New Delhi: Zerodha founder Nithin Kamath often logs on to social media to talk about markets. But his recent post on X veered away from charts and capital, addressing a quieter subject: India’s underdeveloped museum-going culture.
“We don’t really have a strong museum-going culture in India. Maybe the long stretch of British rule has something to do with it,” Kamath wrote in his post Sunday.
At a time when conversations around history and heritage are gaining renewed attention, Kamath’s post has added to a growing chorus calling for greater public engagement with museums—not just as repositories of the past, but as spaces that shape how a country understands itself.
In the post, Kamath talked about his trip to Kolkata with friends and family, where he visited two of Kolkata’s most prominent institutions: the Victoria Memorial and the Indian Museum.
“My first proper museum trip in Kolkata and it’s easily the best museum city in India,” he wrote.
Kamath’s post also reflected on the layered legacy of the sites he visited. The Victoria Memorial, conceived by Lord Curzon after the death of Queen Victoria in 1901 and opened in 1921, remains one of the most recognisable colonial-era structures in India.
“But seeing it in India feels a bit off. Built with Indian money and marble from Rajasthan, it’s also a reminder of the scale of extraction during British rule,” Kamath wrote.
According to him, the Indian Museum is something else altogether. “The range of archaeology, fossils, art, and anthropology is incredible. You can spend hours and still not be done,” he added.
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India’s museum culture
Kamath’s observations sparked responses online, including from civil servant Nirupama Kotru, who said she felt a personal connection to the institutions.
“I am so glad. I feel very attached to both these museums as I was in charge of all our national museums during 2018-2021, as Jt Secretary (Museums),” Kotru wrote.
According to the late JNU professor Kavita Singh, India’s museum-going culture differs from that of Europe.
In her article titled ‘A Public Failure? Museums and Audiences in India’, Singh wrote that in Europe, museums were a tool of “embourgeoisment”, where working-class or lower-middle-class visitors hoped to promote themselves through the acquisition of culture and taste.
“In India, something quite different seems to have happened: the crowds come, not to be disciplined by the museum but to enjoy it in carnivalesque fashion; they do not expect to be changed by the museum visit, but to have the liberty to enjoy themselves within it,” she wrote.
(Edited by Prasanna Bachchhav)