Inside India’s ‘Museum of Conflict’ That Just Won a Major International Award

In 2013, Avni Sethi did a small research in her hometown. It was to know whether the Indian city of Ahmedabad in the state of Gujarat would like to have a museum to discuss conflicts. Many residents she spoke with said that the 2002 communal riots, which killed at least a thousand people in Gujarat, were an aberration. They insisted that Ahmedabad otherwise is a largely peaceful city, implying that this museum was irrelevant. These responses, however, fired her up even more to open Conflictorium — Museum of Conflict that year, unaware that what started off as a college project would win international acclaim one day. 

Two months ago, Sethi bagged the Jane Lombard Prize for Art and Social Justice for 2020-22, which is given by the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School to artists on their project’s long-term impact and boldness, and under which, she has been given a cash reward of $25,000 and an opportunity to host an exhibition in New York next year. 

Conflictorium is not your average museum where you go, browse through historical facts and artefacts, and forget about them soon after. Set in the 95-year-old Gool Lodge (a mansion that once belonged to Ahmedabad’s first trained hairstylist, Bachuben Nagarwala), the museum has been designed as a site to introspect on conflicts because acceptance is the first step towards resolution, or human refinement, as its website says.

As you walk in, you’re confronted with the first exhibit that sets the tone for the many uncomfortable questions that may pop up. Called “Conflict Timeline”, it lays bare the violent history of Gujarat that goes beyond the 2002 pogrom. “We start with 1960, when Gujarat was formed from a linguistic conflict with the Marathi-speaking Bombay Presidency,” the 31-year-old museum founder and Kathak dancer says. “You see, the violence ensued in the making of the state itself. Later, at the Golana Hatyakand of 1986, a couple of Dalit men were killed for protesting (against upper-caste landlords) by drinking from the village well.”

Incidentally, the museum is located in Mirzapur, an old and walled suburb of Ahmedabad that is in sharp conflict to its new and glitzy “other half”. Home to people from different faiths and communities, it is notified as a “disturbed area”. “Stone pelting or the deployment of Rapid Action Forces are common here,” Sethi informs, diffusing the Ahmedabad-is-a-peaceful-city claim. “Then every time a Rath Yatra or Muharram procession is taken out, streets are sealed.” 

As you inch forward, conversations move from Gujarat to India. At “Empathy Alley”, political personalities such as Jawaharlal Nehru and Muhammad Ali Jinnah stand as black cut-outs and you can hear their speeches on India's formation. At the “Moral Compass”, an image of BR Ambedkar overlooks the copy of Constitution of India, almost imploring you to read the vision of a new India.

At “The Memory Lab”, conflicts turn personal as people leave behind reminders of their struggles—mostly messages but also a bangle that might’ve broken during domestic violence, a coin or even cigarettes. On the floor above is a peepul (sacred fig) tree that is difficult to walk past casually. On “The Sorry Tree”, visitors tie notes of apology to lovers, family, the planet and even to themselves.

These permanent fixtures aside, Sethi and her team bring in artists, thinkers and visitors to engage in works based on conflicts that are often brushed aside. From caste, class and gender politics to displacement, forest rights and sexuality, these topics make up the art shows, book launches, workshops and film screenings that are organised here from time to time. They are currently running an exhibition titled Death and Disease. “We are getting used to social distancing due to the pandemic but the Indian society has been practising this in the form of untouchability forever,” Sethi says.

Sethi feels that an individual or a project is too small to resolve socio-cultural conflicts, but if her museum can inspire visitors to at least acknowledge the problem than live in denial, she'll be glad. And she should be.

Photographer Akash Dutt is one such visitor. “The museum has given me tools to accept my truth and stand up for it. These are the tools of reflection, dialogue, empathy and forgiveness,” the 24-year-old tells VICE. “I belong to the Other Backward Class (a term used by the Government of India to classify socially and educationally backward classes). I was four when my family shifted from the conflict-prone Mirzapur to the new part of Ahmedabad to give us a better life. But when we got there, our neighbours would ask us to move out, I would face discrimination in the local playground and so, I continued to hide my identity through the school. But when I read the suicide letter of Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula at the museum and the provision for equality in our Constitution, I got the confidence to talk about my lived experiences, even if they are unpopular opinions.”

As for 22-year-old Dhrupad Mehta, who grew up near the city of Baroda in Gujarat, his family was on the other end of the caste hierarchy. “Growing up, cleaners would come to our home looking for food and I was told to drop the food on their plate without touching it. I felt something was amiss but never fully questioned it. But reading Article 15 and 16 of the Constitution (which prohibits discrimination) at the museum, hit me hard. Now I try to look at all conflicts around me, such as the urban-poor divide, deeply,” says Mehta, a project coordinator with an NGO.

The museum may be a space to hold challenging conversations, but in a country that's becoming highly intolerant, can it be mistaken as an act of dissent? “We have received several threats to vandalise the museum,” Sethi shares. “Even state agencies have asked us why we host events such as a poetry session by an activist from Tibet, reading of a controversial book by an investigative journalist, and screening of a film on disappearances in Kashmir. But despite the intimidation, we have never cancelled our events.”

The resolve to keep the museum going, which has hosted over 450 events and 50,000 visitors from Gujarat and beyond for free, perhaps stems from her childhood. "I was 12 when the Gujarat riots happened. I could not understand why I wasn't allowed to go out and play for a week. Or, why my favourite shop that sold ribbons, paper and sparkly things was burning." Those questions stayed with her and turned into anger until they found a creative vent in the form of Conflictorium.

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