This volume brings together a range of essays that offer a new perspective on the dynamic history of the museum as a cultural institution in South Asia. It traces the museum from its origin as a tool of colonialism and adoption as a vehicle of sovereignty in the nationalist period, till its role in the present, as it reflects the fissured identities of the post-colonial period.

This work will prove indispensable to scholars, researchers as well as professionals in museums and museum studies and allied areas of public culture, art and art history, sociology, social anthropology, and modern South Asia.