India's stolen antiquities: An industrial-scale loot

It got overshadowed by the euphoria over Westinghouse's nuclear reactor deal, but one substantive takeaway of Narendra Modi's recent US visit was Washington's decision to return 200 stolen antiquities to India. Of the 200, the Prime Minister brought 11 back with him. The rest are to follow, although the exact schedule of the returns remains unclear, say officials in the Ministry of External Affairs and the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI). But clearly, several artefacts are on the way. DN Dimri, director of antiquities at ASI, who was in the US recently, says he examined 26 antiquities and 65 paper objects.

Eleven does not compare to 200, and yet it is not a number to scoff at. Consider that in the near four decades between 1976 (when the Antiquities and Art Treasures Act, 1972 came into force) and 2015, India has recovered only 18 stolen artefacts from abroad.

However, 11 or even 200 doesn't make much of a difference when you set it against the scale of loot. According to the ministry of culture records, 101 antiquities were stolen between 2000 and 2016 from 3,650 protected historical monuments around the country. But what about the pilferage from around five lakh unprotected monuments? National Crime Records data, compiled from FIRs registered in police stations across the country, reveals a more realistic figure – 4,115 cases of 'cultural property' stolen in 2010-2014. Of these, 1,130 cases were resolved, leading to recoveries, but there are still 3,000 unsolved cases in just these four years. Add to these statistics the thefts in obscure temples in remote corners of India for which even police cases aren't filed. In sum, the figure that experts give, of more than 10,000 objects stolen in the last ten years, seems a more likely estimate of the heritage going out of our country. It's "targeted loot on an industrial scale," says Vijay Kumar Sundaresan, a Singapore-based blogger and co-founder of India Pride Project, an organisation instrumental in helping bring back stolen antiquities from abroad.

No cops, many robbers

Heritage plunder is rife in India and loot estimated to be worth millions is conveniently labelled garden furniture and handicraft items and shipped out of the country. Once outside, these artefacts thrive on global networks between middlemen and art dealers across continents, finding place at reputed art auctions, in museums and in private collections. It doesn't help that ASI, the agency responsible for preventing thefts and retrieving artefacts, doesn't seem to have even basic checks in place.

"We love to talk about the greatness of our culture, but when it comes to preserving our heritage, we are very lax," says Mumbai-based Kirit Mankodi, an independent heritage activist. Mankodi runs a website called Plunderepast.in, in which he posts information about stolen artefacts and their whereabouts in museums and auction catalogues around the world. For instance, India does not yet have a dedicated law enforcement agency for heritage crimes such as Italy's Carabinieri or Cambodia's APSARA Authority. Tamil Nadu is the only Indian state with an active and dedicated police force, the Idol Wing, to deal with heritage crimes. At the central level, the Economic Offences Unit-VI of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) deals with offences related to antiquity; it registered all but one case in connection with Indian antiquities stolen and sold abroad in the 16 years between 2000 and 2016.

"Very few people have gone to jail for heritage theft in India," says Sundaresan, pointing to the infamous Waman Ghiya case. Ghiya was arrested in Jaipur in 2003 and 900 antiques seized from his godown in that city; investigations revealed many of these were stolen from temples. He'd colluded with employees of Sotheby's to smuggle them out of India and auction them there, claimed Peter Watson in his 1997 book Sotheby's: The Inside Story. In 2008, Ghiya was sentenced to life in prison and fined a paltry Rs70,000, but six years later, in 2014, he walked free after the Rajasthan high court quashed the term, blaming the police for "tardy investigation" and the prosecution for "failing to produce material evidence".

Staring at cold trails

Lack of photographic documentation is a crippling impediment in recovering stolen antiquities. But even with reported cases of theft where there are photographs of the stolen objects, the ASI does not put up the information on the Art Loss Register, an international body that monitors stolen and seized antiquities. As the Register offers such information free of charge to government agencies, it is mystifying why the ASI is so lax in not collecting information on Indian antiques put on sale at international auction houses – information that's public and easily available.

In contrast, proactive American investigators raided a Christie's godown in New York this March and seized eight looted Indian antiques. Among these were a 10th century stone panel of Rishabhanata, valued in the auction catalogue at $100,000-$150,000 and another 8th century panel of Revanta and his entourage, carrying an estimate of $200,000-$300,000. The Americans had tallied the images of these in the Christie's sale catalogue with those found in the files of antiques kingpin Subhash Kapoor, arrested from Frankfurt in 2011.

In fact, the present event – the ongoing process of the US returning 200 stolen antiquities – is the fruit of just one raid on the properties of 67-year-old Kapoor, an American citizen. A search of his now defunct Art of the Past gallery and Manhattan godowns threw up 3,000 artefacts, valued at over $150 million.

Kapoor has been in a Tamil Nadu jail for the past four years and even now, police forces in different states have not been able to unravel the extent of his India network. Just late last month, Tamil Nadu's Idol Wing arrested an 85-year-old art dealer named Deenadayalan, from whom it recovered 38 panchloha idols, 50 stone idols and 50 Tanjore paintings and wooden artefacts worth around Rs50 crore. Deenadayalan, say Idol Wing officials, had links with Kapoor and was probably behind the smuggling of an Ardhanarishwara idol from Virudhagereeswarar temple in Tiruchengode in 2002. Kapoor sold the idol for $3million to the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Australia in 2004; the idol was brought back by Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott in 2014. The government of Australia, informs Sundaresan, has ordered a review of the 1,500 pieces of Indian art in various museum collections to check for skullduggery.

Tainted objects, sullied reputation

Ironically, it is the Americans who have been more proactive. Led by the Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) department, 'Operation Hidden Idol' is probing every lead in the Kapoor case. But much work remains. For instance, most of the 11 returned antiques come from two museums in the US – Toledo and Honolulu – which have cooperated with the HSI in checking the provenances of artefacts bought from, or donated by, Kapoor, and have consigned those with dodgy histories. Several others, such as the museums in Hawaii and the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, are also in the process of or already have returned artefacts proven to be illegally-obtained. One artefact, the statue of saint Mannickavachakar, was given up by a private collector who was unaware that it had been stolen.

Museums being public bodies don't want to be associated with tainted artefacts and may feel a moral pressure to give them back. But what of the others that still lie hidden in private homes?

The only way to get these back and prove that the artefacts were looted are with the help of photographs and other evidence of their in situ presence in temples or museums and elsewhere. Unfortunately, India has a tardy record in this regard as well. In 2007, the government launched the National Mission on Monuments and Antiquities to enumerate, with photographs, all the monuments and antiques across the country. Officials estimated the figure to run into 70 lakh antiquities. The Mission was to have a tenure of five years, but seven years down the line, just over 15 lakh antiquities have been documented. That leaves more than three-fourths of our heritage wealth open to plunder. But does anyone care?

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Number crunching

101: Antiquities stolen between 2000 to 2016, as per the Ministry of Culture

4,115: Recorded cases of 'cultural property' stolen in 2010-2014 alone

3,650: Protected historical monuments in India

5,00,000: Unprotected historical monuments

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On the Yogini's trail

The 10th century statue of Vrishanana Yogini came back to India in August 2013 from France as a 'donation' from the widow of the man who'd bought it. It was taken from a temple near the remote Lokhari village in UP, which once had 20 similar deities with different animal heads. British journalist Peter Watson, author of Sotheby's: The Inside Story, visited the site in the early 1990s to find that 11 had been hacked away and the remaining, smashed. Watson had been tracking a goat-faced Yogini put up for sale at Sotheby's in November 1988. Sotheby's had acquired it from 'Fahrou Sham', a regular consigner of old Indian artefacts and clearly a dodgy character. Investigating the Yogini's trail, Watson discovered that Shams shipped out antiques with diplomats. "The Shams took their time amassing a great many objects — a whole container load — and then sent them out, perhaps when a diplomat was moving house," writes Watson.