The repatriation of objects to source countries seems to be increasing and with that comes the expectation that museums in the source countries will conserve and display such objects in ways that are better—better by the public, with better ethics, and better contextualised. Tall expectations, given the high benchmarks set by art history and exhibition design in Western nations over the past 150 years. One needs to move away from stating how desultory India’s museums are. We need instead to use this opportunity to see what urgently needs to change in the heritage sector and what ethics will guide this.
Public accountability for the removal of artefacts from a place without the consent of its people and hence the repatriation of objects is not possible without detailed studies on their provenance. Equally, the place to which the object is being repatriated must demonstrate the capacity to look after its cultural assets and mobilise them in lively public displays. A depth of research on the meaning of the object—how it was used, why it and by whom was it made, and what has been the history of the object itself over time—needs to be communicated by museums in books and films and through aesthetic displays. This is entirely dependent on the calibre and training of the personnel who work in the heritage and museum sector.
“Personnel have to be able to read the thousand words that every picture tells and reflect to audiences the centuries of civilisational learning that each object encapsulates.”
The importance of art museums has been recognised widely by the media and in government circles in India, yet the development of the sector continues to be slow. Efforts at creating and sustaining an action plan for museums have not proved sustainable for many reasons: inappropriate administrative policy; an inability to maximise the impact and value of museums for the public (thus hindering the development of a sense of public accountability and public trust); failure to appoint appropriate personnel and leaders; and finally, the failure to ensure qualified staff to prepare and communicate high-quality, up-to-date research on the collections. India is home to over 800 museums which showcase its rich art and culture. Yet most of them remain little more than warehouses largely viewed with apathy by government and citizens alike.
Yakshi statue from 2 BC at Kolkata’s Indian Museum. Damages to the statue’s foot were reported in 2015. There is a dearth of specialists in Indian museums. | Photo Credit: SUSHANTA PATRONOBISH
Given the arguments and rationale for repatriation, museums have to extend themselves to being preservers of people’s histories and memories. Every object in the collection has its own history and this extends also to its all too important provenance history. Personnel have to be able to read the thousand words that every picture tells and reflect to audiences the centuries of civilisational learning that each object encapsulates. This comes from years of patient engagement with collections, with continuous scholarly involvement and, above all, a love for the objects.
Politics of heritage
It is vital that museums produce the highest quality of research and publishing, at academic and popular levels, that is communicated and translated into many languages. Deepening research and dissemination gives museums a role in society that is far beyond any immediate financial worth. Several museums across the world have leveraged their historical collections to create a degree of public participation that profoundly impacts people’s sense of their selves and identities. Museums of history have even taken on the role of being spaces of “transitional justice” that articulate historical wrongs and offer a space of mediation for society to reach a state of acceptance. Museum personnel must then also be exposed to cultural diplomacy and the politics of heritage, which can only be built on a base of scholarship on, or knowledge of, the artefacts in the museum. A museum’s current value is always to be judged against its potential.
But the fact is museums in India have a dearth of specialists to fill these posts. The rapid change of officers in the top portfolios of museums does not permit for any substantial institution building. Apart from impacting that institution’s development (especially where a few nodal places account for the majority of the nation’s interest in one area, historical art and heritage for instance), it affects the entire field with massive potential losses. I have written previously on the systemic reforms needed in the position and hiring of museum curators and directors. Yet, for all the chatter about creating world-class museums one has yet to see any systemic shifts initiated by the Cabinet Secretary, the Department of Personnel and Training or PMO in this regard.
The importance of art museums has been recognised widely by the media and in government circles in India, yet the development of the sector continues to be slow. Here is a view of the manuscript section at Thanjavur Maharaja Serfoji’s Sarasvati Mahal Library and Research Centre, one of the biggest manuscripts library in Asia, in Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu. | Photo Credit: Moorthy M.
If the Director General of a national museum is to be answerable to a Joint Secretary in the Central government, as is usually the case, we have already decided at what level India places the top position in this field. As a New York-based museum administrator, once considered for the post of Director at Delhi’s National Museum, astutely quipped; “When Mrs. Obama wants to come to the Met, her office calls the museum’s director straight. When the wife of an Indian Prime Minister wants to visit the National Museum of India, her office deals with no less than seven offices!” We have placed our directors at a lower status than other countries.
We have also not given museums autonomy to function or respected their knowledge. The British Museum is a non-departmental public body governed by 25 trustees whom the director turns to for ratification of most intellectual matters while rendering accounts to the Secretary, Department of Culture, Media and Sports, through which it is funded. The US has an incorporated Association of Art Museum Directors which protects museum ethics, while each museum has its own trustees and autonomy over finances, salaries, and pensions. The trustees or the incorporated associations ensure that the intellectual and administrative autonomy required to withstand the vicissitudes of changing political and media allegiances is maintained. If we want culture and museums to gain the profile obtained in many G20 nations, should we not pause to consider what respect they accord the keepers of their cultural heritage? It would be rather hollow to demand repatriation only for the sake of mediatised photo-ops.
Seized idols and antiquities lying in the premises of the Tamil Nadu police’s Economic Offences Wing Office in Guindy, Chennai, in 2018. | Photo Credit: M. Karunakaran
No doubt museums in the G20 countries aren’t perfect either. Their present conditions were achieved through a process. With the right intervention, India can perhaps set a better example. British museums were dominated by the state till major acts in 1963 and 1992 gave greater autonomy to the Tate, the Victoria and Albert, and the British Museum. In Spain too, the Prado has managed to win an extraordinary amount of autonomy. Meanwhile, in India, the National Museum has often been looked after as an additional charge by a bureaucrat from the Ministry of Culture. The problem is not of top positions alone. Vacancies for 92 posts at the National Museum were closed a couple of years ago because qualified specialists in India could not be found for years on end; other major museums have similar gaps. It calls for urgent investment in updating educational standards in art history, conservation and archaeology. Making and maintaining beautiful museums require small and specialised teams of professionals, who are trained, whose positions within the government’s hierarchy are suitably fixed, and who are given autonomy to function.
Cultural loss: Who is responsible
India has seemingly strong and noble laws to protect heritage; departments of archaeology to enforce them, and ministries of culture to administer them. Yet, these laws have been only partially successful over the past 30 years. Both laws and institutions have now outlived their utility and become both regressive and counterproductive. No doubt they have been a deterrent to the export of art objects but the flipside, as outlined above, is the scant investment in training personnel for museums that will protect these increasing recoveries.
The pressure of rising population is forcing more rural areas and hinterlands to be converted into urban spaces, disturbing archaeological contexts forever. Most often, developers, even if it is the government, supposedly the caretaker of heritage, do not report the discovery of artefacts for fear that archaeologists may slow down or stop the development work. The absence of any reported antiquities during the construction of the Delhi Metro is a prime example of such silence and apathy. Whereas all other major cities like Paris, Rome and London used the opportunity of their metro development to create museums filled with pottery, coins and artefacts found during the excavation, we are led to believe that nothing was found in Delhi while digging in the shadow of the Qutub Minar; in Tughlaqabad; or under Chandni Chowk in Shahjahanabad. Opportunities lost, objects lost—should we live with the hope and prayer that some intrepid private art dealer perhaps “rescued” them?
Our official policies seem rather opportunistic: we invoke statutes in the Indian Penal Code to prove sculptures are gods when we need to or turn them into commodities when customs duties need to be paid at borders. We build dams like Nagarjuna Sagar and Sardar Sarovar knowing that archaeological sites have to be sacrificed at the altar of economic necessities, yet take a puritanical stance when it comes to the free trade of art. The truth is that a desire for the possession of art objects is no longer the main driving force for the desecration or pillaging of ancient sites. It is urbanisation, the cutting down of forests, the construction of metros, dams, and smart cities.
“Museum’s security needs to be more than just physical, extending also to autonomy in management without which it cannot safeguard heritage.”
Are we expecting too much of our museums and archaeology departments? Like most cultures that were subjected to massive looting, stringent laws were enacted in India to stem the export of antiquities and the onus lies on the state to protect all heritage. However, the pace at which heritage objects are being affected and lost by modern development seems well beyond the coping capacity of the state. There is thus little choice but to widen the support base by increasing the stakeholders in the preservation of heritage—and who better to do that than the people whose heritage it is. At the same time, however, we also need to consider whether the repatriating countries need to send back more than just a physical object and also help source countries develop the infrastructure needed. The major questions, then, are if the government should encourage international collaborations in capacity building and knowledge sharing? Should it privatise aspects of museums and heritage management? What does such privatisation mean for the long-term security of heritage? What will be the guiding principles by which public-private ownership of heritage will be regulated?
Tricky questions
The questions get more tricky. Laws to protect antiquities are imposed by a nation. But what happens when the government suddenly changes and a nation as previously defined ceases to exist? If the museum is subject to shifting ideological whims, it stands to ignore the culture of those displaced by the power shift. These matters get magnified in times of war and conflict. In the case of Tibet in 1959 the exodus that accompanied the Dalai Lama to India was followed by a shift in movable cultural heritage. Icons, thangkas, sculptures that went with the performance of rituals necessary for the religious identity and functioning of the Tibetans were relocated. We know that terrible atrocities were perpetrated on what was left behind in Tibet, and untold quantities of artefacts made their way to the international art market via China, Hong Kong, Kathmandu and Bangkok. Precarious conditions in source countries have led to redeployment of artefacts for reasons other than looting alone.
Let us look at another example, Afghanistan, a country whose educated intelligentsia and the larger proportion of its middle classes live in diasporas scattered across the world. Many of them have taken with them what little they could as mementos of their rich civilisation—a textile woven for the wedding of an ancestor, a carpet that once supported a family feast, a piece of jewellery, or a powerful example of ancient Gandhara art. Such cases are aplenty. They force one to ask how valid it is to attach heritage to a place rather than to its people. After all, it is the people who make up the place, and these objects are now held by people to inform their identities in lands they now regard as home.
There is a vast Indian diaspora too, who similarly have a claim to their heritage in the US, Singapore, UK, Canada, or wherever they may now reside. Those governments, too, have to be seen as inclusive, and showcase the heritage of these communities in their public museums. A much bigger question thus hangs in the balance: Does heritage belong to the land from which it comes or to the people who love it? In the past decades, redefining a “national” project has become necessary in a world where families and identities are hyphenated. People are Indian while simultaneously belonging to some other part of the world. Speakers of multiple languages, Indians identify with language groups—Punjabi or Sindhi, Nepali or Bhutia, Tamil or Tibetan—that are spoken by communities split between different countries. Then there is the extraordinary rise of mixed-race citizens in diasporas. Migrations of people will always be accompanied by a migration of their heritage.
Heritage moves when people move
Is identity linked more to a place or to a people? The current global climate, and indeed the entire history of migrations since the Second World War, should force us to acknowledge that heritage needs to move with the communities who seek to make other parts of the world their home rather than the land in which it was first made. Addressing this will require much greater investments by the governments of these countries to create frameworks for bilateralism in sharing cultural assets and shift the discourse to mediation rather than accusatory slogans of “theft”.
Robbing refugees and diasporic communities of their cultural patrimony to send it back to the nation state they fled can be seen as perverse by human rights activists (and the UNHCR), even though it may be permissible under the 1970 UNESCO regulations on heritage. Rather than the ownership of a cultural asset, globalisation should force greater resources to be deployed in the sharing of the knowledge that asset can generate. The co-production of knowledge is a better way for different nations to share the responsibility of ownership—whereby each can hold the other accountable to do their fair share. Heritage and museums will thus have to be viewed as constituting a “global commons”.
Museums preserve historical evidence of the ways in which religion and culture were practised in previous times, but this can also make them extremely vulnerable as they may demonstrate a past that is very different from the way traditions and religions are perceived today. In a country where perceived ideas of “tradition” outweigh the “facts” of history, museums are often the only places which can maintain the evidence, the safeguarding of which is onerous.
Over the past decade, this revelation of the difference between past and present has led to very serious attacks on museums and heritage sites all over the world, the most glaring examples being Tunisia and Syria. India, in turn, faces its own vulnerabilities and the museum’s security needs to be more than just physical, extending also to autonomy in management without which it cannot safeguard heritage.
Tipu Sultan’s tent on display at “The Fabric of India” exhibition, V&A Museum, London, September 2015. Is ownership linked to a place or to a people? | Photo Credit: JUSTIN TALLIS/AFP
Rescue and commandeering of artefacts cannot be the only way museums build collections. Our museums have to reinstate the habit of purchasing collections of national importance if the ethics of public-private partnerships are considered. Added to this is the fact that India is seeing unprecedented development work leading to an enormous scale of destruction of cultural heritage. Unless the government wakes up and supports urgent salvage operations to rescue archaeological records, we will only see greater lists of losses for which we ourselves will be responsible.
An adjustment of the present laws to encourage public disclosure, facilitate exhibitions, and allow purchases by Indian museums will encourage legitimate domestic trade and be effective in restricting the smuggling routes on which the illicit international trade depends. As awareness of art, history and heritage increases, it will in turn make the market more conscious about the authenticity of objects offered for sale while also demanding more of the museums.
Indians bristle when they see these things in beautiful museums abroad; they are filled with anger and a desire to bring them back. National pride and injury seem to be linked to ownership of heritage alone but not to the responsibility for taking care of that inheritance and mobilising it to inspire and train the next generation of curators, artists, and conservators.
Naman Parmeshwar Ahuja is a noted curator and professor of Indian art history and has published widely on the need for systemic and policy shifts in the governance of heritage and museums at various forums. Excerpts from his writings are summarised in the piece above.
The crux
- The repatriation of objects to source countries seems to be increasing
- Given the arguments and rationale for repatriation, museums have to extend themselves to being preservers of people’s histories and memories
- It is vital that museums produce the highest quality of research and publishing, at academic and popular levels, that is communicated and translated into many languages
- Museums in India have a dearth of specialists
- India has seemingly strong and noble laws to protect heritage; departments of archaeology to enforce them, and ministries of culture to administer them. Yet, these laws have been only partially successful over the past 30 years
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