THE monuments of ancient Nimrud and Hatra – the great historical sites of ancient Mespotamia – were destroyed less than a year back.¹ A fortnight after the attacks, the staff and tourists at the museum at Bardo in Tunisia were killed by right wing Islamic extremists who saw them as preservers and purveyors of idolatry.² These were followed by the further destruction of Palmyra in May 2015. Earlier in 2014 there was a shoot-out by a terrorist in the Jewish museum in Brussels.³ These stories are commonplace; archaeological sites, museums and artworks make for priceless targets. The destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan in 2001 appears only to have emboldened right wing forces to destroy more art and heritage – the rationale for their destruction lay not merely in the ignominious propaganda it accrued amongst lovers of history and art, but martyrdom and iconoclasm also remain persuasive phenomena.⁴ In India too, art and museums appear, with regularity, to cause offence to the currently held religious sensibilities of some. Communal tensions are rife, and religiously motivated censorship on art not uncommon.⁵

 

South Asia is encountering a pace of development never before seen in its history. More parts of India are being urbanized, more power projects being constructed, there is more industrialization, and ever expanding suburbs. As the population increases and more rural areas and hinterland are converted into urban spaces, archaeological contexts are disturbed forever. Most often no developer, even if it is the government, which is supposed to be the caretaker of heritage, ever reports the discovery of artefacts for fear that archaeologists may slow down or even 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 historic cities like Paris, Rome and London have used the opportunity of their metro development to create museums filled with pottery, coins and artefacts found during the excavation,⁶ we have been led to believe in Delhi that nothing was found while digging in Mehrauli in the shadow of the Qutub Minar, in Tughlaqabad, and under Chandni Chowk in Shahjehanabad.

 

The entire South Asian region has seemingly noble and strong laws to protect its heritage; it has departments of archaeology to enforce them and ministries of culture to administer them. Yet, these laws have only been partially successful over the past 30 years. These laws, procedures and institutions have now outlived their utility and become both regressive and counterproductive. No doubt they have been a deterrent to the export of Indian art objects. But they have rarely been successfully used to prosecute art smugglers or even allowed for the repatriation of antiquities once taken out of the country. If at all, the small handful of illicit art smugglers/dealers who were imprisoned/booked under it demonstrates how ineffective the current law has been, even as thousands (if not tens of thousands) of antiques have been exported since 1972, temples and old houses ripped off their ornamentation, entire sites pillaged to the point that they are rendered useless for archaeology.⁷

These laws are ostensibly created to preserve heritage so that our future generations can be informed of their identity. Yet, the first problem is that the laws which govern antiquities constitute only a small part of what informs cultural heritage and identity. And by seeking to regulate just that one aspect (which itself is beyond the state’s capacity to control), how can our nations imagine they are doing all what is needed to preserve heritage?

 

The larger casualty with urbanization is the loss of the cultural habitat of the village, agrarian roots and the ritual customs that are attached to that habitat. Where do we preserve the songs, rituals, material objects that these newly urbanized people’s descendants will need to learn about in order to know their identity and where they came from? Where do you keep those memories in a country that doesn’t have a definitive word for a museum in any of its own languages? Of two new words which are commonly used in North India – sangrahalaya, the Hindi word (of Sanskrit etymology) means a house that keeps/collects things. This definition leads us to think of the museum as a place that protects objects, and indeed most museums in India offer little more than a storage space. Public dissemination of knowledge is notably absent from this meaning. The Urdu and Hindustani word for a museum, ajaibghar – the house of curiosities where extraordinary things are kept – takes us in a very different direction, predicated as it is on the human emotion of curiosity, leading at least to infotainment if not knowledge production. In some places such as Bengal, the word jadughar, or house of magic, replaces ajaibghar. Although these words can be critiqued as incorrectly defining the role of museums as we see them today, both suggest the strategic and important components of what museums do and stand for, whatever additional functions they may have in changing times.

 

One major aspect of the problem is that we are perhaps expecting far too much of our museums and archaeology departments in India and the rest of the South Asian region. Like most cultures that were vulnerable and subjected to massive looting, stringent laws were enacted to stem the export of antiquities. The onus thus lies on the state in these countries to protect all heritage. However, the pace at which our heritage is being affected by modern development and being lost 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.

 

However, it is not easy for people to legally own artefacts privately; nor is it easy for the state to monitor all the antiquities that lie in these countries. The urge to collect art is as ancient an impulse as is the urge to make art; a strong domestic market for antiquities is thus the best means to curtail the illegal export of art. If art fairs, auctions and dealing in antiquities are incentivized in South Asia, a domestic market will be encouraged so that the only markets that presently thrive, that is, the markets in the western world, may be relocated to South Asia. A similar move has been seen in the past decade in China, where most of the world’s largest auction houses and art dealers have started selling their collections of Far Eastern art to Chinese people ever since this was incentivized by the Chinese government. China has also opened over 100 departments of art history in its universities so that there will be a higher quality of graduates to staff their archaeology and museum sector in the next ten years.

As part of the endeavour to create a legitimate domestic market, we will have to create the knowledge base that will allow proper assessment of objects. We will also have to spend great effort in preserving and protecting our archaeological sites. And it goes without saying that in addition to a robust domestic market we also need first-rate public collections in well tended museums. Museums and private collections are not at odds with each other; across the world (and in India) the generosity of private collectors has been the mainstay of museums.

The paradox is that laws made to protect heritage in South Asia have now become self-defeating. It is illegal, at present, for an individual with a keen eye who happens to spot a historical object to acquire it unless she can first verify that the vendor is licensed. Farmers regularly discover things in their fields; these are usually passed on to the thousands of middlemen who operate the art trade. Garbage collectors sell off old household goods in every city, and which keen collector has not gone scavenging for treasures amongst ragpickers, who must all, as per current regulations, seek licenses! The first links in the chain, thus, have no legal means to sell the objects they find, setting off a cascade of illegal activities.

The problems continue. Should people wish to own antiquities, they must register them with the Departments of Archaeology. Registration, collectors claim, is a cumbersome process. The extensive paperwork apart, the law demands that changes in the ownership of registered items must be notified to the ASI and that the ASI should be permitted to enter your home to inspect the registered items every three years. Furthermore, if the state wishes, it may compulsorily acquire an antiquity in a private owner’s hands. All of this is a disincentive for Indians to build collections of antiquities.

 

How can we fix this problem? The first step would be to change the laws that govern these matters. The current laws have been framed from the perspective of archaeologists. But an archaeologist is not the only person who is in charge of interpreting what is heritage, and civilizational memory. Their intentions are in fact shared by litterateurs, art historians, historians, anthropologists who also investigate issues of civilizational memory and heritage; however, these disciplines are not consulted when laws on heritage are framed. As a result, the concerns of one discipline outweigh others when formulating the knowledge on that discipline.

Archaeological research requires that sites must be preserved as wholly as possible, as objects outside their context reveal little of their civilizational history. Laws that are framed on this principle make it illegal for museums and collectors to buy artefacts as their purchase will, in turn, encourage the further pillaging of sites. One cannot slight this logic, but the nobility of this argument notwithstanding, it has proved, at least in India, to be impracticable where one of the main reasons for the despoliation has been the very legislation that was enforced to protect heritage.

 

Most source countries have some form of control over the export of archaeological material; these range from the pragmatic (the UK, Germany, the Netherlands) to the draconian (lndia, Greece, Turkey, Egypt). While discussing the ethics of collecting and trading in antiquities, James Ede, Chairman of the Antiquities Dealers Association of Britain, noted that the fiercest laws were passed at very different times, but were essentially chauvinistic, and it is interesting to note that in almost all cases they were enacted at a time of nationalistic revival (in Italy under Mussolini, in Greece following the war of Independence from Turkey, in Egypt under Nasser). These laws were designed to foster a belief in outside cultural imperialism, and are both a symptom and a source of deep emotional feelings. Emotion however, is a poor basis for legislation, and though these laws have proved remarkably ineffective, their emotional basis makes it difficult for the relevant authorities to adjust them in a way which might make them work.⁸

These laws are also by no means uniform. Whereas some countries (Egypt, Turkey) have taken the drastic step of ‘nationalizing’ all antiquities (even when privately owned for generations), others have allowed private ownership, and dealing, to continue. The latter case usually involves a strict embargo on export, and this has served to produce a false, two-tiered market.⁹ In India, the central government reserves the right (the Antiquities and Art Treasures Act, 1972: clause 19) to compulsorily ‘acquire’ any object, such that this ‘nationalization’ of legitimately held objects is tantamount to state theft. Collectors and dealers are thus left with no choice but to dispose off their collections by smuggling them out of the country. The law has had a diametrically opposite effect to what was intended. Adjustment to encourage legitimate trade would effectively restrict the smuggling routes on which illicit trade depends.

 

Instead of being so insular so as to constantly think about the situation in India and using those rules to see what happens in the rest of Asia, let’s actually use some very real historical examples to see what has been happening around India, the impact of which has been felt by India in no small measure. The law to protect antiquities is imposed by a nation. But what happens when a nation itself ceases to exist? This is what happened in the case of Tibet in 1959.¹⁰ The large exodus that accompanied the Dalai Lama to India, brought their movable cultural heritage with them. These were icons, thangkas, sculptures that went with the performance of rituals that were necessary for their religious identity and functioning. Terrible atrocities we know were perpetrated on what was left behind in Tibet, and untold quantities of that made their way to the international art market via China, Hong Kong, Kathmandu and Bangkok.

Let’s look at another example, that of Afghanistan. Another country where the educated intelligentsia and the larger proportion of its middle classes now live in diaspora, scattered across the world. Many of them have taken with them what little they could, as mementos of their rich civilization – a textile woven for a wedding of one of their ancestors, a carpet that once supported a family feast, a piece of jewellery. Both these very real and substantial incidents force one to question as to 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 are objects held on to by people to inform their identities.

 

A much bigger question hangs in the balance: Does heritage belong to the land from which it comes or the people who love it? In India, movable property like jewellery (and by extension utensils, textiles, objects) forms part of women’s traditional wealth (even covered in law under the term streedhan). Considering also that many tribal and nomadic communities may have a communitarian sense of land but value their material possessions highly and the fact that artefacts, paintings and jewels can command prices in the same league as land, a comparison with a similar situation with the Land Acquisition Act is appropriate. And while the abuses and failings of the Land Acquisition Act have come under severe scrutiny, art, which is of the same value and importance, seems yet to be a matter that Parliament has to find time to debate.

 

Footnotes:

1. Reported all over the world. For succinct summaries, see, Jon Lee Anderson’ s lament that the local population does not identify with these historical monuments: http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/isis-and-the-destruction-of-history; accessed on-line on 1 May 2015. Several writers, like Zainab Bahrani at Columbia have stated that such attacks have multiple reasons: ‘the looting for the antiquities market, which is an illicit international market, is very important to consider, because this is very destructive. But the blowing up of shrines and monuments on site is really horrendous, and this is a form of cultural cleansing, certainly, but also ethnic cleansing.’ View full transcript of the interview on: http://www.democracynow.org/2015/2/27/antiquities_scholar_islamic_ states_ destruction_of; accessed 1 May 2015.

2. A statement by the attackers of the museum described their act as a ‘blessed invasion of one of the dens of infidels and vice in Muslim Tunisia.’ See: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-31960926

3. http://www.thehindu.com/news/international/activists-is-destroys-temple-at-syrias-palmyra/article7575095.ece accessed on 25 August 2015.

4. As Faisal Devji says, ‘From spectacular attacks to sundry communiqués and beheadings, the jihad’s world of reference is far more connected to the dreams and nightmares of the media than to any traditional school of Islamic jurisprudence or political thought’ (p. 90). ‘Only in mass media’, he later amplifies, ‘does the collective witnessing that defines martyrdom achieve its full effect, as various attempts by would-be martyrs to film their deaths or at least leave behind videotaped testaments, illustrate so clearly’ (p. 95): Landscapes of the Jihad: Militancy, Morality, Modernity, Cornell University Press, 2005. [That it was not just Islamic society that promoted martyrdom, and that martyrdom is always meant to be seen and commemorated, and that it is something age-old, was hinted at by placing memorials to martyrs from diverse Indian traditions at the entrance, encouraging viewers to think about how importunate socio-political actions are exonerated in almost all religious propaganda.] Finbarr Barry Flood sums up the alienation that the divergent views on iconoclasm as propaganda and theological proscription in: ‘Between Cult and Culture: Bamiyan, Islamic Iconoclasm, and the Museum’ in the Art Bulletin 84(4), December 2002, pp. 641-659. For an instructive, larger discourse in the western art history, see, Willem van Asselt, et al. (eds.), Iconoclasm and Iconoclash: Struggle for Religious Identity. Brill, Leiden, 2007.

5. Tapati Guha-Thakurta, ‘Fault Lines in a National Edifice: On the Rights and Offences of Contemporary Indian Art’, in Sumathi Ramaswamy (ed.), Barefoot Across the Nation: Maqbool Fida Husain and the Idea of India. Routledge, New York and Oxford, 2011, pp. 172-197. See also, her: ‘Art History and the Nude: On Art, Obscenity and Sexuality in Contemporary India’, in Monuments, Objects, Histories: Institutions of Art in Colonial and Postcolonial India. Columbia University Press, New York, 2004, pp. 237-67.

6. A survey of these can be found at http://mic-ro.com/metro/archaeology.html, accessed 25 August 2015.

7. The cases of various 2nd century AD Kushan (Mathura) sites in Haryana and UP, Chandraketugarh in West Bengal, bronzes from Thanjavur district in Tamil Nadu, collections of manuscripts from various religious institutions’ libraries and the large-scale exodus of artefacts from Buddhist monasteries in the higher Himalayas are well known examples. Peter Watson’s book, Sotheby’s: Inside Story, Random House, 1998, famously recounts the instance of how a Mumbai based art dealer was imprisoned because a Channel-4 journalist carried a spy camera in her clutch bag through which she shot the scene of her interactions with an art dealer eager to sell her pink sandstone Kushan period pillars of the 2nd century AD, which they both agreed would look excellent in her London sitting room. The sale price agreed to was the same as what the dealer had offered for another pair of pillars from the same site via a Sotheby’s sale in London. On the facing page of the Sotheby’s catalogue that offered the Kushan pillar were a series of terracotta plaques from Chandraketugarh. Even though Chandraketugarh has been known to those knowledgeable on Bengal’s ancient history for over a century, it was common knowledge that the site had begun to be indiscriminately looted in the mid-1990s. Watson used the evidence from that sale to reveal the covert smuggling of Indian artefacts.

8. See a succinct summary of these views by James Ede in ‘Ethics: the Antiquities Trade and Archaeology’, in http://www.theada. co.uk/ethics.htm accessed 21 May 2014.

9. More on this can be read in Naman P. Ahuja, ‘India: A Tale of Two Markets’, The Arts Newspaper (London), No. 194, September 2008. And, Naman P. Ahuja, ‘Why is Liberalised India Smuggling its Heritage Abroad?’, The Hindu, 22 July 2012, http://www.the hindu.com/arts/why-is-liberalised-india-smuggling-its-heritage-abroad/article 3666911.ece accessed 21 May 2014.

10. Read Kavita Singh, ‘Repatriation Without Patria: Repatriating for Tibet’, Journal of Material Culture 15(2), June 2010.