Hyderabad SALARJUNG MUSEUM TOnly 12,200 of the curious collection of 48,000 objects are showcased for want of sufficient space. It includes art objects, books and manuscripts that were put together by Salar Jung III, prime minister to the Nizam. The Veiled Rebecca, a delicate marble statue of a woman draped in a transparent veil, and Mephistopheles and Margaretta, a wood carving done in 1876, are among the items on show.

It comes as no surprise to anybody then that a pistol stolen from the museum last month was wrongly listed as the one Lt-General A.A.K. Niazi surrendered to his Indian counterpart Lt-General J.S. Aurora in 1971-the real McCoy is actually safe at the Indian Military Academy in Dehradun. The museum revels in bad labelling-witness its display of its most treasured object, the bronze dancing girl from the Indus Valley, which has no caption at all-and in quixotically keeping its treasures away from public gaze. So a series of prized objects has never or very rarely been on display: the trimohar of Akbar, the only gold coin of its kind; a rare copper plate from Nalanda acquired from the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI); manuscripts such as the Duwal Rani Khizrkhan; and the collection of one of the country's greatest anthropologists, Verrier Elwin. Ask

R.D. Choudhury, director-general of the museum since 1998, and he can only say, "We have no centralised data on the objects. The curator of each department is supposed to know."

Delhi NATIONAL MUSEUM Stylised painted wooden mask of human skull: Any anthropology enthusiast will be unable to distinguish the collection of Verrier Elwin from the National Museum's other acquisitions. A staffer says it cannot label Elwin's collection because the "existing format does not allow it". TRIMOHAR OF AKBAR, DATED BETWEEN 1556 AND 1605: The National Museum has this priceless gold coin (front and back views) but it has never displayed it. "It is extremely rare," says a staffer. "We have shown it only once in 1983 at a temporary exhibition." SRI GURU GRANTH SAHIB, DATED 1839: The National Museum has two copies of the sacred book, one of which was acquired in 1961. It is significant for scholars as well as believers but it has never been exhibited. DUWAL RANI KHIZRKHAN: Earliest known illustrated manuscript dating to Akbar's time, it deals with the love affair between Prince Khizrkhan, the son of Sultan Alauddin Khilji, and Princess Devaldi. Written by Amir Khusrau, it is a storehouse of information on the 13th century but has never been exhibited.

If the curators know, they are not telling. The staff has no clear idea of how many visitors the museum gets every day and how much of its collection is actually displayed: the figure varies from 5 per cent of the total items to a tiny 2 per cent. With the staff busy organising exhibitions internationally and at the museum (over 20 a year), there is little time for the institution to fulfil its actual role of public awareness. As a result some artefacts have deteriorated with time and neglect. The manuscripts especially, says a senior museum official, are "crying out for attention".

It has been enough to agitate intach, which is in the initial phase of drafting a management plan for the museum. But the bigger question really is the state of museums nationwide. Take a look at just two that are under the aegis of the Ministry of Culture. At Kolkata's Indian Museum, most of the 1.5 lakh objects are in the reserve collection though director Shyamalkanti Chakravarti and his staff have tried to revolutionise the 20-odd storage areas from a disorganised dump to rows of 12-ft-high shelves. But time may have effected a lot of damage. At the Salar Jung Museum in Hyderabad, for instance, when the collection moved from its original home in Dewan Deodi to its present building in 1968, a lot was lost. Ahtram Ali Khan, grandnephew of Salar Jung III, prime minister to the Nizam of Hyderabad, whose collection was acquired by the government by an Act of Parliament in 1961, admits as much. "Some objects were obviously stolen and others perhaps replaced in the early days. But there is no way of checking, for there was no proper inventory," he says.

Lack of documentation is the biggest problem facing the custodians of our heritage. This has led to rampant thefts even from protected monuments. A list submitted by the Ministry of Culture to the Lok Sabha in April this year details as many as 23 cases of theft in the past two years, one of them from Hampi, a World Heritage Site, and two from the open sky museum in Patan. Such thefts hit the headlines all over again last month when the Jaipur police arrested Vaman Narayan Ghiya for allegedly smuggling as many as 700 pieces for the auction house Sotheby's alone.

The situation may not be so alarming at the National Museum, though it is surely unusual for a pistol to disappear from a gallery when as many as 96 personnel of the Central Industrial Security Force and 28 museum security guards keep watch at the premises. But it is clearly in need of professional reorganisation and more importantly, a passion for the past with a wish to store it for the future. As former director-general of the ASI, M.C. Joshi, who is the chairperson of the museum screening committee for international exhibitions, puts it, "The state of the museum is apparent from the fact that not a single catalogue has been published. I think the staff is overwhelmed by holding exhibitions. Where is the time for first-hand research?" Or for the lofty values of cultural awareness and scholarly research?

— with Amarnath K. Menon and Labonita Ghosh