Victoria Memorial: A museum should not be a mere repository of artefacts or an epitome of colonial heritage. They should tell stories of people's movements, be seats of inclusion and a platform for people to exchange knowledge and ideas.

The directors of three museums - Victoria Memorial Hall (VMH) and the Indian Museum in Calcutta and Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (CSMVS) in Mumbai - got together at the western quadrangle of Victoria Memorial Hall on January 30 to talk about how museums should go beyond their limited role.

Jayanta Sengupta, the secretary and curator of Victoria Memorial Hall, dwelt on the tussle between imperialism and nationalism that his institution faced. "Victoria Memorial was designed to showcase the achievements of the British empire. It was an empire museum and included all that the empire considered good."

While the museum does include artefacts related to some heroic Indian adversaries like Tipu Sultan, it obliterated others like Nana Saheb who according to the British had committed atrocities such as the Kanpur massacre, Sengupta said. "Victoria Memorial thus became a symbol of the imperialist's game of cultural politics."

Efforts are on to make the museum inclusive and reflective of social culture and a voice for the minority, Sengupta said. He listed a string of events organised in recent times, including exhibitions, workshops for students and the Tata Steel Kolkata Literary Meet, in association with The Telegraph , to carve out a more meaningful role for Victoria Memorial.

Sengupta spoke of some smaller museums such as Arna Jharna, the desert museum of Jodhpur, and Remember Bhopal Museum, featuring the gas tragedy and the people's movement that followed, that will be the trends of the future.

Encyclopaedic museums have to reorient their collection, he said. "They should be developed as open-air cultural spaces."

Rajesh Purohit, the director of the Indian Museum, said encyclopaedic museums should ideally integrate people through the stories that their exhibits tell. He shared how he found the visitors' response to exhibits at the Indian Museum too casual. "I see no interaction between them and the exhibits," he said.

Purohit wanted the artefacts to hook people through their stories. "Only then will visitors enjoy their experience and pass the word on," he said. Museums, he felt, should play a pivotal role in bringing people of different communities and nationalities together.

Sabyasachi Mukherjee, the director-general of CSMVS-Mumbai, spoke of the hard work that went behind the India and the World exhibition. The audience was treated to a sneak peak of the exhibition through an audio-visual presentation. "The role of a museum in contemporary society has changed. Besides preserving its collection, it needs to empower people, too. It needs to define its people," he said.

His mantra: Act local and think global.

Mukherjee shared how he was not interested in hosting an exhibition that told stories from the global perspective. He wanted to tell India-specific stories. The exhibition is inspired by A History of the World in 100 Objects, curated by art historian Neil MacGregor at the British Museum.

"The India and the World exhibition focuses on how people from a single nation can preserve their different identities," Mukherjee said.

The discussion, held as an outreach programme of the India and the World: A History in Nine Stories exhibition, was moderated by author-critic Ranjit Hoskote.