School series 57

  The Museum That Came From Lahore

CHANDIGARH'S GOVERNMENT MUSEUM & ART GALLERY

A Collection Divided by Partition

There is something deeply moving about the Government Museum and Art Gallery, Chandigarh.

Many museums begin with a ruler's collection, a scholar's passion or an archaeological excavation. Chandigarh's museum has a different story. Part of its collection came to India because history itself had been divided.

Before Independence, Lahore was an important centre of art, archaeology and scholarship. Its museum housed a remarkable collection representing the artistic heritage of the Indian subcontinent.

Then came Partition in 1947.

The museum collections had to be divided between India and Pakistan. A substantial portion of the Indian share—particularly Gandharan sculptures and miniature paintings—was brought across the new border.

But the collection had no permanent home.

It travelled from Lahore to Amritsar, then to Shimla and Patiala, before finally reaching the newly created city of Chandigarh.

For years, these precious objects were essentially a collection without a proper home.

Finally, Chandigarh provided one.

The museum building was designed as part of the new Chandigarh conceived by Le Corbusier and was inaugurated in 1968.

So when we walk through its galleries today, we are not simply looking at sculptures and paintings.

We are looking at pieces of India's artistic inheritance that survived one of the greatest upheavals in modern history.

Among them are magnificent Gandharan sculptures, ancient Indian sculpture, Pahari and Rajasthani miniatures and other works of art.

And there is a particularly poignant thought:

The political map changed.

The borders changed.

But the art carried across that border remained a part of the cultural history of the same civilisation.

That is what makes Chandigarh's museum special.

It is, in a sense, a museum of memory.

Part 2: Gandhara — Where Indian Buddhism Met the Classical World