An ethnographic Museum: Arna-Jharna: The Desert Museum of Rajasthan is an attempt to re-imagine what a museum could be. Instead of being enclosed in a box, it celebrates the open spaces of the desert, including its flora and fauna, as part of a larger holistic exploration of the museum as a place of learning. Envisioned by the late Komal Kothari, one of India's leading folklorists and oral histori
ans, the Arna-Jharna Museum can be described as a process of interactive learning experiences linked to traditional knowledge systems. Concept: The Desert Museum Rajasthan embodies two principles in its philosophy and practice: One, the museum can be regarded as a laboratory of the ordinary, a testing ground of all those basic structures of life that facilitate the art of survival in the desert. The so-called 'traditional communities' holding on to skills and modes of knowledge from earlier times are also part of a dynamic, changing present. In order to test its principles in a rigorous and organic way, the Museum devotes the first three years of its existence to a single object: the broom. It is not the panoramic display of hundreds of brooms from the far corners of Rajasthan that is the priority here. Instead of ethnic spectacle, the focus is on the interrelationships of the broom to a wide variety of contexts: natural resources, local/local modes of broom making/the lives of broom makers from marginalized caste groups/the myths beliefs and symbols surrounding the broom/the economy of the broom. Why the Broom?: Inconspicuous, marginal, if not invisible, tucked away in corners, hidden under the bed, a broom would appear to be devoid of any value. Certainly, it is not an art object that one would associate with a museum. And yet, this is precisely the object that Komal Kothari highlighted in order to begin his investigation of the museum. What seems totally insignificant, if not disposable, is what holds the world together in its capacity to clean and order space. As we explore the world of the broom, we are duly humbled by the vistas of human and social knowledge that it is capable of revealing. First and foremost, the broom brings us into contact with grasses, plants, and other botanical resources. In rural Rajasthan, village women make their own brooms from whatever is available in their environment--leaves, twigs, shrubs, and waste material. The majority of the brooms in our exhibition focus on these improvised brooms, testifying to the ingenuity and creativity of local knowledge. In addition, we also focus on brooms made by professional broom-making communities that are sold in markets. There is no dearth of variety here in terms of shape, size, and material, which are closely related to the texture of particular surfaces. We have collected more than a hundred sixty brooms from different parts of Rajasthan. The number could grow. But the focus will not be on quantity, which would promote the ethos of collecting objects. We are more concerned with developing an understanding of the relationship between the biodiversity of the desert and the lives of people inhabiting and surviving its harsh, yet nurturing, environment.
