At G20 meet, Meenakshi Lekhi urges countries to voluntarily return plundered heritage

The oft-repeated case for the return of such antiquities is to prove theft, which is not possible evidentially if something was taken away so many years ago. “So, the countries, without getting into the merit of how they were taken away or acquired, should return them on purely moral and ethical grounds,” Lekhi said.

“Whoever acquires it, possesses it, should be able to explain from where they got it in the first place,” the minister remarked.

Lekhi, during her opening address to the over 50 delegates who have assembled from 20 countries for the four-day meet, also presented a strong case for the age-old sophistication of India’s art and culture heritage, and through it, the idea of women empowerment rooted in the country’s ethos.

She presented the 5,000-year-old famed sculpture of the Harappan Dancing Girl, with one hand on the waist, and compared it to Kristen Visbel’s bronze sculpture, Fearless Girl, which was installed at a public intersection in New York City just five years ago.

During her address, the minister also spoke about the need for G20 countries to look “at the darker side of history, including loot, imperialism, slavery and destruction, to address and redress concerns pertaining to culture”. The culture stream was included in the G20 working groups during Saudi Arabia’s presidency in 2020.

Officials proposed for the countries to work together to remove impediments for the return of such heritage, citing issues such as a lack of database of lost antiquities, provenance issues and procedural delays.

The G20 countries should go beyond deliberations and formulate an action plan for the repatriation of cultural properties, the minister said.

(The writer is in Khajuraho at the invitation of the Ministry of Culture)