Pune’s Raja Dinkar Kelkar Museum contains the collection of Dr Dinkar G. Kelkar (1896–1990), dedicated to the memory of his only son, Raja, who died an untimely tragic death.
The collection was started in the 1920s and by 1960 it contained around 15,000 objects. By all accounts Kelkar was a man obsessed with art. For over those forty years he traveled extensively across India – to obscure villages and tribal settlements, to grand temples and humble huts, to forgotten attics and folk fares – relentlessly collecting.
In 1962, Dr Kelkar handed his collection to the Department of Archaeology within the Government of Maharashtra.
Since then the collection has grown further, and now holds over 20,000 objects of mainly Indian decorative items from everyday life as well as other art objects mostly from the 18th and 19th centuries. Amazingly the three-storey building that houses the museum only has about 15% of the…
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Swayamkatha 