Bring back the treasures

British sensitivity takes time to percolate. When it does, there is anxiety to make amends. Retribution and atonement come into play. Prim...

British sensitivity takes time to percolate. When it does, there is anxiety to make amends. Retribution and atonement come into play. Prime Minister Tony Blair has appointed a parliamentary committee to trace the antiquities looted when London ruled nearly half the world. The purpose is to consider returning these cultural objects to the countries of their origin. Strangely, however, the Indian subcontinent does not figure in the exercise at all.

So far, the pressure exerted by the House of Commons on the government is to return the Elgin Marbles, a case of dispute between Greece and Britain. These famous Athenian sculptures, which once decorated the Parathenon, the temple overlooking Athens, are in London8217;s British Museum. But what about the jewels which the British removed from India? They are all kept in the Tower of London. When I saw them as India8217;s High Commissioner to Great Britain, the authorities were apologetic. They said: quot;We feel ashamed to show them because they are from your country.quot; However, the story of the Victoria and Albert Museum was worse. The curator and others were not even courteous. They rudely brushed me aside when I asked them if I could see the treasures from India. They refused even to entertain the question if and when the pieces would be exhibited. They behaved as if they were the real owners and I a nosey intruder.

There are hundreds of paintings, statues and other objects lying in the basement of the museum. In 1990, after a lapse of 40 years, a four per cent of them were displayed at a gallery which the Indians living in the UK financed. The museum authorities at that time admitted that the rest of the possessions would continue to lie in the basement for many, many years to come. My suggestion that some art pieces be loaned to India was rejected outright. Now that a committee has been appointed to locate the antiques, I hope that the ones which were taken from us, forcibly or for a pittance, will be returned. The Government of India should raise the demand. This will not be a chauvinistic voice but a moral stand. What has been taken from here when we could not resist because of slavery is ours, however long it may have stayed elsewhere. Unfortunately, both Human Resources Development Minister Murli Manohar Joshi and Culture Minister Ananth Kumar are so busy saffronising education and culture that they have hardly anytime for a problem like getting back our cultural treasure.

Besides the antiques, the Raj has a 10-mile-long morgue in the India Office Library in London. Everything about British rule and our struggle for independence, told in books, documents, papers, pictures, posters and paintings, is there. This is essentially a heritage which belongs to the subcontinent and should have come to it long ago. Pending discussions, the British government should arrange to send at least the photocopies of all the documents. Ironically, both India and Pakistan have paid for the photocopies of the few documents they have obtained in the past few years. When the matter of records cropped up after independence, the British took advantage of the differences between India and Pakistan over the division and appropriated the entire material. The few attempts to reopen the issue have drawn a blank. Not only that, the India Office Library has been amalgamated with the British Library.

Part of the morgue has been transferred to other libraries in the UK. But that is not our problem. It will be for the parliamentary committee in London to trace the material and restore it to its owner. One drawback is that the committee is headed by Gerald Kaufman, former foreign minister, who is anti-India. True, the cultural treasure at British museums is open to the world. But should it be at the expense of the countries which want the objects back so that their nationals can see them and feel proud of their heritage? The British should realise that the possessions were acquired not in the best of circumstances.

The Economist has admitted in a recent article: quot;Much museum art was acquired by dubious means, if not by outright looting, extortion or imperial force majeure.quot; What we have been able to bring back are some Sikh relics, after paying through our nose. Even this would not have been possible if they had been with the British government. We purchased them from a family. It is historically proved that the East India Company came to possess certain Sikh relics, including swords, in the wake of the Anglo-Sikh wars.

The relics were then kept in the Toshakana house of gifts in Lahore during Maharaja Ranjit Singh8217;s reign. Lord Dalhousie, then the Viceroy in India, purchased nine relics in 1849. Two swords, the kalgi the plume pinned to the turban of Guru Gobind Singh and a lance used by him were among them. There is no truth about his swords being on display in a British museum. Some other relics have been acquired by the Government of India from Lady Edith Brown Lindsay of Scotland, a direct descendant of Lord Dalhousie.

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It is significant that, when the Political Affairs Committee of Indira Gandhi8217;s Cabinet decided to purchase them, it was resolved: quot;These relics we-re sought to be acquired not as religious objects but as historical objects.quot; Perhaps, the government did not want to be accused of trying to placate the Sikhs. The two swords and some other weapons which the Lindsay family possesses are still with them. The family at one time wanted compensation at the exorbitant rate of two pounds per head of the Sikh population in the world.

Experts are not convinced about the authenticity of the relics. Robert Skelton, keeper of the Indian Department of the Victoria and Albert Museum, stated: quot;There is nothing in the collection of outstanding importance.quot; As regards the kalgi, it has passed through many hands. It has been established that the family of Lord Dalhousie does not possess it. But there is no doubt that it does exist. At one time we traced it and even verified its authenticity but the Gulf crisis snapped our links with its owner.

The Lindsay family8217;s collection has been written off. A committee of secretaries to the Government of India decided before I took charge of the High Commission that the matter need not be pursued. I reopened the case of purchasing whatever we could and appointed a committee to look into the matter de novo. The reason why I was persistent was the information I had gathered that quot;a groupquot; of Sikhs in the UK was trying to purchase the relics. If still true, this may serve as a grist for the extremists8217; mill. They would surely say that the Indian government, as one of them had already communicated to me, quot;had not shown any interest in conducting meaningful negotiations for the return of the relics.quot;