Disclaimer: It is a long write-up.
I cannot boast of being knowledgeable in matters of museums, but going by my cramped, claustrophobic, almost stifling experience of the Louvre and the British Museum, Bihar Museum provides visitors, who are overwhelmingly Indian, with a sense of repose and tranquillity. It offers a vast expanse of pleasantly chilled air-conditioned space where one can tarry a while before the exhibits or spend an hour without being jostled by the crowd. The Louvre gives you the feeling of having emerged from a vigorous session of contact sport. Bihar Museum, with its low crowd density and massive physical footprint per visitor, is simply sybaritic in splendour and comfort compared to the overcrowded, sweaty, grimy but better-known museums.
It hosts a very civilised average of around 2,000 visitors per day, according to the museum's own estimate [1]. The museum sprawls across 13.5 acres of prime property and houses around 30,000 artefacts, largely transferred from Patna Museum, compared to nearly 480,000 objects in the Louvre's collection (ranked 31, yes, 31!), more than 1.5 million masterworks in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (ranked 10), and a staggering eight million objects in the British Museum's collection.
In order to ease the pressure and ensure optimal working conditions for museum staff, in June 2022 the Musée du Louvre management decided to cap daily admissions at 30,000 [2]. And yet the huge crowd gives the appearance of a giant caterpillar crawling on thousands of feet.
The government spokesperson said that a world-class museum was needed to showcase the rich cultural heritage of Bihar and debunk the narrative of Bihar being a Gareeb Pradesh [3]. In its affidavit before the Patna High Court, the government had held out the prospect of attracting foreign tourists and generating substantial revenues from the proposed world-class museum [4]. According to figures published by Prabhat Khabar [5], during the three years from 2021–22 to 2023–24, it received 11,05,604 visitors, of whom 1,198 were foreigners. The foreign visitors constituted a little over one-tenth of one per cent of the total. At the prescribed admission charge of ₹500 per foreign adult, their contribution to the museum's coffers could not have exceeded ₹5.99 lakh over three years, assuming that every one of them paid the full adult tariff. In terms of attracting either foreign or domestic visitors, Bihar Museum does not stand particularly tall. Two museums I checked at random, the Salar Jung Museum in Hyderabad and the Indian Museum in Calcutta, attracted substantially larger numbers of visitors. The Louvre, which has been placed considerably lower than Bihar Museum, had 70 per cent foreign visitors in 2022.
But there is an even more interesting comparison nearer home. The older Shrikrishna Science Centre, sequestered in a small corner of Chajju Bagh, almost beggarly in comparison with the new, magnificent Bihar Museum, received 10,32,366 visitors in 2023–24, according to figures furnished by the Union Ministry of Culture to Parliament. In the same year, Bihar Museum received 4,49,400 visitors. The Science Centre thus attracted more than twice as many visitors as its grander neighbour. It has apparently managed to draw the crowds without acquiring a place among the world's ten greatest museums.
I believe a new restaurant is an added attraction to the crowd. The many Biharis who are not very curatorially inclined find a leisure space especially attractive with an eatery attached to it. The Bihar Museum is undoubtedly a magnificent piece of architecture, as much on display itself as the artefacts inside its galleries.
With the high global ranking conferred by a little-known German website, the world outside must now be convinced of Bihar's financial muscle to showcase its culture in unrivalled splendour. The Indian press has completely ignored the website's small faux pas of locating it at Mutton Mahal, opposite the New Bihar Museum, Kidwai Puri [6]. The museum has now justifiably become the ultimate vanity project to boost the sense of Bihari pride.
II
Biharis are poor, they have been poor and could not care less that they are poor. It so happens that the poor tend to have too much pride, and Biharis are not found lacking in it. V. S. Naipaul observed, among other things, how the powerless lie about themselves and to themselves because lying is the only resource they can command (Nobel Lecture, Two Worlds, on The Mimic Men) [7]. Bihar brings up the bottom of almost every index of development and prosperity, and the only way Biharis can rid themselves of their shame and ignominy is through fantasy. The new, swanky Bihar Museum is the ultimate act of lying to itself about its condition.
During Sushasan, this was more or less institutionalised. To celebrate its classical antiquity became an intellectual etiquette as far as the discourse on Bihar was concerned. Whether it was the political demagogue or the engaged scholar, whether it was a tourist brochure or a plan document, they all started with homage to the hoary and holy past.
In the earlier years of Sushasan, a research institute run by an NGO used to hold regular seminars with the usual flock so familiar, in Koestler's words, on the intellectual call-girl circuit to assure Biharis of their heritage and that the millennium was just round the corner. Even when Amartya Sen, the distinguished economist and one of the leading public intellectuals of our time, was here during the earlier years of the regime to deliver a lecture, he chose the topic, or the topic chose him, Bihar: Past, Present and Future.
The audience, which had flocked together in great numbers, was drawn by his formidable reputation as an economist and his sustained engagement with issues relating to poverty, hunger and entitlement. They expected him to hold the crystal ball in front of their eyes, to give them a preview of their future. Was the unfolding “success” story authentic? Were we on the correct trajectory, or did we need some course correction?
We expected him to give us some clue as to why there has been such an overwhelming gap between our past glory and our present misery. What led to the disappearance of tradition of intellectual enquiry? Why could we not recover and transmit the high culture of classical antiquity? What caused the drying up of the genius of the race? Why have we all become compulsive navel-gazers? Is the landscape of Bihar itself permeated with some morbidity which stifles talent, inhibits competition and reduces us to tiny, squabbling worms crawling in the putrid pool of casteist sludge?
We are scraping the bottom on so many indices of growth and well-being? And yet, to borrow an expression from Emerson, “Why should we grope among the dry bones of the past, or put the living generation into masquerade out of its faded wardrobe?”
Nalanda and Vikramshila were undoubtedly world-renowned seats of learning, but this past has been too much with us. How relevant is it when education in Bihar, from primary to higher education, is in a state of terminal decay, better known for fraud, examination-paper leaks and abysmally poor standards? Forget about antiquity. The academic world of Bihar of the 1950s appears to be some mythical Arcadia.
These were the troubling questions, and who else but savants like Amartya Sen could answer them? But unfortunately, except for some pious hopes for the future and a few words of encouragement for the Chief Minister, Amartya Sen had nothing else to offer.
Nalanda University, a flagship international project, generously funded, became embroiled in controversy almost from its inception, and the Nobel Laureate himself was at the centre of it. The controversy was first reported, as I recall, by the local web magazine Bihar Times and remained uncontradicted for a long time [8]. It subsequently received wider attention in the national press. We have not had an official report as yet on how the university has invigorated the life of the mind in Bihar. Has it done anything to repair the institutions of learning in present-day Bihar?
A Greek cartoonist, when asked whether his country had a future, said, “Well, we have a past. You can't have everything.” He might as well have been talking about Bihar.
To be contd.
References
Bihar Museum cafeteria tender (estimated daily attendance): Bihar Museum Cafeteria Tender
Musée du Louvre, 2022 visitor report: 7.8 Million Visitors to the Musée du Louvre in 2022
The Wire, Bihar Museum and the “Gareeb Pradesh” narrative: Patna Museum Eclipsed by Swankier Bihar Museum
Ashok Kumar v. State of Bihar, Patna High Court (26 June 2015): Indian Kanoon
Prabhat Khabar, Bihar Museum attendance figures: Bihar Museum Foundation Day
Worth a Journey, Bihar Museum listing: Bihar Museum
V. S. Naipaul, Nobel Lecture, Two Worlds: Nobel Prize Lecture, 2001
Scroll, Nalanda University controversy: Scroll article
Additional sources
Ministry of Culture parliamentary statement, 19 March 2026: Press Information Bureau
Salar Jung Museum Annual Report 2023–24: Annual Report (PDF)
