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
Curating divinity: Religious souvenirs, shopkeepers and bazaar curation
This paper explores the universe of souvenirs of Sikh Gurus and martyrs available in the bazaars around Sikhism’s most sacred shrine, the Darbar Sahib in Amritsar. Rather like objects in museum exhibitions, souvenir art actively produces ideas of divinity and martyrdom. The deliberate arrangements of Guru and martyr souvenirs in shopwindows demonstrate the ‘sense’ of curation of ordinary shopkeepers in the bazaar. Shop displays, I argue, resemble the care of sacred art by museum curators. But there is more to shop displays than mere imitation. I analyse the vis-à-vis between the souvenir displays of two modern martyrs, Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, the militant leader of separatist Khalistan, and Bhagat Singh, the nationalist hero, that express bazaar understandings of martyr souvenirs as affective objects, possessing both ritual and political value. The curated displays in museums and shopwindows are critical in creating a conscious, purposive aura around modern Sikh martyrdom.
International Law, Museums and the Return of Cultural Objects
Introduction 1. The state and national culture in the early nineteenth century 2. International law, international exhibitions in the late nineteenth century 3. Dismantling empires and post-World War I peace treaties 4. Colonised peoples and the League of Nations 5. Restitution in the mid-twentieth century 6. Genocide, human rights and colonised peoples during the Cold War 7. Decolonisation without restitution 8. Indigenous peoples and restitution as a process 9. Indigenous peoples, states and reconciliation Conclusion.