Seventy-Five years ago, as India gained Independence from the rule of Great Britain, the Subcontinent was also partitioned into post-colonial nation-states. The Partition Museum was established in 2016 as a people’s museum, to document this historical event that resulted in forced mass migration and impacted people across regions and generations. True to its aim to become an archive of oral histories, documents, footage, memories and expressions, the Amritsar-based museum has called for submissions that explore and thereby unravel what freedom in post-colonial South Asia means to participants. Shreya UK, assistant project manager, tells us, “As the world’s first museum on the Partition of the Indian Subcontinent, we felt it was important for us to critically engage with what these 75 years mean for the everyday people of South Asia. How do they remember their past, navigate their present and aspire for the future? How do they understand, contextualise and actualise the idea of ‘Independence’ since 1947?”

Shreyashi Bagchi and Shreya UK