherished as ‘New Museum’ exhibits at the mega Indian airport, were not spared in order to starve the Naga people.
A colleague’s grandfather was known for his single wood carvings of a Morung bed, and even the village log drum whose sound, they say, could be heard from all neighbouring villages. During the ‘groupings’ (a torture method used by the Indian army) of Naga villages in 1950s and 60s, all of this was burnt down. Without any conglomerate sponsorship or elite aspirations under the garbled language of ‘contemporary arts’, grandfather’s work belonged in the ashes, signifying a method of colonization that sought to remove even the memory of independently inhabited spaces.
Alas the method did not work so well given the unprecedented celebration of Naga Republic Day in all its glory by Naga national groups on March 21-22, 2017.
Amidst all this, the GVK New Museum under the Indian national banner head of ‘Jaya He’ (Victory Forever) has co-opted Naga art works without any sensitivity or justice to the pillage, murder and destruction of the symbols that constitute the Naga body politic. This shameless loot of Naga identity to make a museum ‘representative’ of ‘India’, reducing the Naga people to warring tribal entities, is what Naga elders had forseen while embarking upon their journey to remain an independent self-determining community. There is nothing ‘new’ about it - decades of this discourse has produced violence and led to marginalisation of the Naga people.
It will be 70 years since humanity, respect and power have been denied to the Naga nation; the Naga areas are not the “silent sentinels of India,” they are the sentinels from where people are screaming hoarse at us to re-examine the nation of nations we refer to as the Indian Union. If contemporary museums want to represent India’s stories, at least they should present a truth that does not trap us in an unjust past but opens apolitical possibilities towards a just future. It should guide us where political will and ability have failed.
As a start, this needs honesty in presenting ‘narratives’ by situating them in their proper context. The nationalist-capitalist venture called the ‘Jaya He GVK New Museum’ fails miserably in that pertinent duty of the arts.
Discussion points may be sent to moitramail@yahoo.com
