Gods For Sale!

A collection of writing on IPPs #BringOurGodsHome initiative

Compiled by Anuraag Saxena*

Also featuring...

Devdutt Pattanaik

Neil Brodie

Duncan Chappell

Vijay Kumar

Nistula Hebbar

*Anuraag Saxena is based in Singapore, and is the Asia-Pacific CEO of World Education Foundation, UK.
He is passionate about Indian heritage and culinary-history, and is the co-founder of India Pride Project
(www.ipp.org.in).
He tweets at @anuraag_saxena

For thousands of years, our gods have been looted.

Nobody has bothered to bring them back.
UNTIL NOW

The Mughals plundered us.

Then the colonials.
Its time to #BringOurGodsHome.

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Contents

Gods for Sale! ............................................................................................................................... 4

Victims or villains?...................................................................................................................... 6
India is not alone ......................................................................................................................... 7
Why bother with icons? ............................................................................................................. 8
How Smuggled Indian Art Is Brought Back Home ............................................................... 9
Idol trackers elated as Ganesha set to come home ............................................................... 11
Part 1: The War on Terror... and other petty expenses. ....................................................... 12
Part 2: Indias Past for Sale....................................................................................................... 14
Part 3: Paramparasura Mardini ............................................................................................... 16
And finally... the victories!!! .................................................................................................... 18
How YOU can help us .............................................................................................................. 19

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Gods for Sale!

How India is losing the battle against the Heritage-Mafia
-

On the banks of the river Kaveri lies a small, dusty

village called Sripuranthan. Its not much to speak
of, except that it boasts of a temple complex built by
Rajaraja Chola, which for ages has been the nervecentre of the community. The Sripuranthan temple
is part of a huge temple-network built by the
Cholas in 9th century CE.
The village was pretty much off-the-grid till 2006
when the Nataraja statue was stolen from the
temple and smuggled out of India. What made this
loot interesting was:
a)
b)

It was sold for a staggering amount of US$

5 million (Rs 33 crores).
It was bought by the National Museum of
Australia (a government owned
organisation).

The Nataraja stayed lost and forgotten till 2013

when a bunch of private art-enthusiasts, called the
India Pride Project, located it and started lobbying
for its return. Armed with photo-evidence, papertrails and documentary-proof, this global team of
private-individuals used public and backdoor
tactics to bring the Nataraja back to India.
In mid-2013 nobody knew where this priceless
piece of heritage was.
By end-2013, the Australian government was
pretty-much open to return it back to India.
There was one small problem though. The Indian
authorities didnt take it back. Yes you heard that
right. The Indian High Commission in Australia
made no attempt whatsoever to bring the statue
back. Indias looted heritage was one again a victim
of, the not my job syndrome.
Are you wondering if the Nataraja ever got back to
India? Well of course it did. But not how youd
have imagined.
In an absurd twist to the tale, the Australian Prime
Minister Tony Abbott, brought the statue with him
to New Delhi (while on his state visit in September
2014) and personally gave it back to Narendra
Modi. This, after a year of wondering why Indian
authorities arent taking it home.
The Scale of the Loot
If you think this is an isolated incident, think again.
The US Government recently seized over 2,500
pieces of smuggled heritage valued at over $100
million.

By Anuraag Saxena

Experts estimate that thousands of Indian artifacts

have been smuggled out of India, of which about
10,000 can be easily traced and recovered.
But more significant than the financial value of this
loot, is the faith value. Temples have historically
been hotbeds of social activity. From the time a man
is born (annaprashan) till after he dies (atma-shanti
puja), temples form an integral part of our lives.
Like I had said in my INK video, By taking away
the deity from a temple, you take away its heart.
The video has since gone viral, and for good reason
(www.bit.ly/IPPvideo).
Government Apathy?
The University of Chicago organised a seminar in
New Delhi titled The Past for Sale: Protecting
Indias Cultural Heritage. This seminar was
attended by historians, academicians, artaficionados, heritage-experts and journalists from
across the globe. Guess who WASNT there?
Representatives from the Ministry-of-Culture and
the Archaeological Survey of India.
Oh and did we tell you, this seminar was at Rajiv
Chowk, less than 10 mins of a drive from the
Ministry?
This begets five basic questions:
1.

2.
3.

4.

5.

Why do other countries worry more about

restoring Indias heritage than we do
ourselves?
Why does the art-mafia consider India a
soft-target?
Why are our government institutions
inefficient when it comes to protecting and
recovering our heritage?
Why does a private group, like the India
Pride Project, take the mantle of bringing
home our Gods?
Why cant India have structures to reclaim
its lost heritage?

So, is preserving Indian Heritage a lost-cause?

So how SHOULD India protect its history?
While there are many hypotheses floating around,
the practical answer lies in a rather simple
construct:
a)

Allow good-samaritans to protect our

heritage: By allowing citizens to
participate in the process of
documentation and conservation of our
heritage.

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b)

c)

Make it tough for the art-mafia to loot

our heritage: By creating a National
repository and archive of high-profile
targets.
Make life hell for them when they do: By
creating an India Heritage Squad with
enforcement authority. Many smaller
countries have this, so why cant India?

Thats pretty much it. Period!

The simple question is Will Indian bureaucrats
and politicians take the right call and say Lets
give it a shot!.

The bigger question is this When it comes to

protecting our heritage, can the Modi government
risk making a wrong call? Can he go down in
history as a Prime Minster that could bring back
Indias treasures, but chose not to?
-------(This article was first published in Swarajya)
Anuraag Saxena is based in Singapore. He is passionate
about Indian heritage and culinary-history, and cofounded India Pride Project (www.ipp.org.in). He tweets
at @anuraag_saxena

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Victims or villains?
-

In September 2015, the National Gallery of

Australias (NGA) independent review into its 2008
purchase from Subhash Kapoor of the stolen
Sripuranthan Shiva Nataraja concluded that the
NGA had been the victim of a well-planned fraud
by Art of the Past. Well, true enough, the fraud was
certainly well-planned, and well-executed too, but
it was a fairly transparent one and should not have
fooled experienced museum professionals. Shady
art dealers are not in the habit of offering stolen
objects for sale with honest accounts of their theft
and trafficking. Lies and forged provenance
documents are the order of the day.
The NGA visited Kapoors New York Art of the
Past gallery in 2007 to view the as yet unpublished
and previously unknown Shiva Nataraja. Kapoor
produced three fraudulent documents purporting
to show that a visiting diplomat had purchased the
Nataraja in India in 1970, had taken it with him
when he left India in 1971, and that the diplomats
widow had sold it to Kapoor in 2004. The NGA
came away sufficiently convinced by this minimal
account of provenance to authorize the Natarajas
purchase the following year for $5 million. Was the
NGA a victim of Kapoors scheming? To answer
that question, it is worth remembering what was
happening in 2007 in the wider world of art
trafficking and museum collecting. In August that
year Californias J. Paul Getty Museum agreed to
return 40 objects that had been stolen and trafficked
from Italy. The previous year, for similar reasons,
the Boston Museum of Fine Art had agreed to
return 13 objects to Italy, and the Metropolitan
Museum of Art in New York a further 21. All these
pieces had been acquired with a respectable
provenance. All had been stolen and trafficked. All
were well-planned frauds, and widely publicized
as such, and yet the NGA does not seem to have
been paying attention, or else believed itself
unsusceptible to such dishonest trading practices.
And then it fell for exactly the same scam.
It is ethically incumbent upon museum directors
and their curatorial staff to conduct rigorous due
diligence when investigating the offered
provenance of a potential acquisition. But in March
2014, the Australian arts minister said with regard
to the Shiva Nataraja that the due diligence

By Neil Brodie

standards of the NGA were not in my view

sufficiently complied with on this particular
occasion. In other words, the NGA had been
negligent in its duty to validate the provenance of
the Nataraja, and in consequence had purchased a
stolen object for $5 million. Was this really the act of
a victim, as the NGAs review claimed, or was it
instead an act of institutional hubris by a rich and
powerful national gallery? Yet while the NGA was
lax in its conduct of due diligence, it was sharp
enough to obtain a warranty of good title as part of
the purchase agreement. In February 2014, it used
the warranty to initiate legal proceedings in the
USA against Kapoor for recovery of the purchase
price, claiming that he had fraudulently induced
NGA to acquire the Shiva by making
misrepresentations and false assurances concerning
the history of the Shiva. In September 2016, the
Supreme Court of New York ruled that the NGA
should receive $11 million in compensation for its
lost purchase price, plus an equivalent sum on top
for unspecified costs and losses. Why the NGA
should be awarded recompense for its own shoddy
due diligence and general negligent engagement
with the realities of the art trade, particularly as the
real victim, the community of the Sripuranthan
temple, has been offered no compensation, is
anybodys guess. Avaricious institutions such as the
NGA should be left to suffer the consequences of
their hubris, and the cost of their nemesis. In the
meantime, as the recoveries and returns of stolen
idols and other objects continue apace, due to
efforts of the civil society India Pride project as
much as to law enforcement or officially mandated
cultural agencies, many more museums will be
looking to make entries in the loss columns of their
accounts books. Victims or perhaps villains? Time
will tell.
-------(This article was first published in Organiser)
Neil Brodie is a Senior Research Fellow at the University
of Oxford. He has been researching the trafficking of
cultural objects for twenty years and has published many
books and papers on the subject.

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India is not alone

I am writing from the ancient Persian city of Isfahan
in the midst of a cultural heritage study tour of Iran.
Contemporary Iran is properly immensely proud of
its history and the cultural heritage treasures it has
produced and can now display. Even so, as my
study tour has progressed I have come to
appreciate how deeply many Iranians still feel
about the continuing absence of many of their
original historic treasures in foreign institutions.
The Louvre Museum in Paris, for instance, has
possession of the basalt stele containing the Code of
Hammurabi, excavated in 1901 by French
archaeologists and one of the earliest set of laws
ever discovered, while the British Museum in
London holds the Cyrus Cylinder, an ancient clay
cylinder containing important information in a
cuneiform script about the Persian conquest of
Babylon in 539 BC. The cylinder was excavated in
1879 by an expedition that was sponsored by the
British Museum.
Of course, Iran is far from alone in wishing to
repatriate cultural heritage treasures like these from
foreign climes with the ongoing dispute between
Greece and the United Kingdom regarding the
return of the so called Elgin marbles being perhaps
the most notorious and long standing illustration of
such claims. Regrettably, for many countries in the
Middle East the more immediate and pressing
current concern about their cultural heritage
treasures is to protect them from the threat of
damage, theft and destruction associated with the
armed conflicts consuming the region.
However, all is not doom and gloom as I believe
recent experience in both Australia and India
demonstrates. The well publicised events
surrounding the acquisition by both the Australian
National Gallery of Art [NGA] in Canberra, and the
Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney, of

By Duncan Chappell
numbers of rare and valuable Indian artefacts of
seemingly dubious provenance from the New York
City based antiquities dealer Sabhash Kapoor has
resulted in a searching review of the acquisition
policies and practices of both galleries, and the
ongoing repatriation of objects whose true identity
and place of origin can be established
authoritatively. Mr Kapoor at present remains
unconvicted of any crime and continues to languish
in jail while awaiting trial in Tamil Nadu. The
evidence to date suggests that he successfully
operated a very lucrative and sophisticated
business stealing artefacts from isolated, poorly
secured and documented locations and then
fabricated suitable background stories regarding
their purported provenance. The Australian
galleries were also far from being the sole victims of
these fraudulent activities.
The alleged extensive and long term criminal
conduct engaged in by Mr Kapoor and his criminal
associates is a timely reminder of the need for
rigorous due diligence to be exercised by all
involved in the antiquities trade to ensure illegally
excavated, exported or stolen objects do not enter
the market in the first place, or if they do they are
quickly identified and returned to their legal owner.
-------(This article was first published in Organiser)
Duncan Chappell, a lawyer and criminologist, is
currently an Honorary Professor in the Faculty of Law at
the University of Sydney, Australia. A member of the
Australian National Cultural Heritage Committee, and a
former Director of the Australian Institute of
Criminology in Canberra, he has also published widely
on issues associated with art crime and cultural heritage
protection.

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Why bother with icons?

-

I remember the time my friend took me to the

Kapaleshwara temple in Chennai. It took the two of
us almost an hour to reach the sanctum sanctorum.
No, not because it was crowded. But because we
were enjoying the vast range of Shaiva iconography
that decorated the temple from the gate through the
corridors right up to the innermost structure in
which was located the enshrined deity. Meanwhile,
dozens of devotees were rushing in to temple to get
darshan and rushing out to do their daily chores.
No one seemed interested in, or even aware of, the
sophisticated art that embellished the temple. This
art developed in India over 2000 years, was codified
in the Agamas, and was meant to communicate the
Vedic view of life.
Somehow art appreciation is not seen as a religious
or spiritual activity. The common man is
conditioned to be common by rejecting all things
deemed even slightly intellectual. But art
appreciation is not an intellectual activity; it is a
visceral activity. By looking at iconography we let
the art evoke aesthetic sensations (rasa) and
emotional outpourings (bhava) in our body. This is
a valid means of non-cognitive transmission of the
divine idea directly into our beings. Like
champagne and caviar, even single malt whisky, art
appreciation is an acquired taste, a sign of high
culture. This is why art was so important in
Hinduism. And it was made available to all.
I have seen many people bristling with rage at the
idea that Muslims broke Hindu temples and the
British stole icons from India and took them to
England, or that smugglers are stealing temple
icons today and selling them in the antique black
market. But I have seen very few who bristle at the
thought that neither they nor their children have
any clue about art appreciation of Indic
iconography. Yes, they may be able to distinguish
Durga from Lakshmi thanks to calendar art, but can
they distinguish Chamunda from Charchika, or
Yoga-Narasimha from Lakshmi-Narasimha?
At an Indian consulate in a foreign country, a few
years ago, I saw a Shiva Pinaka-dhari (bow holding
Shiva) Chola bronze statue being identified as
Vishnu. Cant you see the third eye? I asked the
local official. The official did not know how to react.

By Devdutt Pattanaik

He clearly was clueless . Sir, please dont tell

anyone or we will all get into trouble, is the only
thing he said. And so, Shiva still remains Vishnu,
no thanks to a culture department full of officials
more interested in bureaucracy than art
appreciation.
We can blame the government and the education
system, but how many parents actually take their
children to museums, or temples, and play the
game of let us identify this god. How many Jain
parents can actually take their children to a Jain
mandir and together decipher the symbols of the
various Tirthankaras, and identify the various
yakshas and yakshis? How many of us know the
difference between Gandharan Buddha and
Mathura Buddha? Do we even care to find out
where is the oldest stone image of Ram and Krishna
on a temple wall? And no, it was not 5000 years
ago, and certainly not on the banks of the now-dry
Saraswati river.
And then when Euro-American scholars write
about these icons, and call themselves experts, and
Euro-American universities and museums publish
their works in books with high production value,
the bristling, the rage and outrage, of patriotic
Indians unleashes itself once again. In other words,
our icons have been reduced to property.
Possessing them is more important than
appreciating them. That is tragic.
As long as we do not appreciate our art, we will
never notice that they are missing from temples.
What gets lost is not a sacred object but a source of
wisdom, and beauty, an idea carved in stone, a
moment of history frozen in time. Yes, we want to
bring back the plundered treasures back home. But
once home, can we spend some time looking at
them a bit more curiously?
-------(This article was first published in Organiser)
Mumbai-based Devdutt Pattanaik has written 30 books
and over 700 articles on the relevance of sacred stories,
symbols and rituals in modern times. To know more visit
devdutt.com

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How Smuggled Indian Art Is Brought Back Home

-

The India Pride Project an online volunteer

group is determined to bring back
priceless artifacts smuggled out of India. A look at
how they brought back a beautiful bronze work
from a museum in the US.
Subhash Kapoor, an art smuggler, is accused of
running a major smuggling racket from South
India. He has helped many international collectors
and museums illegally acquire millennia old Chola
bronzes and exquisite sculptures. Ongoing
investigations have led to the discovery of 2622
items worth Rs 800 crore smuggled out of India.
Despite all this collectors and museums across the
world are refusing to divulge information about
their illegal acquisitions of valuable Indian art.
The India Pride Project, a volunteer group set up
after the Indian governments shoddy
investigations and lame attempts to bring back
smuggled art treasures frustrated, has taken to
social media and online activism. Over the last four
years, this group has painstakingly built a volunteer
sourced image archive of Indian art works now
being housed in overseas museums and art auction
houses.
The results of these exercises have been startling
notable since the CAG performance audit report of
2013 paints a sad picture of how the custodians and
legal authorities have been unable to bring back to
India even a single smuggled artifact since 2001.
The groups activism has ensured the return of art
works like Sripuranthan Nataraja, Vriddchachlam
Ardhanari (brought back from Australia), the
Sripuranthan Uma and more. These have been
returned with much fanfare during the visits of
heads of state/government of Australia/Germany.
You can see pictures of Modi with the returned
Nataraja, Angela Merkel handing over the Kashmir
Valley Durga (housed in Stuttgart) below.
One of the toughest cases to crack for the group was
that of the Alingana Murthy from the Ball State
Museum. In July 2015, the group broke the story of
the Ball State University Museum of Arts
acquisition of the Chola Bronze Alingana Murthy
Shiva embracing his consort Parvathy. This
exquisite piece of art, at least a millennium old, was
acquired through Subhash Kapoors smuggling
network.
The Alingana Murthy bronze
The India Pride Project knew from its experience of
dealing with dubious artwork related projects that

S Vijay Kumar
all related paperwork provided in such cases are
dubious.
What set the group up with this artifact was its date
of acquisition and the fact that it had a beautiful
Tamil inscription on its base which read
Tipambapuram sivgai nayagar ( loosely translates
to Shiva, the lord of Tipambapuram)
Inscribed Chola bronzes are rare and to find one in
this condition should have been a hotly discussed
topic by scholars. However, the said bronze never
came up in any discussion, paper, publication or
exhibition till it was bought by the Museum. This
must have raised a red flag immediately.
It was on this basis that the group raised serious
doubts about the credibility of any provenance
paperwork (indicating where the artwork came
from and how it was acquired) work provided by
the now defunct gallery. The response from the art
gallery was that all due diligence had been carried
out during the time of acquisition.
We understand that the University has now handed
over the bronze to Homeland security America as
part of a larger restitution process to India.
We can now reveal more information as to why the
museum has changed its stand, with information
obtained from persons who are in the know of the
Kapoor operations. The bronze has an apparent
provenance paper authored by the previous owner
Dr. Leo S. Figiel dated April 13, 2005, where he
claims to have purchased the small Chola figure of
Shiva and Parvati from a European collector in
1969. (Dr. Leo Figiel, was a well known collector of
Indian vernacular art ( is now deceased died Feb
2013) and is now suspected of having a working
arrangement with Subhash Kapoors activities.)
Citing year of acquisition as 1969 is a very
convenient and off repeated ruse seen in many fake
provenance cases. 1969 is the cut-off year for the
UN statue on Protection of Cultural Property which
regulates arts and cultural property acquisitions.
Most unscrupulous dealers try and pass off fake
documentation with a pre-1970 date.
But at-least for Indian antiquities, the 1969/70 cutoff is no holy grail. There are other legal provisions
for ensuring the return of smuggled artifacts. These
include the Antiquities and Art Treasures Act, 1972
which can be read in addition to Ancient
Monuments Preservation Act, 1904, the Ancient
Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains
Act, 1958 or even the Indian Treasure Trove Act of
1878.

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That the bronze was never exhibited or published

till the Museum purchased it, and the fact that the
provenance letter itself is pretty vague should have
raised serious concerns if not earlier atleast after
Subhash Kapoors arrest in 2011.
We now have images of the Shiva-Parvathy bronze
in what appears to be a pre-repair condition. The
color photograph is not from 1969. Further, the soil
encrustations and damage are akin to those usually
seen with freshly excavated bronze hoards. An
expert collector especially of the stature of Dr Figiel
with published works on Indian Metullurgy and
Arms especially given his seminal work On
Damascus Steel in 1991, would have known that a
bronze fresh from such an excavation in this
condition must be immediately cleaned to stop
advent of any bronze disease. He would have
cleaned up the bronze as soon as he had acquired it.

multiple centuries old bronzes. Some constitute

entire bronze sets from temples buried to prevent
them from the onslaught of iconoclasts in the mid
14th century. We might never know where this
particular bronze work of Alingana Murthy was
found. We might never know if any other bronze
works were found along with it and smuggled out
of India.
Hundreds of bronze works like the Alingana
Murthy were buried for centuries and were almost
lost to the world because those who buried them
probably died during the invasions. The Alingana
Murthy and Parvathi are coming back home to take
their place thanks to the India Pride Project.
Hundreds of other priceless Indian art treasures
await their turn.
-------(This article was first published in Swarajya)

We keep finding such buried treasures routinely to

this day in South India. Such discoveries yield

Vijay is a shipping professional working in Singapore.

He is an avid heritage enthusiast and runs poetryinstone,
a blog aimed at promoting awareness of Indian art.

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10

Idol trackers elated as Ganesha set to come home

India Pride Projects three-year labour fructifies
-

On Tuesday, the U.S. government handed over the

Chola age Sripuranthan Ganesha idol and 200 other
stolen Indian artefacts to Prime Minister Narendra
Modi, with U.S. Attorney-General Loretta Lynch in
attendance.
Behind the photo-op in Washington is a potboiler of
a story, spread across continents, involving the
governments of India and the United States,
policemen in Tamil Nadu and a voluntary group
the India Pride Project (IPP), to bring the Ganesha
idol home.
Blogs come in handy
Speaking to The Hindu, co-founder of the IPP
Anurag Saxena said the return of the idol was a
three-year labour of love for the group. It was in
2013 that his IPP colleague, Vijay Kumar
Sundaresan, an accountant in the shipping sector,
matched the photograph of the idol taken by the
French Institute at Puducherry (IFP) with that of an
idol housed in the Toledo Museum of Art (TMA) in
Ohio, United States. His blogs, both on his own site
and at IPP, piqued the interest of the local press
who contacted the TMA over the stolen idol. In an
ongoing investigation by the U.S. Homeland
Security department into art dealer Subhash
Kapoors questionable dealings, the Ganesha idol
was among the many object darts found to be
stolen and housed in museums across the world.
Mr. Kapoor is undergoing trial in Tamil Nadu in
various cases of idol thefts. The role of Brenton
Easter, who heads the antiques division at the
Homeland Security Investigation (HSI), was crucial
in this matter.
The role of groups like ours is basically knowing
that an artefact of this kind has gone missing and
establishing that it is missing, like filing FIRs and
getting the law enforcement agencies in. Then come
the investigations into where these artefacts may
have landed up, matching photographs, contacting
people in the art world etc. The final restitution
demand and its acceptance are between
governments, said Mr. Saxena, otherwise working

Nistula Hebbar

as the Asia Pacific CEO for the World Education

Council in Singapore.
Decisive pictures
In the case of the Ganesha idol, Mr. Sundaresans
tip off and painstaking matching of pictures
(showing at least 19 similarities between the idol in
Toledo and the picture kept by the IFP) were
decisive in terms of establishing that the art work
was stolen.
Mr. Saxena, in fact, spends the first week of every
month in New Delhi meeting with officials in the
Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) and the
Ministry of Culture to push for more such
restitutions. We are a group of volunteers and
term ourselves a network rather than any thing
else, he said.
When idols like the Nataraja at Brihadeeswara
temple that was recently returned by the Australian
government or even the Ganesha idol are stolen
from temples, it is not just a theft of our material
resources, the whole community suffers as a result,
because of the violation of the belief systems that
take place, he said. The governments role is
important, but it cannot do everything, he said.
Mr. Saxena adds that the 200 artefacts returned by
the U.S. government were very significant. This
set of artefacts is highly representative of wares
sourced from various dealers, therefore it can allow
the Indian Government to prosecute them
successfully. It also covers not just new thefts, but
old ones as well and from all parts of the country,
he said.
Its a start, and we hope that it does not sink back
to tokenism in diplomacy, he added. Our Gods
are coming back, they should be welcomed, Mr.
Saxena added.
-------(This article was first published in The Hindu)
Nistula Hebbar is an Indian journalist and EditorPolitics in National Bureau of The Hindu.

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11

Part 1: The War on Terror... and other petty expenses.

(This op-ed is Part-1, in a three-part series on the heritage-mafia, terror-funding and national-pride)
-

Lets take a moment and go back to September 11,

2001. After the 9/11 attacks, USA decided to hit
back with all its might. An provocation that lasted a
few hours, has been followed up by decades of a
response. The war on terror has already costed
the US $2 trillion and will cost $6 trillion over the
coming generation. To put that in perspective, thats
about $64,000 per American family; way much
more than the average American family income for
a whole year.
It makes one wonder if the response was
disproportionate to what America saw as the
upside. Now, that begets the real question What
really IS the upside? Different theorists have offered
differing explanations, as to why Americans
decided to hit back so hard. Explanations ranging
from control over oil reserves, to political
exigency, to Hey, the US really hasnt won a war
since World War 2. They just need to showcase a
win.
While the control over oil explanation seems the
most logical, it is intriguing that the US has
excluded the real oil rich nations in that region
(Saudi Arabia, UAE, Iran, Kuwait & Qatar) from
such aggression. Backchannel diplomacy, trade
agreements and lobbying are significantly more
efficient ways to keep the oil flowing.
The most plausible explanation is quite simply, the
hitting back theory. With banks and financial
institutions and regulators housed in there; the
World Trade Centre represented at its very core, the
core of America Capitalism. That is precisely what
the perpetrators wanted to attack.
Symbolic Destruction
Destruction of symbols, is a huge part of any
conflict. Not to belittle the issue, but my kids make
sure they lick the last cookie on the plate. Dogs
mark their territory by urinating around it. Bears
scar trees in their area.
Humans, with their superior intelligence and
dexterity, destroy symbols of a higher order.
Therefore, in battle, the first thing you did was
bring down the enemys symbol their flag.
Jewish art was systematically looted by the Nazis.
The Bamiyan Buddhas were destroyed by Taliban.
More recently, ISIS razed Palmyra to the ground.
All of this, to destroy symbols and establish
cultural conquest.

Anuraag Saxena

So when the terrorists decided to bring something

down, they picked the Twin Towers; simply
because it represented everything they despised
about America. Because capitalism and progress
were core to Americas identity; the terrorists
decided, that core is precisely what had to be
brought down.
The US on the other hand, refused to look at the
war on terror in return-on-investment terms.
Their core was under attack, and they had to
protect it. No matter the cost.
Indias core identity
Now contrast this with Indias core identity and
how we respond when it is attacked.
While all our scientific and IT prowess has steered
our image away from the land of milk & honey;
India is still known and visited for its amazing
heritage. No mention of India is complete without
discussing the Taj Mahal or the amazing forts of
Rajasthan or the mesmerizing temples of Tamil
Nadu. In short, Heritage is Indias core identity.
That core identity, our heritage, has been attacked
for centuries. The Mughals plundered our forts and
temples, then the colonials did. This didnt end with
independence. It is estimated that, since 1947, India
has lost thousands of idols, maps, manuscripts, etc
to the illicit heritage trade.
And how does India react? Well, we choose to
showcase our tolerant side and strategic
restraint. Since Indias independence, we have not
brought even one significant heritage-criminal to
justice. On many an occasion, in different parts of
the world, I have been asked a variant of the same
question If India cannot protect its most amazing
assets, then what are you so proud of?.
India continues to languish with the out-of-date
Antiquities Act; and even if we were to update that,
it would be a toothless piece of paper, with no
enforcement-wing to enforce such a law.
So in the end, when people attack our core, they
know they will get away with it.
When USA and Pakistan share the podium...
Lets go back to the US for a moment. Clearly,
heritage isnt core to them, in a way it is to India.
Lets see how they respond to the issue.

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12

Democrat Bill Keating recently tabled a bill in the

US Congress - HR 2285: Prevent Trafficking in
Cultural Property Act. The strong Trump-Hillary
friction is no secret and a overall mood of adversity
(among political parties) prevails. GovTrack USA
applied an algorithm and predicted a 34% chance of
this bill passing.
However, something amazing happened on
September 22, 2016. This bill was passed 415-0. Yes,
you heard that right. Democrats and Republicans
got together, across the aisle, to publicly recognise
the issue, and decided that both parties need to
come together to deal with it. To back their intent
with action, they have always had the fairly
efficient Cultural Property Division under the
Department of Homeland Security, to enforce these
laws.
Having said this, one is aware of the naysayers that
will argue that heritage-protection is a first world
luxury, and India will get to it when we are done
with feeding our poor. Here sir, is a contrasting
example, specially for you naysayers.
Lets look towards our friendly next-door
neighbour, Pakistan.
The recently enacted KP Antiquities Act, 2016
increases financial penalty on heritage-crimes by 40
times (compared to last year). The law also

establishes the Antiquities Trade Control Wing to

regulate and monitor the illegal trafficking of
antiquities.
So there you have it a study in contrasts. Both the
USA and Pakistan have (a) a newly updated law to
deal with heritage-crimes, and (b) enforcement
wings to restrain heritage-criminals.
India has neither.
Personally for me, as a deeply patriotic Indian; its a
sad day when India needs to follow Pakistans
lead!!!

(To be continued: In part 2, we will discuss the scale of

the loot, and Indias insufficient response to this threat.)

-------(This article was first published in Sunday

Guardian)
Anuraag Saxena is based in Singapore. He is passionate
about Indian heritage and culinary-history, and cofounded India Pride Project (www.ipp.org.in). He tweets
at @anuraag_saxena

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13

Part 2: Indias Past for Sale

(This op-ed is Part-2, in a three-part series on the heritage-mafia, terror-funding and national-pride)
-

In March 2015, the University of Chicago organised

a conference in New Delhi titled The Past for Sale:
Protecting Indias Cultural Heritage. Scholars,
archaeologists, historians, and activists from across
the world discussed Indias heritage being sold on
the international market without legal
authorization. In short, Indian heritage being
looted and smuggled abroad.
While global experts got together to discuss this
deep-rooted plunder of Indias heritage, there was
one group of people conspicuous by their absence
the Indian Ministry of Culture, or for that matter,
any of its agencies (the Archaeological Survey of
India, National Museum, etc).
On the one hand, it may seen bizarre that global
experts convened in Delhi, but our officials couldnt
find the time to join them.
On the other hand, in a resource-constrained
country like India, one could argue that heritagetheft is not a serious enough challenge. One could
hypothesise that the government has other more
important priorities.
A hypothesis worth testing.
UNESCO estimates that 50,000 idols and artifacts
had been stolen out of India till 1989. Advocacy
group Global Financial Integrity estimates the
illegal trade of arts and artifacts is worth Rs. 40,000
crores a year. As an example, a single sandstone
sculpture stolen from Madhya Pradesh was worth
Rs. 100 crores in the international market.
These are not isolated incidents though. India has
lost thousands of heritage objects to the
international heritage-mafia. Idols, maps,
manuscripts, paintings, murals, etc are looted enmasse and find their way to New York, London,
Zurich and other playgrounds for the rich.
India has the dubious distinction of being one of the
biggest victims to this trade. A self-denigrating
victim, that has for long, allowed perpetrators to
loot our heritage. However, awareness of this rare,
even disgraceful, honour is missing in most
Indians minds. In one word theres the problem
Apathy!
Its not just about the money, honey.
In February 2015, the United Nations Security
Council (UNSC) expressed its concern that the
Islamic State (ISIS) are generating income from
engaging directly or indirectly in the looting and

Anuraag Saxena

smuggling in cultural heritage items () to support

their recruitment efforts and strengthen their
operational capability to organize and carry out
terrorist attacks.
As a response, the UNSC adopted its resolution
2199, formally recognizing art and antiquities
trafficking as a terrorist financing tool.
In August 2015, the Federal Bureau of Investigation
(FBI) issued an advisory stating, Purchasing an
object looted and/or sold by the Islamic State may
provide financial support to a terrorist organization
and could be prosecuted under 18 USC 233A.
German Commissioner for Culture (Deputy
Minister) Monika Grtters, made a public statement
earlier this year, stating she is working towards
curbing such financing by pushing for stricter
regulations on artifacts entering Germany. She
made it a point to emphasise to the international
community, We must act against this trade..
Interpol has a dedicated Art-Crimes Wing based in
Lyon, France. They have an enviable database of
about 50,000 stolen heritage-objects. Enforcement
authorities across the world use this database on a
regular basis to track and recover stolen heritage.
India unfortunately, neither contributes to this
database, nor leverages it to track heritage-crimes.
Bombs for Ganeshas
While most of these responses and sanctions were
directed towards curbing terror-funding, we must
not forget that the heritage-mafia is a globally
networked ecosystem. It really does not matter if an
artifact was looted from Cambodia, Egypt or India.
Most of these looted-objects share the same
shipping-agents, trade-routes, hawala agents,
auction-houses and art-dealers.
It is an intricate network of regenerative tentacles,
where one tentacle feeds the other. When you cut
one off, another grows in its place.
The only way out is to have an impenetrable
defence mechanism. The only way is to enforce,
with an iron hand, when any such perpetrators are
caught.
If we dont, then as the UN says; we should be
ready for our heritage to be sold, for bombs to be
bought.

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14

(To be continued: In part 3, we will discuss a

comprehensive strategic response to the threat of
heritage-destruction.)
--------

Anuraag Saxena is based in Singapore. He is passionate

about Indian heritage and culinary-history, and cofounded India Pride Project (www.ipp.org.in). He tweets
at @anuraag_saxena

(This article was first published in Sunday

Guardian)

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15

Part 3: Paramparasura Mardini

(This op-ed is the third and final part, in a three-part series on the heritage-mafia, terror-funding and national-pride)
-

Legend has it that Mahishasura, the most powerful

in the Asura kingdom derived his powers from
Lord Brahmas boon. Mahishasura had asked for
immortality, but Brahma watered it down to a boon
where Mahishasura could not be destroyed by
man, god, demon or beast. Mahishasura, in all his
arrogance, ignored that woman was not part of
this list.
Armed with this boon, Mahishasura started a
campaign to conquer the three worlds and went
about destroying the gods (devas). The citizens of
devaloka resisted, but were driven out of heaven.
They rushed to the higher gods for help.
Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva and the citizens of devaloka
pooled their powers together, and from it was born
Durga. Each of her arms held a weapon gifted by
the gods. Brahmas kamandala, Vishnus chakra and
Shivas trishul. A long battle ensued in which Durga
finally vanquished Mahishasura; and restored order
in the three worlds. Thereby earning her the
moniker, Mahishasura Mardini.

terminate the destruction and peddling of our

heritage?
The answer simply is to form alliances like Brahma,
Vishnu and Shiva did with citizens of devloka, to
bring down Mahishasura.
I suggest a five-point collaborative-framework to
stem these Paramparasura:
1.

2.

In short, what could not be achieved either by

citizens (of devaloka), or the gods alone; was
achieved when they all got together against the
common enemy.
Now, lets draw a parallel with our modern-day
asuras in the heritage-mafia. Lets call them
Paramparasura, the destroyers of parampara
(heritage).
Paramparasura are the almost invincible asuras that
loot and destroy temples and forts across India.
Like Mahishasura, they have derived their powers
from a boon of perceived invincibility. A lack of
consequence or punishment, notwithstanding how
much they plunder.
Armed with this boon, the Paramparasura have run
a very lucrative enterprise of destruction; exporting
stolen Indian heritage across the world, where it is
sold for millions. This destruction by the
Paramparasura has run unabated for the last 70
years, even if we were to ignore the preindependence era. Government agencies, the
police, citizens volunteer-groups and others have
carried on independent efforts but have failed
rather miserably.
It really is an existential crisis for Indian heritage.
The question is this. Do we, as a nation, let
Paramparasuras prosper, or do we destroy them
once and for all? If we do choose to destroy them;
then what can we, as a nation, do to permanently

Anuraag Saxena

3.

4.

Heritage Squad: Lets take an example of

cyber-crimes. We dont expect an average
policeman to solve cases of computer-hacking,
phishing or identity theft. Why? Because these
are sophisticated crimes that needs
sophisticated skills. Similarly, heritage-crimes
involve international players, multiple
currencies, complex shipping routes and reams
of documentary evidence. Unless we have a
separate enforcement wing with specific
expertise in this area, we are unlikely to ever
solve heritage-crime.
Updated Legal Frameworks: Indian heritage
and antiquities are protected by a law, that is
considered out-of-date by the Minster-ofCulture himself. While there is widespread
debate on the components of the updated bill
to be placed in Parliament, there is no debate
on whether we need a new one. I sincerely
hope, we learn from the rest of the world and
incorporate best practices that have worked in
various countries. Like I said in part-2 of this
series. If Pakistan can do it, so can we.
National Heritage Archive & Database: Not to
be dramatic about it, but a ration-shop owner
today, knows what stock and assets he has in
his ration-shop. It is paradoxical then, that we
as a nation, have no comprehensive public
record of our heritage-assets. Not only will
such a database help in building a disincentive
for the heritage-mafia (knowing that they cant
dispose off a stolen artifact, as its record exists
somewhere); but will be matter of great pride
for heritage-enthusiasts and citizens to refer to.
Diplomatic efforts & International
Partnerships: India is not alone in this battle.
Since the UNESCO Convention on Cultural
Property 1970, numerous nations have built
structures and shown a very serious intent of
curbing heritage-crimes. In the last two years
alone, five different countries have returned
Indian heritage back to us. Of course, with
effort from the Ministry of External Affairs.
However, such restitutions cannot be ad-hoc
affairs, neither should they stay limited to a
handful of numbers, as it is now. India needs

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16

institutions and structures that build bridges

with their international counterparts, and turn
ad-hoc restitutions into a process. The world
has taken a step towards India. It is time we
reciprocated.
Public Private Partnerships (PPP): It is
heartening to see the current governments
focus on bringing in private-enthusiasm to
solve public-issues through PPP models.
However, why limit PPP models to
developmental and financial projects? Why not
build PPP models in the social and cultural
space as well? This is a emotional subject that is
close to peoples hearts. This is also a subject
where many privately run groups, India Pride
Project being one, have shown (a)
demonstrated success, and (b) established
international relationships. If we invite private
experts to run our ports, highways, schools and
hospitals then why not bring in private experts
to save our heritage?

It will come as a surprise to nobody, if one or two of

these measures are adopted and the rest ignored.
Soon thereafter, the effort dies a natural death,
simply because it wasnt structured comprehensive
and robust enough to begin with.

Having made these points, the biggest risk is this half-measures and half-solutions. Bureaucratic halfheartedness very often ensures that boxes are
ticked, without it ever bringing the change it was
meant to. As Prof. R. Vaidyanathan humorously
puts it, Operation is successful, but patient is
dead.

Anuraag Saxena is based in Singapore. He is passionate

about Indian heritage and culinary-history, and cofounded India Pride Project (www.ipp.org.in). He tweets
at @anuraag_saxena

5.

The real question is this can we as Indians, sit by

and let our heritage keep getting destroyed
(emphasis on the present continuous tense);
especially when we knew that it is so easy to solve.
When we know we can all be Paramparasura
Mardinis.
If a Mahishasura could be destroyed when citizens
and their rulers got together; what chances do mere
mortal Paramparasuras have?

-------(This article was first published in Sunday

Guardian)

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And finally... the victories!!!

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How YOU can help us

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19