On February 22 2023, the Ministry of Culture, in collaboration with the Archaeological Survey of India, National Museum Institute and National Museum, organised an exhibition Re (ad)dress: Return of Treasures, at Chhatrasaal Convention Centre at Khajuraho in Madhya Pradesh. The exhibition displayed a selection of 26 antiquities as part of the ongoing G20 Culture Working Group meetings planned at historic sites across India.
Several smuggled and exported antiquities from India today lie in private and public museum collections abroad, mainly in Europe and North America. Many of these countries and museums have now, however, begun to research the provenance of their collections and are sending back the antiquities received ‘illegally’ in their home countries back to India following the World Heritage Convention of 1972.
During the inauguration, G Kishan Reddy, the minister of culture, said that since independence, the government had retrieved only 13 antiquities. However, since 2014, the present government has shown its resolve to bring the country’s cultural pride by bringing back 229 antiquities.
The ruling BJP government takes pride in the fact that India has received more than 200 antiquities from the United States, Australia, Canada and the UK in recent years.
While the Indian government is projecting the repatriation of antiquities as a matter of national celebration, and the media outlets in their headlines are busy highlighting the monetary value of these repatriated collections, It is essential to note that the institutions which are supposed to look after these repatriated collections are in a deplorable condition.
The Parrot Lady, a sandstone sculpture repatriated from Canada in 2015, a highlight of the return of the Treasures exhibition, has found a home at the site museum in Khajuraho. However, a 2022 report by the CAG reveals that the site museums, including the one in Khajuraho, are struggling for skilled human resources and management systems, the basic requirements of a museum.
The report further highlights that 90% of the collections in 51 site museums in India remain locked in storage, and there is no rotational policy for replenishing old displays with new ones. It would be no wonder if the Parrot Lady, in a few years, might again disappear from public view despite existing in the museum.
Repatriation, anthropologist Mary Bouquet explains, is “an umbrella term which, when applied to museums, connotes the restoring, returning, repairing, replacing and renewing of objects and images and the relationships that compose them.”
Consider this image: the prime minister of India, Narendra Modi, stands before a collection of antiquities the Indian government received from the United States in 2021. The neat display of antiquities, the return of antiquities, and the inspecting eyes of the prime minister with a catalogue in his hand might evoke a feeling of pride among the viewers.
But as you shift attention to how the prime minister is holding the small statue aloft, you begin to wonder about the iconography of the stage and its settings. No museum professional anywhere in the world would advise an object/antiquity to be held in one hand as the prime minister does in the photograph.
This photograph symbolises the government’s careless attitude towards the national heritage and culture. One can further glean the government’s lax attitude from the fact that the Archaeological Survey of India, an apex body under the Ministry of Culture, does not hold a central database for its 4 lakh plus heritage structures and 58 lakh plus antiquities. During the physical verification, the CAG team found that valuable antiquities at national museums are kept in poor condition, without an adequate system for accession, valuation, display and conservation of antiquities.
Furthermore, it pointed out an acute staff shortage in all key positions in the ASI and other organisations, including museums, National Monuments Authority, etc. While in an earlier CAG audit of 2013, the ASI reported encroachment cases in 249 monuments, it rose to 321 in February 2021.
In addition to these issues, the report highlights that higher study enrolment at the National Museum Institute is alarming. During 2013 and 2015-17, no student enrolled on its PhD-level history, conservation and museology courses.
Given these developments, one must ask how the government plans to look after the repatriated antiquities from abroad. Is the subject of repatriation merely a showpiece for newspaper headlines, or should it also have a road map for strengthening the country’s heritage and heritage institutions?
In 2018, Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, during an event in London, taking a jibe at the long history of British colonial rule, said that people in India identify the museums in Britain as chor bazaars. He, however, forgot to mention what Indians think of their museums in India. While the subject of repatriation provides a cover for nationalist politicians to speak against the empire, the treatment of heritage and museums in post-colonial India is rarely brought to the forefront by eminent figures like Mr Tharoor.
The nationalist politics in contemporary India around heritage also shows the turn towards majoritarian politics by the present government. The effort by groups led by the BJP government to reshape the historical memory around monuments like the Taj Mahal by claims that there was a Hindu temple beneath the mausoleum is a glaring example of that turn. One wonders if repatriated antiquities with Islamic histories would even find a safe place for display in India.
According to a report by Times of India, the government aims to move the Central Antiquity Collection (CAC) from Purana Quila to the Institute of Archaeology in Greater Noida. It plans to utilise the empty barracks in Purana Quila to display major antiquities repatriated to India. A new museum of repatriated antiquities might become another news headline, but will it help the country’s ailing condition of museums and heritage?
Akash Bharadwaj is a museum researcher. He is currently pursuing PhD in history and archaeology at Shiv Nadar University, NCR, New Delhi.
