Why science centres? An appraisal of the rhetoric and activities of the National Council of Science Museums, India

With the emergence of nationalism in the period of decolonisation after the Second World War, museums came to be recognised as powerful tools for radical socio-economic transformation (Ghose 1992; Venugopal 1995). The first two science museums in India came up, around 1953, in Pilani (in the Indian state of Rajasthan) and New Delhi, soon after the independence. In the former case,it was the initiative of the Birla Institute of Technology and Science to open a central museum on campus, and in the latter, it was the effort of the National Physical Laboratory to house a museum.1The first governmental attempt at defining India’s scientific heritage and to promote science education was the establishment of Birla Industrial and Technological Museum (BITM hereafter) in Calcutta in 1959, in the decade following India’s independence. As Saroj Ghose, erstwhile director of the National Council of Science Museums (NCSM) and president of the International Council of Museums (ICOM), explained in a personal interview, the need was felt by the central and state governments, and especially by the then Chief Minister of West Bengal, Dr Bidhan Chandra Roy, to preserve artefacts of historical significance in the newly formed state with diverse people. He was to a great degree influenced by the set-up at the Deutsches Museum which he personally visited and from this institution, he drew inspiration to form a similar one in India.