Preserving Memory? The Partition Museum in Amritsar

This chapter studies the new Amritsar Partition Museum inaugurated in August 2017 and argues that the museum invokes a nationalist narrative of partition violence as a sacrifice for the greater good of the birth of a nation but that this nationalist framework has significant limitations. I reimagine the partition museum through a contemporary feminist lens that seeks to represent partition as a transnational trauma of multiple regional and linguistic communities in South Asia. Such a museum would more effectively nurture forms of friendship and camaraderie in a fractious South Asia.