Experts concerned over damage of artefacts in Valley

Artists, conservationists, historians and cultural activists sent out a passionate appeal to experts within India and the international community on Wednesday for urgent help with the scientific rescue and restoration of damaged manuscripts, paintings, shawls and carpets, miniature paintings and other artefacts at the Shri Pratap Singh (SPS) Museum in Srinagar that had been damaged by the floods.

dna was the first to report the extensive damage of the Gilgit manuscript, a 6th century birchwood manuscript, known to be among the oldest in the world, which contains several Buddhist sutras.

Addressing the press conference held in the capital, Saleem Beg, former head of the Jammu & Kashmir chapter of the Indian National Trust for Heritage and Culture (Intach) and now member of the National Monuments Authority, showed visuals of priceless, 200-year old shawls hung out to dry on the pavements of the museum, with dogs walking over them. Museum officials had pulled them out of the mud and washed them in tap water — against every principle of modern, scientific conservation. "These ancient shawls, and textiles some of going back to the 2nd century, form the largest number of artefacts lost," Beg said. Among them was a shawl that had been presented to Queen Victoria on her coronation in 1837.

Highlighting the state of disrepair at the museum, Beg said that the SPS museum did not have a catalogue of the around 18,000 artefacts it possessed. "There are no names, only numbers, so it is very difficult to identify exactly what objects have been damaged or destroyed," he said.

While SPS Museum is administered by the state government, Beg alleged that the central government too had not been prompt in reacting to the damage. "Only yesterday, a three-member conservation team from the National Museum has gone to Srinagar. They will do an initial fumigation and submit an assessment report," he revealed.

SPS Museum, however, is not the only cultural institution to have been wrecked in the floods. Several important works of modern art, a collection that goes back to the 1960s when the artist GR Santosh held the first art camps in India in Kashmir, have also been lost, revealed Veer Munshi, artist. Paintings and sculptures by artists such as MF Husain and Bal Chhabda had been housed at the Institute of Music and Fine Arts, which was ravaged in the floods.