Ghosts of Future Nations, or The Uses of the Holocaust Museum Paradigm in India
This chapter discusses two twenty-first-century museum projects in India dedicated to the historical traumas of two different communities. The first of these, the Khalsa Heritage Complex, addresses the Sikh community and is a multimillion-dollar project whose high-tech displays are housed in spectacular “starchitecture.” The other, far more modest, project is sponsored by the Tibetan refugee community in their exile capital at Dharamsala. Though the two museums are vastly different in scale, architecture, and ambition, this chapter shows how both museums were inspired by Jewish Holocaust museums. But forms of Jewish Holocaust memorialization cannot simply be “cut” from one place and “pasted” in another, for local contexts and politics exert their own pushes and pulls on these projects. By comparing the differing fortunes of these two projects, this chapter discusses the circumstances in which a difficult memory becomes possible, or a difficult amnesia becomes a necessity. 
 
 
Keywords: 
 
exile Tibet; 
holocaust museum; 
JuBus ; 
Khalistan; 
Khalsa Heritage Complex; 
Moshe Safdie; 
Anandpur Sahib; 
Sikh martyrdom; 
Tibet Museum; 
Yad Vashem
A MUSEUM, A MEMORIAL, AND A MARTYR
In May 2013 a memorial was inaugurated within the Darbar Sahib complex. Ostensibly devoted to memorializing the carnage during Operation Bluestar, the inscription on the entrance suggests clearly that this is a memorial dedicated to the memory of the controversial Khalistani militant, Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale. The significance of this memorial lies in its location within a sacred space. The tussle for prestige between the sacred complex and the memorial indicates that it is not the sanctity of spaces that is at issue here -- it is their ability to secure memory and therefore their pre-eminence as mnemonic spaces that remains unresolved. The discord that preceded the unveiling of this memorial lays bare the politics that continue to haunt remembrance of the Khalistan movement and its key militant-martyr.
the making of modern saints: manufactured charisma and the Abu‐Hatseiras of Israel
In this article we analyze the sanctification of two figures in contemporary Israel. The two figures—Baba Sali and his son Baba Baruch—belong to the Abu-Hatseira family, which many Jews of North African origin perceive to possess lineage or clan charisma. We use the analytical metaphor of “manufactured” charisma in order to explore the ways in which such present-day means as the media (written and broadcast), industry, and various state structures have been used to create a particular public image of these men. We suggest that in order to understand their sanctification, one must also examine the North African idiom of saint worship as well as certain assumptions about legitimate public action that underlie contemporary Israeli culture. [charisma, lineage charisma, manufactured charisma, Israel, public culture]