The Partition Museum, Delhi, in collaboration with the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA), is set to commemorate the 79th year of India’s Partition on Friday, August 14th, 2026, at 11 A.M. at the Partition Museum and Cultural Hub, Dara Shukoh Library Building, inside Dr. B.R. Ambedkar University Campus, Lothian Road, Delhi. The memorial ceremony will be held in the distinguished presence of Sardar Taranjit Singh Sandhu, Hon’ble Lt Governor of Delhi, as the Chief Guest; Dr. Sachchidanand Joshi, Member Secretary, IGNCA, as the Guest of Honour; and Lady Kishwar Desai, Founder and Chair, Partition Museum. The programme will bring together Partition survivors, families of eyewitnesses and others to remember the millions who were forced to leave their homes overnight in 1947.
August 14th has been officially designated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi as Partition Horrors Remembrance Day. The commemoration at the Partition Museum will remember the millions who were forced to leave their homes overnight in 1947, bringing together Partition survivors, families of eyewitnesses and members of the public. The programme will be followed by High Tea and a tour of the museum, offering visitors an opportunity to engage with the personal histories, objects, photographs, documents and artworks that preserve memories of Partition.
For Sardar Taranjit Singh Sandhu, the remembrance carries a deeply personal resonance. He comes from a distinguished family of freedom fighters whose roots, like those of countless families in Punjab, were profoundly affected by Partition and colonial rule.
Dr. Sachchidanand Joshi, Member Secretary, IGNCA and Guest of Honour, shared his views as, “The preservation of memory is an essential part of preserving culture. It is also essential to remember the agony of the Partition to keep our Country united and strong. The stories of Partition live not only in history books, but in oral histories, family photographs, documents and personal belongings passed down through generations. It is also to tell the world about this tragedy, which is one of the biggest human displacements of all time.
IGNCA values its association with the Partition Museum in bringing these lived histories into a larger cultural conversation, so that they may continue to be documented, studied and understood by generations to come.”
Lady Kishwar Desai, Founder and Chair, Partition Museum, whose vision has been central to creating the Partition Museums, emoted, “The Partition Museum was created to ensure that the voices of ordinary people are not lost to the passage of time. The objects they carried, the photographs they preserved, the documents they saved and, most importantly, the stories they shared, tell us what Partition meant at a deeply personal level. On Partition Horrors Remembrance Day, we remember not statistics or borders, but people, their homes, their losses, their journeys and their extraordinary resilience. This commemoration is also an invitation to younger generations to listen to those memories and understand why they must never be forgotten.”
The Partition Museum in Amritsar, established to mark the 70th anniversary of India’s Partition, was the first museum in the world to collect and publicly display oral histories, documents, photographs and objects carried across the border by refugees of 1947. It was established by The Arts and Cultural Heritage Trust (TAACHT) under the chairmanship of Lady Kishwar Desai, with Mallika Ahluwalia as its first curator. The museum has received more than seven national and international awards.
The Partition Museum, Delhi, is the second Partition Museum in the world. Both museums were conceived as people’s museums, centred on the lived experiences of those affected by Partition, and are run entirely through donations.
Their collections and exhibitions encompass the Punjab and Bengal Partitions, as well as the Lost Homeland of Sindh, bringing together personal narratives and material histories from communities whose lives were transformed in 1947. The museums also feature art installations and artworks by well-known artists who have themselves been impacted by Partition.
Today, the museums welcome national and international visitors, school and college students from India and abroad, and have been written about by international historians and featured in films and documentaries.
The August 14 ceremony at the Delhi museum will bring these strands together—memory, history, culture and lived experience—in an effort to ensure that the human stories behind Partition remain alive for generations that did not witness it.
