Kolkata to get virtual Partition museum

KOLKATA: Soon, Kolkata will get a Partition museum, albeit a virtual one for now, showcasing the art and literature that reflects the bond between people across the barbed wires and the trauma the land endured.

Partition scholar Rituparna Roy, who is spearheading the Kolkata Partition Museum Project (KPMP), said the aim to build the museum is to memorialise eastern India's including Bengal' experience, with Partition as well as its aftermath and afterlives, in the most comprehensive manner possible.

"With this project, we are also equally trying to change the discourse around Partition. Because, by Partition, we understand rupture, violence and post-migration trauma, among others. It has continued for seven decades and more, and we understand why it has been so. But, it is also time to come out of it," she said.

There is also another aspect of Partition, which is continuity. Given the deeply divisive times that we live in, we want to remember that as well," she added.Roy noted that West Bengal and Bangladesh have very different post-colonial trajectories."We are not denying that Partition happened, and there were reasons for that, there were fault-lines, for which it occurred. We are not saying that we will reunite like Germany. We will remember Partition, and put forward all the theories there are regarding it," she said.