The first and foremost museum in India was one of the fruits of the primary mission of the colonial authorities to establish control over the Indian people. It paved the way for larger ethnographies of various linguistic, religious, and regional groups. However, after Independence, the museum’s role was redefined to attain the new nation-state and a ‘national consciousness.’ The post-colonial Indian state curated museums and heritage sites to assist the laborious construction of a nation. The tribal museums are one such employment that sprouted when the Indian Government founded the Tribal Research Institutes (TRI) with the concern to frame a tribal identity. This paper discusses shifting mosaics of Indian historiography and anthropology concerning the formation of the institution of tribal museums. The focus is mapping the discourses that shaped the museums of India pre-Independence and exploring the consequences of its adaptation in the nationhood narrative after Independence to materialize a ‘nation’ with a national heritage. By analyzing the ethnographic study of a state-tribal museum conducted in the newly formed Telangana State of India, I argue that although anthropology as a discipline has evolved since the 19th century, the epistemic basis of tribal museums is located in the ontological corset of the ‘anthropological gaze.’ Against this backdrop, I attempt to engage in a critical dialogue between anthropology and ethnographic institutions like tribal museums.
