A museum of international standard in Patna, India: The predicament of loss and revival

Abstract

This essay locates the creation of the Bihar Museum within the context of emerging international and transnational aspirations, especially in the post-liberalization era, and the regional space of Bihar and its political economy. It argues that this positioning, where the museum is supposed to cater to both the regional and the transnational, or the local and the global, presents opportunities as well as challenges. In other words, the state's branding of its identity through the museum creates what James Clifford called the predicament of culture: a chronotopic imagination that speaks of both loss and revival. The essay posits that the new Bihar Museum creates an anticipation of a grand Bihari identity that seems imminent but is never fully realized.