Since 2015, a mobile museum has been traveling around the most rural parts of India, introducing disadvantaged schoolchildren to the rich tapestry of Indian history—from the dinosaurs to the Mughals.
The innovative education idea has so far traveled over 50,000 miles and visited 700 cities in the states of Karnataka, Maharashtra, Goa, Gujarat, Haryana, and Delhi NCR.
The “Museum on Wheels” was dreamed up by the staff at a famous Mumbai Museum called Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya, who received support for the idea of a pair of large coach buses carrying museum-like exhibitions to rural communities from both parents and the government.
“Even in today’s day and time, people from rural backgrounds, especially children, do not see museums as a place that can aid learning. With this initiative, we want to change the narrative and say, ‘If you can’t visit a museum, we can bring it to you’,” says Krutika Mhatre, who spearheads the MOW project.
She told The Better India that the subject matter rotates every 6 months based on feedback from schoolteachers in the towns and cities visited.
The overwhelming success of the MOW initiative led to the museum getting a government grant for the purchase and outfitting of a second bus in 2019.
“We wanted to start with a topic that everyone was familiar with. So we based it on Harappan civilization, and it was a great success,” said Krutika.
It makes sense—the Harappan, or Indus Valley Civilization, was the first great civilization of the Indian subcontinent, dating back to 3,300 BCE. The Harappans built the Great Baths, an archaeological find today recognized as a World Heritage Site.
But the MOW has also featured exhibitions on the dinosaurs of Cretaceous India, traditional Indian games, Indian coinage through the ages, and other past civilizations.
Krutika remembers that not only did many of the schools they visited not have a museum in town to go to, but many of the classrooms didn’t even know what a museum was.
It’s especially important in a nation like India that is so big, where human history stretches back so far, and which is also rapidly modernizing.
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