Protecting Objet d'art - Preserving Indian History

I was reading a series of articles on preserving Objet d’art in India – mainly on how to bring the stolen art objects back to India – a commendable effort of some art historians, authors and scholarly in this country.

Most of us, internet users of this country are aware of the rich cultural history of India. Land which we define by the geographical boundary of India today, was in good terms with its neighbouring states since ages. Not only people from this geography used to trade in precious stones and metals, scholars in eastern part of the globe also used to travel a lot through the entire region. Scholars do tend to take their books along – even if not printed sets. Buddhist monks were no different. That was how some Buddhist manuscripts moved to the land we call Tibet or Nepal today. Haraprasad Sastri, while doing research on ancient India staying in Nepal, found some of them (Charyapada texts) in the then royal library of Nepal and brought them to the then British India in early 20^th century. Movement of books, tapestries, coins and painting were not political issues. From unknown past till the time British reigned, India was not much aware of those items as artistic treasure and their ownership it seems.

Probably starting from Islamic invaders, foreign rulers started carrying precious items as looted goods to their homeland. Therefore since few hundred years, numerous art-objects from this geography left their place of origin and crossed the western border. Nadir Shah got a permanent place in our school books for looting some of Mogul properties, if not for anything else. None of Portuguese or British forgot to collect their shares as well. Colonial rulers were good at displacing objet d’art. They did not always carry Indian items to England; they brought works of art from other countries to India too. This way a complete pagoda from Burma (current Myanmar) was brought to Calcutta by the then British rulers (1853-54). In fact Indian Museum in Calcutta became a storehouse for artefacts from different regions in South East Asia which were being ruled by British colonialists. Broken heads of sculptures from Indian temples or pieces from temple walls became eligible as precious items during this regime.

Contemporary Indian intellectuals are not only campaigning to bring the items taken away mainly by Mohammedan and colonialist rulers, they are also fighting to stop movement of Indian art – objects to other countries. Reason is clear - if a large number of relics move outside country then those will carry also the history of the country along. To preserve those, some are suggesting that each and every object d’art in this country should be listed.

But not only the task of listing is cumbersome; this kind of activity needs public awareness to a large extent. How do I know which one is a precious artefact and which one it not? If I don’t then how do I do a voluntary disclosure? How come government will know what art-objects I possess are?

Today I was going through another article on this awareness building. The author suggests Indian parents should at least teach their children to appreciate art. Awareness built this way would in turn help in preserving Indian history. True, parents who belong to the group of educated Indian middle class could introduce Indian art and culture to their children better. May be ‘art appreciation’ as a part of school curriculum could also help. Question is, how many of Indian parents belong to this well-aware educated class? When parents themselves do not know how to appreciate art, how do we expect them to teach children?

I remembered couple of my experiences which I gathered during my days in rural Bengal – a privilege government servant’s children enjoy – mostly unknowingly.  Our interest in old temples dragged us to some remote villages in Burdwan and Hooghly districts – home of several 15th-18^th century temples. In most of the cases we found broken old temples – uncared and unattended, at times covered by creepers and banyan tree roots with most of their tiles from walls removed. In many cases, those do not belong to anyone’s personal property. Hence, common villagers do not even have an option to know a lot about those. Few of remaining tiles and size and shape of bricks show the antiquity of those temples to the history student, but that is all. For a visitor, there is no option to find out information like how the Kali idol inside a half broken temple in a remote Burdwan village wears something like shoes. Greek-influence? We can only imagine – none knows the truth.

My visit to famous Bishnupur temple in early 1990s was no different. Many of the terracotta plates from the temple walls were already disappeared – and nobody around were aware of the historical importance of the temples. Currently Bishnupur is under strict vigil of ASI but not the other remote villages. Unless locals are aware of historical importance of those old structures, some of them would obviously not mind earning some extra money by removing some temple tiles and giving those to their friends (first level collectors in the antique market) who pay good amount for those useless old tiles! Even if a villager does not remove by himself, why would he stop others to remove some from a broken temple wall?

Only awareness creation among educated middle class would not help much till awareness is created among people (mostly not eligible to be middle class) staying in those rural areas where our old temples are located. The educated middle class, even if grows an interest in history or learn appreciating art, may be able to differentiate between a Ram and Krishna depicted on a 15^th century terracotta tile, which will help in their research program in some prestigious foreign university, but won’t be able to prevent antique theft from remote areas.

Listing all objet d’art in the country seems to be a concept of golden stone-boat in that case.



Few of the articles I was going through:

http://www.mondaq.com/india/x/407126/music+arts/Law+Relating+To+Antiquities+In+India+Be+Aware+Of+Your+Obligations

https://sanyalsanjeev.wordpress.com/2016/04/13/india-must-start-working-to-reverse-plunder-of-our-national-artistic-heritage/

http://organiser.org//Encyc/2016/10/24/Guest-Column-Gods-back-home---Learn-to-respect-symbols.aspx

http://organiser.org//Encyc/2016/10/24/Interview-%E2%80%98Gods-back-home---Battle-incomplete-until--Gods-reach-Home-.aspx