Amritsar: Closure of Partition Museum on Monday, public holidays riles tourists

Neeraj Bagga

Amritsar, February 5

Tourists are irked at the closure of the Partition Museum on weekdays and public holidays when there is maximum footfall of visitors. Sanjib Biswas, a tourist from West Bengal, said he and his entire family were dismayed at the museum being closed on Monday on account of the weekly off at the gallery. He said they halted at the holy city on their way to Jammu and Kashmir to pay obeisance at the Golden Temple. After learning that both Jallianwala Bagh and the Partition Museum were situated in the vicinity of the holiest Sikh shrine, they visited the historical garden. Later, on reaching the museum, they found it closed owing to the weekly off.

Gesturing at a large number of tourists in the open courtyard of the museum, also known as the Town Hall building, he said all of them would return without going through the repository of stories, materials and documents related to the Post-partition riots that followed the division of the British India into two independent dominions.

He said his relatives, who had been in the holy city earlier, specifically told him to visit the museum as it shared the first-hand memories of those people whose lives were ravaged by the Partition. “My elders told me that similar gory tales were heard in Bengal during the Partition,” he said.

A local resident Anil Vinayak, who recently took his relatives to the museum, was surprised that it was closed on Monday. He said caretakers of important historical sites should not close such venues on public holidays when the footfall of visitors could likely increase. The administration should take notice and deploy staff on holidays at the museum so as not to deprive visitors and tourists from having a glimpse of the past historical events.

Rajwinder Kaur, manager of the museum said, “There is standard operating procedure for holidays at all museums in India. As per the procedure, such establishments remain closed once in a week on Monday and their employees avail three national holidays in a year. We, at the Partition Museum, are complying with these norms. Moreover, we have limited employees to look after the infrastructure at the museum.”