Opinion Express View on IE-ICIJ investigation of Indian antiquities in US museums

A feature of the cultural ferment in the country is a growing interest in heritage. Historical artefacts — the Kohinoor, for instance — are being drawn into nationalist narratives. The government has signed agreements with museums in the UK, US and Australia to repatriate Indian antiquities. Some of these objects were taken away from the country during colonial times. It’s well known that an overwhelming majority of heritage items have found their way into foreign museums through illicit antique trading networks. Now, an investigation by this newspaper, in association with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and the UK-based Finance Uncovered, has uncovered the trail of at least 77 antiquities in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art to a smuggler currently in custody in the country. Another 94 objects at the Museum, reportedly from Jammu and Kashmir, are proof of the challenge faced by the government in getting back historical artefacts from repositories outside the country — the Met has no background detail on how these objects were moved out of India.

Since Independence, only 486 artefacts have been reported missing from the monuments preserved by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI). Experts, however, agree that there is a large gap between what is reported as missing and what is surfacing now in foreign museums. Estimates of missing pieces range between 500 and 50,000. One part of the problem pertains to the ineptitude of law enforcement agencies. RTIs filed by this newspaper and police records accessed by it reveal that investigations into several cases of missing antiquities in J&K have been summarily closed and FIRs are gathering dust. But the more pressing concern is the ASI’s inability to protect the objects it’s mandated to safeguard. Report after report of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India, including one last year, has pointed out that the agency “has no vigilance or monitoring cell to function as a deterrence against theft of antiquities”. Without autonomy from the Union Ministry of Culture, the ASI will not attract the best talent. In fact, as far back as 1984, the Mirdha Committee had recommended that the agency “should be accorded the status of a scientific and technical institution, enjoying autonomy in its functioning”. In 2005, a report of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Transport, Tourism and Culture repeated this suggestion and drew attention to the ASI’s inability to access the latest technology. Archaeologists, for instance, have to depend on laboratories in the First World for analysing pottery.

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In 2021, another Parliamentary Standing Committee report on Tourism and Culture listed “lack of resources” as one of the biggest challenges faced by the country’s museums. At a time when the past has become a contested terrain, the imperative to equip these agencies with adequate resources, expertise and the latest know-how cannot be overstated. The government would do well to heed the message from this investigation.