Trudeau visits Partition Museum at Amritsar

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, February 21

The Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, visited the world’s first Partition Museum at Town Hall, here on Wednesday, along with five Cabinet Ministers and 15 Members of Parliament.

The Prime Minister was accompanied by Ministers Harjit Sajjan, Navdeep Bains, Bardish Chagger, Kirsty Duncan, and Amarjeet Sohi. The Prime Minister was escorted by Mallika Ahluwalia, the CEO and Curator of the Partition Museum; Hardeep Singh Puri, Union Minister of State; Navjot Singh Sidhu, Minister of Local Government, Culture and Tourism; Gurjeet Singh Aujla, Member of Parliament, Amritsar and Karamjit Singh Rintu, Mayor of Amritsar.

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The Prime Minister spent about 25 minutes in the Partition Museum. He spent time in the Gallery of Migration hearing the stories and looking at the various objects carried by people as they fled their homes and moved across the newly drawn borders.

He also paused at the well installation in the Gallery of Divisions, dedicated to the women who were lost at the time of Partition. He spent the maximum time in the Gallery of Hope, which focuses on love and reconciliation. He left a note on the Tree of Hope writing that the Museum is “a poignant reminder that dividing people is never the answer; we must learn to live together and love our differences”.

Mallika Ahluwalia, CEO and Curator, Partition Museum, said, “We are very grateful to Prime Minister Trudeau for visiting the Partition Museum. As Canada has a vibrant Punjabi community, the Museum is very keen to record and include the stories of Punjabis settled there.”

Prime Minister Trudeau also shared his thoughts on the Partition Museum saying “to think of the lives torn apart, the violence and loss…We need to remember that it’s always easy to divide people. It’s much more difficult but it’s the only path to bring people together in love and understanding. We have to be ever vigilant that that is what we are putting into the world and that is the way we are building our future”.

The Canadian Prime Minister is on an eight-day visit to India. Earlier in the day, he paid obeisance at the Golden Temple in Amritsar.

The Partition Museum is the world’s first Museum dedicated to the Partition of the Indian sub-continent in 1947. The Museum is dedicated to all those millions impacted in the largest migration in human history and is a space of reconciliation.

The museum uses multimedia exhibits, including oral histories, archival footage, historical newspapers, official files, as well as personal documents and objects carried by individuals and families who lived through the Partition to tell the story. It also aims to become a comprehensive archive on the Partition. The museum opened with a curtain raiser exhibition in October 2016 and opened all its galleries to the public on August 17, 2017.

The Partition Museum is located in Town Hall, Amritsar, a short walk from the Golden Temple.