Hi-tech museum on India's democratic history opens

Picture this: A front row seat with stalwarts like Sardar Vallabhai Patel and Sarvapalli Radhakrishan as India's first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru unfurls the national flag and grandly declares the nation has kept its tryst with destiny!

Thanks to advances in technology, such glorious moments from India's past come alive at the newly opened parliament museum, which was inaugurated by President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam Monday.

The museum, which has been designed as a hi-tech story telling centre to depict the continuum of democratic heritage in the country is a combination of modern technology and traditional art.

The walk-through period settings inside the museum would tell you how Bhagat Singh gave up his life for the freedom of his motherland, how India roared 'Go back Simon' to throw the colonial rulers out, how 'half-naked fakeer' - Mahatma Gandhi was termed so by British prime minister Winston Churchill - fought a non-violent war for freeing the nation and how millions of Indians plunged into celebrations when the country was liberated from the British rule.

The story is told through sound-light-video synchronisation, large screen interactive computer multi-media and visualisation with multi-screen panoramic projections, virtual reality and animations.

One enters the museum in the ground floor - of the parliament library complex - through a recreated archaeological site that depicts Ashoka pillar at Sarnath among others. The period settings during the time of Mughal Emperors Ashoka and Akbar show how the peaceful co-existence and multi-religious pluralist society in the past had inspired Indian society.

After a visual presentation of Indian freedom struggle, it demonstrates how post-Independent India takes part in the democratic process. The life size replica of the constituent assembly, the original drafts of Indian constitution and the first sitting of Indian parliament at the central hall, where a computerised pneumatic controlled animation shows Nehru delivering in his original voice the historic 'Tryst with Destiny' speech. One can sit along with the life-size statues of the national leaders seated at the hall.

Visitors can see the calligraphic copies of constitution in Hindi and English and access every page of the constitutions in a computer multi-media programme.

In the first floor, there is a collection of gifts and memoirs presented to Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee, who is the brain behind the high-tech museum, and the first Lok Sabha speaker G.V. Mavalankar. There are also the chairs used by both Nehru and Indira Gandhi and the first chief justice of India.

The museum has been built by Kolkata Museum under Saroj Ghose, former president of the International Council of Museums, Paris.

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