The Lok Virsa Museum, Islamabad

Photograph Courtesy: Google Images

The people of Pakistan work with devotion and dedication to preserve their rich historical culture. There are numerous museums throughout the country which present the nation's culture. The people consider the Lok Virsa museum to be the finest cultural heritage museum among these. The museum is located in Islamabad, close to the Shakarparian Hills. The museum showcases the unique culture, lifestyle and history of the people of every province of the country.

     The museum houses a collection of over thirty-two thousand books and journals. these are mostly on the subjects of Pakistani folklore, cultural anthropology, ethnology, art history and craft. The vast literary collection serves researchers, students, scholars, historians, writers and lecturers till today.

Sculptures of Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah,
Begum Rana Liaqat Ali Khan and Fatimah Jinnah.

The museum also houses works of traditional arts such as metalwork, woodwork, bonework, embroidered costumes, block printing and ivory art. There are also sculptures of significant historical figures and cultural icons. Sculptures of local animals such as bullocks, camels and buffalos are also present on display.
Other than the immense literary collection, the museum holds more a recent collection of digital audio, which contains cultural folk music. Other audio includes around three thousand hours of cultural audio recordings and fifty-one documentaries. The archives also hold more DVDs containing hundreds of hours of film, including videographed festivals, cultural rituals, cultural dances and artisans at work. The museum has several mobile teams always ready to film any cultural activity.

Sculptures representing cultural romantic stories,
left: Heer & Ranjha, Right: Sassi & Punnu.

   Another department of the museum is the Research Centre. The VIRSA RESEARCH AND PUBLICATIONS CENTER is tasked with conducting field surveys and studies. The staff goes to villages and cities and try to record the visible culture on film, audio or in writing. They conduct studies on even the most trivial elements of the Pakistani culture such as cildrens' games, nursery rhymes, folktales, oral traditions. Books are produced in series such as cultural romances, Sufi poetry and epics. They often involve schools, colleges and other institutions to assist them in their surveys at a regional level. This helps them sidestep the problem of not having branches in various regions and also helps them in their goal to bring the youth of Pakistan closer to their national culture.

      The Lok Virsa museum lists five official objectives of it's mission.

"

1. Systematic inclusion of youth and their engagement in exposure to progressive, creative and pluralistic traditional culture, through making our folklore relevant to them.
2. Inculcate a deeper understanding of our identity and pluralistic past, entailing layers of cultures over centuries, amalgamating into a sense of robust present.
3. Accentuate the diversity of folk cultures __ lifestyles, songs, music, languages, foods, geographical links and perspectives, intertwined in Pakistan’s folklore.
4. Using internet, social media, as well as mainstream radio and television, as new grounds for Lok Virsa to disseminate its message.
5. Making Lok Virsa a vibrant hub of expression, discussion, performances and coming together of ethnic communities, folklorists, performing artist, students and scholars, who would develop a high level of ownership of this platform and use it for collaborative programs."

Sculptures showing the uniqueness of lifestyles from all
 the provinces.

 The survival of the nation's vast cultural heritage almost totally depends on the future efforts of the Lok Virsa museum so it is the duty of every Pakistani to support the museum and hope that it shall not fail in even one of it's goals.