Idols turn decorative pieces

So widespread is the practice of stealing temple art these days that robbers of idols and sculpture are ca-ught regularly in several states. Most Indians know that the police must be catching only a small number of temple art thieves. So, how many sacred art creations must be getting stolen all over the country every year? This writer, who has worked as a journalist in Washington, has learned that several thousand works of ancient Hindu temple art from tiny statuettes to large statues, from sculpture heads and fragments to carved stone blocks as well as entire pillars have been smuggled out of India.

Strongly attracted by the architectural and sculptural splendour of ancient Hindu temples, the writer has also visited them on an extensive tour of Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, and Karnataka. There is almost no such temple he has visited in interior villages with its best sculptural pieces still intact.

So many empty sockets, niches and wall frames or headless idols or half-sculptures are evidence that art thieves have visited the place, and sometimes indicate that thieves took away the sculpture or carved stones only recently. At many places in MP, local people told him that there had been sculpture and idol thefts as recently as a few weeks before his visit.

At various places, villagers complained about thieves who made repeated attempts to rob a temple. When the caretakers or villagers are not especially vigilant, the robbers pry loose a sculpture or hack out its head. Sometimes, the thieves come in a jeep, equipped with chains and ropes to lift and carry away heavy statues, pillars and carved stone slabs.

Idols and sculptures, statuettes and statues, columns and fragments, animal figures and stones with floral patterns are stolen from the custody of the Archaeological Survey of India and state departments of archaeology, with the employees’ complicity or the officers’ connivance.

The stolen pieces are smuggled out mostly to the USA and also to Europe. The art objects are acquired by galleries specialising in the sale of oriental art, leading art auction houses (such as Sotheby’s and Christie’s), the metropolitan area museums, art collectors and investors in art. A number of art and antique dealers in our metropolitan cities, especially Mumbai and Delhi, are heavily involved in the criminal trade.

The culprits include ordinary employees as well as high officials of the Central and state governments, members of certain non-governmental organisations (NGOs), foreign tourists and diplomats, and the staff of international agencies based in New Delhi, besides politicians ranging from villages headmen (sarpanches) to ministers.

A regular visitor to ancient Hindu temples in less populous locations all over India (and also in Nepal) will notice a lot of sculpture with the heads hacked off. The smaller piece of a sculpture can be more easily smuggled out of India than the whole. But who collects Hindu sculpture heads? A number of interior decorators in the West these days favour the heads of Hindu gods and goddesses as focal objects and accents in decorating high-fashion apartments and rooms of the wealthy.