International
H e r i ta g e for
Sale One positive fallout of the warming relationship between India and Australia has been the return of priceless antiquities to India that had surreptitiously ended up in Australian art galleries.
I Sarosh Bana Correspondent
n a move that sought to bring an end to an international art scandal of vast implications, the Australian government announced that it would be returning a stolen Kushan period Buddha statue dating back to the 2nd century BC that had surfaced in Canberra’s National Gallery of Art (NGA) in 2007. The Gandhara and Mathura schools of art had flourished during the reign of the Kushan dynasty that had ruled over most of the northern Indian subcontinent, Afghanistan and parts of Central Asia between the 1st and 3rd centuries BC, and which had been instrumental in spreading Buddhism in Central Asia and China. Canberra’s decision was prompted by New Delhi’s request for a service of process on grounds that the red sandstone Buddha, originally from the northern region of Uttar Pradesh in India, had been stolen and sold fraudulently to Australian authorities. Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott has on several occasions stated that improving relations with India was high on his priority list and one of the ways he has reached out to the Indian government is by returning stolen artefacts smuggled out of India. Heeding a long-pending request from India, Abbott had used his state visit there last September to hand over to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi two antique statues of Hindu deities that were on display in Australian galleries, including the NGA, after having been stolen from temples in Tamil Nadu. One sculpture was of Ardhanariswara, which represents Shiva in half-female form, and dates back to the 10th century, while the other was of Nataraja, the dancing Shiva, belonging to the Chola dynasty of the 11th-12th century. The bronze statue of Nataraja was acquired by NGA in 2008 at a price of $5.1 million from Subhash Kapoor who ran the Art of the Past gallery at 1242 Madison Avenue, at 89th Street, in New York. Kapoor, an American citizen born in India 63 years ago, was arrested in Germany in 2012 and subsequently extradited to India on charges of burglary and smuggling of Indian antiquities. The Manhattan district attorney’s office also has a warrant for his arrest in the United States on charges of possessing stolen property, with investigators having seized more than $20 million worth of Asian antiquities from storage units in Manhattan linked to him. Many of these ancient bronze and sandstone statues
were found to have been looted from temples in India. The Ardhanariswara stone statue was purchased for $280,374 by the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 2004. “Returning the sculptures is a testimony to Australia’s good citizenship on such matters and the importance with which Australia views its relationship with India,” Abbott’s office has said. Modi and Abbott have a good personal rapport and this has given an impetus to bilateral relations. The 63-year-old Bharatiya Janata Party leader of India and the 56-year-old Liberal Party leader of Australia were elected to office within eight months of each other, and Abbott became the first head of government to be hosted for a standalone bilateral visit by the Modi government that came to power in May 2014. Last November, Modi also became the first Indian prime minister in 28 years to visit Australia. In a tribute to Abbott’s leadership, he said Australia was “no longer on the periphery of our region but at the heart of our thoughts”. While visiting India, Abbott had said: “The purpose of this trip, as far as I’m concerned, is to acknowledge the importance of India in the wider world, acknowledge the importance of India to Australia’s future, to let the government and the people of India know what Australia has to offer India and the wider world for our part, and to build on those stronger foundations.” The repatriation of the stolen Indian antiquities, however, raises a larger issue. And that is whether institutions like the NGA, which is a designated Australian Government Agency, can walk away from such episodes and be absolved of all responsibility, liability and criminality simply because they are returning stolen exhibits that they have purchased and/or publicly displayed. For instance, would Kapoor walk free if he were to return the ill-gotten antiquities? Illegal excavations and the illicit trade in cultural property have been flourishing just because this criminality, that desecrates a nation’s heritage and cultural wealth, is patronised, unwittingly or otherwise, by individual art collectors and national museums and galleries. Seeking to tighten its legislation of 2007 on the protection of cultural objects, the German government has noted that although it is “common practice for museums not to purchase cultural
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