Politics of placement

Politics in a museum?Photo: APHabibul Haque Khondker

HOW we place exhibits in a museum is as tangled a problem as placing nationalist figures in history. In both situations politics more than anything else plays the decisive role. This is not surprising since the history of a nation and that of its national museums are interlinked. National museums are nothing more than the narratives of nationalism.

Immanuel Wallerstein, the noted sociologist, once defined history as the record of the past, not as it was but is. In other words, the past is always seen in the light of the present -- the present weighs heavily on representing the past. Much depends on who is doing the writing. There is an African proverb that says, and I paraphrase: if lions could write their history it surely wouldn't be the history of heroism. But history is written by the hunters not the hunted.

Recently, at Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum at London, these thoughts returned to me as I toured the exhibits and had my picture taken with the replicated celebrities. As I scrutinised the life-sized representations of the film, music, sports and political stars I realised that the artists who made them did a much better job with the so-called western icons than their non-western counterparts. For example, the image of Aishwarya Rai hardly looks like the real Aishwarya Rai. However, the replicas of Beyonce or Angelina Jolie are replaceable with the real stars. A similar difference is apparent when it comes to Shahrukh Khan versus Brad Pitt.

Inadequacy in artisanship is a minor flaw compared to the problem of the politics of placement, locating the icons in the space of the museum. Where these images stand and who they stand next to are decisions that entail politics. After passing the young Beatles having a good time, you see Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, Indira Gandhi, and Benazir Bhutto. Sadly, Bangabandhu along with Jinnah are missing; so are the South-East Asian heroes. Here, a faint attempt at gender balance seems to have overridden the representation of history. Political correctness has found a place in the arrangement of the museum as well.

Then you see George Bush standing to the right of Martin Luther King, and Fidel Castro to King's left. That's ok. Marxists are leftists and someone like George Bush was surely an apple in the eyes of right-wing politicians in America and elsewhere. Then all the "dictators" -- Mugabe, Saddam Hussein, Adolf Hitler, Yasser Arafat, etc -- are placed in a "dictator's corner."

Yasser Arafat was controversial, but a dictator he was probably not. Shortly before former Indian Prime Minister Mrs. Indira Gandhi's last visit to the United States in the early 1980s, Mr. Yasser Arafat was awarded an honorary doctorate by one of the Indian universities. Naturally, Mrs. Gandhi was quizzed by the American media. In a nationally televised network interview an American journalist asked quite predictably: “How could you justify awarding an honorary degree to a terrorist?

Mrs. Gandhi's reply is etched in my memory. In the confident manner of a distinguished statesman, she replied: "As far we are concerned Mr. Yasser Arafat is a nationalist leader fighting for his people." And this is exactly how millions of people around the world would evaluate Mr. Yasser Arafat. Would Madame Tussauds replace Yasser Arafat with George Bush? How will history evaluate Saddam Hussein? Or George Bush? Who wins the bad guy of the decade or century contest?

Saddam Hussein did many bad things for which he may deserve a place in the "hall of infamy." But what about comparing him with leaders of democracies such as George Bush junior? The legacy of an illegal war unleashed on Iraq, which continues to create tragedy after tragedy, may secure Bush junior a rightful place in that corner when a fuller evaluation of his presidency is made.

The exhibits at Madame Tussauds are not permanent. They are removed after a while and presumably placed in cold storage, only to be resurrected at more opportune moments. Does that not mirror historiography?

Habibul Haque Khondker is a Professor of Sociology at Zayed University, Abu Dhabi, UAE.