The long road home

Around the world, the call is getting louder as countries demand the return of ancient artefacts from Western powers. India has managed to wrest 212 treasures back since 1976, most in the last few years. See how the toughest battles have been won globally

Around the world, the call is getting louder as countries demand the return of ancient artefacts from Western powers. India has managed to wrest 212 treasures back since 1976, most in the last few years. See how the toughest battles have been won globally, and what it will take for India to up its game

First, the good news. In the last three years, Western museums have returned a record number of antiquities – idols, busts, reliquary, jewellery, weapons, religious objects – to former colonies and territories, as political and public pressures mount in countries on both sides. Host countries are more aware of the racist, colonial baggage that accompanies their amassed treasure. At top museums, exhibits that remain (and there are still too many) are subtly changing. Explanatory labels that once boasted of dominance over savages now mindfully note the expansion of Western empires as periods of subjugation, exploitation and violence.

India has managed to bring 212 ancient artefacts back from foreign countries since 1976, the overwhelming majority of these returns effected by the Narendra Modi government, which is prioritising the repatriation of treasures obtained illegally from India.

But consider that thousands of objects were taken from India as war trophies, excavations, souvenirs, specimens for scientific study, and that number pales. See the list alongside to get a sense of how much of our heritage has escaped our borders (the Koh-i-noor, in the possession of the Queen of England, is but one sparkling example).

“Repatriating items is a small but important issue for museums,” says Vinod Daniel, a museologist and member of the Board of the International Council of Museums. “Today, if a museum knows that an object’s provenance is dubious, they won’t acquire it. Due diligence of religious items is especially high. But when an object has changed hands over many generations, where do you draw the line?”

For some, that line is clear. “Any and every heritage item taken from India without consent is illegal and should be returned to us,” says Anuraag Saxena, co-founder of the non-profit India Pride Project, which has helped the government identify artefacts that rightfully belong in India. “It’s abhorrent that some nations have normalised institutionalised kleptomania,” Saxena adds.

That moral argument has global backing. More than 100 countries ratified a 1970 UN convention endorsing the return of objects that were found or suspected to have been stolen.

The art of the steal

There’s global support for the idea that artefacts are best experiences in their intended locations and contexts – Buddha idols in their stupas, ceremonial swords in palace galleries, and so on. They can boost tourism and offer tangible reminders of history and culture.

Restitution might even save lives. A 1998 study by Michael Chandler and Christopher Lalonde at the University of British Columbia suggests that one factor contributing to the high rate of suicide (sometimes 800 times higher than the average) among Canada’s indigenous First Nations people is cultural discontinuity. The absence of cultural continuity puts both individuals and communities at risk, states their report, published in the journal Transcultural Psychiatry.

“As a nation we are dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder. Centuries of barbaric attacks, colonisation, mass-murder and loot can shatter the self-confidence of a community. It can really dilute your sense of self-worth,” says Saxena, making the same case for India.

And yet, while collectors and museums show enthusiasm about re-assessing their hoards, actual returns are sporadic and keenly contested. Many offer the patronising argument that Western museums are better custodians than the home countries.

With objects from former colonies, museums and governments often demand evidence that the object was illegally taken, shifting the burden of proof from the coloniser to the colonised.

When records are presented — as they were in the case of the Kohi-noor, which the 10-year-old Duleep Singh was forced to give up to the British East India Company after the Second Anglo-sikh War in 1849 — countries shrug them away saying the objects were acquired under laws deemed appropriate by them at the time.

So how do we make claims for the return of items we believe are rightfully ours? Increasingly, in cases involving former colonial powers, when it’s one country’s word against another’s, the growing consensus is that the object ought to simply be returned. It’s one kind of restitution, in a world where so much more is due.

Meanwhile, India must consider its own role in hoarding objects. Many artefacts unearthed before Partition, in regions that are now in Pakistan, remain in India. Could we part with the Dancing Girl, excavated from Mohen-jo-daro in the 1920s? Lines suddenly start to blur. “Most public objects were made for communities,” Saxena says. “If those communities still exist in Pakistan or Bangladesh, and were to make a legitimate claim, then of course India should consider it.”

That response is better than the ones usually trotted out by the British Museum, which refuses to even loan artefacts to their home countries. Of course, as the joke goes, if the British Museum returned everything it had taken without permission, all it might be left with are some ancient dentures and a wooden toothbrush.

Golden throne of Maharaja Ranjit Singh

Ranjit Singh (1780-1839), founder of the Sikh empire, preferred to sit on a carpet on the floor. He used this golden throne for state occasions. Commissioned in 1820 and crafted in wood and gold, it is shaped like a lotus. When the British East India Company annexed Punjab in the Second Anglo-sikh War in 1849, soldiers took the throne to England as state property.

On view at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Sikh groups have campaigned for its return to India, but the museum has rejected all claims.