When I walked into the ‘Asia’ section of the British Museum in London, I didn’t know what to expect. I was hoping for a glimpse into the rich, vast histories of India, Pakistan, China and Japan, and to come away understanding the background of my origins much better than I when I walked in. I wanted a glimpse into Indian culture, invention, mythology and design. I wanted to learn.

I was, as always, much too hopeful.

India is home to some of the world’s oldest religions and civilisations. While much of Europe was in a feudal, pre-Medieval state, India was rich with language, trade, art, science, mathematics, philosophy and technological advancement. Detailed statues of Hindu Gods in the British Museum, from thousands of years ago, are testament to this. The works are of breathtaking intricacy, and you can only marvel at the level of skill deployed during a time we imagine as ‘primitive’.

Yet despite this history, the section on India at the museum is merely but a few shelves. Worse, the entire collection is mainly these statues of Gods and Goddesses. Centuries of history, represented by a few statues. There is nothing to suggest from that collection that India has a deep, complex history. There is nothing to suggest to visitors the contributions the Indian subcontinent brought to the world for centuries, nothing on its culture, nothing to learn from. The collection doesn’t trace the variety of empires India belonged to, notably the Mughal and the British Empire, and the effects this had on the country. The collection does not represent any history that visitors can pick up on and research at a later date. By being nothing more than a selection of statues (of which the extraordinary skill that was required to make these is not mentioned), the entire history of India is reduced down to a (very selective) display of religious worship. By providing visitors with nothing to learn from, the collection says, India has no history.

In comparison to the display on British Enlightenment, the entire section on Asia pales in comparison. The Enlightenment is housed in a large open room, the walls lined floor-to-ceiling with books to represent the ‘rationality’ of the era. Research by travellers, scientists and writers is on display and hidden in drawers for visitors to ‘discover’ themselves. The language used to describe the British Empire and the East India Company is clinical, minimal and positive. You could leave the collection thinking that the British Empire in India was nothing more than a trading arrangement. Of course, the plaque on slavery mentions how Britain was the first country to ‘abolish’ slavery, but does not mention the forced indenture of thousands of Indian workers to the Caribbean after the abolition. Nor does it mention the atrocities, nor does it mention that modern Britain was built upon the backs of slaves, and from plundered resources.

The contrast between the two collections is stark, and yet, most visitors will not notice because they align with the versions of History we are taught. We do not celebrate or even acknowledge the contributions of non-Western countries to science, language, art and technology, nor of the millions of slaves and forced workers of the Empire to building the Britain we know today. A history of thousands of years is worth a few shelves, but a history of a few hundred that represents British advancement, rationality and development spans an entire room. Yes, the museum is one of British history, but British history is a history of a global Empire. British history is a history of one-fifth of the world. If we are to truly move on from our imperial past, we must acknowledge a history that looks outwards as well as inwards.