I is for The Indian Museum

Hi folks!

The first time I stepped into the Indian Museum, I was spellbound by the grandeur and variety. It was as if it contained the entirety of human history and evolution, especially the Indian kind, within its walls. I spent several hours exploring its various halls and exhibits. When I finally left because my legs couldn’t move one more step. I have mentioned in a previous post that you can spend the whole day here, and I stand by that claim. The Indian Museum is an experience you should embrace at least once in a lifetime, if not more!

Established in 1814 by the Asiatic Society of Bengal, it is the largest and oldest museum in Asia-Pacific. It is also the ninth-oldest museum in the world! With its grand Italian-inspired architecture with massive white pillars and high ceilings, the building itself would be worth a visit if the exhibits inside didn’t outshine it in magnificence. One of the first things I ever encountered there was the Torana or gateway of the Bharhut Stupa. Gazing at the magnificent architecture of the Torana and segments of the wall, my mouth literally fell open. It was as if I’d walked into 2^nd Century BCE India!

Being a history fan, I always make a beeline for the Archaeological marvels housed in the Indian Museum whenever I visit. This includes, apart from the Bharhut Gallery mentioned above, the Gandhara Gallery and exhibits from the Indus Civilisation, including a Unicorn Seal. Stunning sculptures from temples, Inscriptions of rulers whose names we’ve read in history books, as well as art and sculpture from other South Asian countries are mesmerising. You can’t help feeling a sense of great pride in your country’s past, it’s heritage.

These days, the Indian Museum also contains an Egyptian gallery. Along with other beautiful and significant Ancient Egyptian artefacts, it also houses a 4000-year-old Egyptian Mummy! How thrilling is that! It is only one of six mummies in India and the first to be displayed in the country. To prevent damage and decay, this ancient mummy is kept in a specially insulated case. Talk about Atithidevo Bhava! As a fan of the Mummy movies and Egyptian mythology and history, I absolutely love paying a visit to this long-term Egyptian expat.

Another of my favourite galleries is the Natural History Gallery, as unlikely as that might seem. The massive whale skeleton, Blue Whale lower jaw, various fossils including a dinosaur egg, woolly mammoth tusks, and numerous other skeletons and taxidermied specimens are an education in the power of evolution. You are forced to wonder about your place in this world full of almost infinite variety and constant change. It also makes you wonder why humans feel like they own the world when we are just a blip in the evolutionary history of the planet!

Besides these galleries, the Indian Museum also hosts an Industrial Botany Gallery, a Bronze Gallery that contains a spectacular selection of bronze artefacts from the distant past, a Numismatics Gallery (Coins, for those who are unfamiliar with the term) with more than 50,000 specimens from across South Asia, an Insect Gallery, which is not for the faint of heart, a Birds and Fish Gallery, which I generally avoid due to my Ornithophobia, a Textiles Gallery, a fascinating Masks Gallery, and many more. As I’ve said before, you can spend the whole day here and still feel like there’s much left to see.

The Bengali name for the Indian Museum (or any museum) is Jaadughar, which means “House of Magic”. I like that name because it hints at the power that museums have of transporting us beyond the current time and space into a world that is simultaneously familiar and strange. I know that it is fashionable to consider museums as “boring” but the truth is that they are the repository of our identity as a species, as a culture, and as a nation. I am fascinated by the stories their exhibits tell and the stories that remain as subtext, something that I would love to explore in one of the later books of my City of Kaali series.

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This post is a part of BlogchatterA2Z Challenge 2026