The objects themselves: restoring an identity to the collections

The historical account of the museum presented so far will serve to locate the unfolding evolution of the collection as touched upon periodically in the following chapters, in which the primary narrative is shaped essentially around the objects in the collection and what they reveal collectively about the nature and purpose of the India Museum. The account given here attempts to give a voice to the objects so that they may begin to make their own contribution to the debates that have proliferated in recent years concerning colonialism and museum culture, from which – despite forming a major point of