The real story of looted art
Pakistan’s receipt of Gandhara art needs to be placed in the context of colonialism and how art had been acquired by force
The numerical figures are stark but the story is even starker. The haunting ghost of wrongful acquisition returned with the case of 192 artefacts belonging to Pakistan. The same was repatriated by Manhattan District Attorney’s office after a year plus investigation. A major success in repatriation of antiquities in recent times, the incident can be deliberated as a result of a much intensified and continuous movement pressurising European and American Museums to send back objects and art acquired by colonising countries.
Pakistan’s receipt of Gandhara period art needs to be placed in the larger context of colonialism and how art had been acquired by force, and unfair means in past 500 years with rise of colonial powers, making of Europeans middle class and the market that would relentlessly supply artefacts and antiquities from the subjugated lands.
It is no surprise that the history of loot is also a history of accomplice alongside being war booties. In the later category everything pales to Nader Shah’s loot of late Mughal Delhi stripping away treasures worth billions. Memories of this loot plugged recent public recall when the demands to return Kohinoor came to the fore.
For the starters Kohinoor’s has a long and checkered history first documented in 1740s. It had been a prized possession of Mughal emperor Shah Jahan and now sits atop the crown of England. Needless to say that the theft by Nader Shah changed hands courtesy other Indian rulers, eventually making the gemstone land in the court of England during Queen Victoria’s reign in 1849. A whole range of objects from Siraj-ud-daula’s palanquin to everyday objects like betel nut case, combs, crockeries, paintings has reached anonymous collections of the English as well as European and American collectors.
In a news published in summer of this year it was reported that Belgium’s Royal Museum for Central Africa still has 180,000 objects, Ethnological Museum of Germany has 75,000, Britain holds 73,000 while the Dutch National Museum of World Culture has approximately 66,000 objects that landed in these museums mostly by plunder and or acquired unconsented. But no number of looted art or forcibly owned art can be compared with what British museums have been holding (nearly 8 million) that the Empire had gathered from its colonies in last four hundred years, from Nigeria to India and Jamaica to Indonesia.
The museums of Britain have not been paying any importance to repartition citing the Museum Act of 1963 though the law of the land permits returning of objects deemed “unfit” to be retained in the country’s museum. Of the long list of hordes at British Museum are India’s Amaravati Marbles, Iraq’s Ashurbanipal reliefs, Nigeria’s Benin Bronzes, Ghana’s Akan Drum, Egypt’s Rosetta Stone, Greece’s Parthenon Marbles, Rapa Nui’s Hoa Hakananai’a, Jamaica’s Birdman and Boinayel figures.
And this holiday season if you plan to visit a Western museum the least you could be is not merely be awed by an exquisite palanquin or a textile piece or a Maori head, but hope that they soon return to where they belong!