Art

Stolen Treasures

by I.J. SINGH

Let us start with a given.

There is absolutely no question and little doubt that in the Indian Army attack on the Golden Temple in 1984, much priceless art and artifacts were destroyed.  There is also incontrovertible evidence that truckloads of rare manuscripts and relics were carted away by the army.

Now, over twenty years later, there have been sporadic demands by Sikhs that those relics be returned; there has been no response to date. This unresolved matter prompted me to cast a wider look at the art world  -  how art is acquired and how it ends up where it does.

Perhaps the most outstanding claim remains over the fate of the Elgin Marbles.  In the War of Victory against the Persians, Athens was destroyed.  Pericles led the campaign to rebuild it.  The Parthenon was constructed between 447 and 432 BC, and dedicated to the Greek goddess Athena; hence the name Parthenon Marbles.  In 450 AD, the Parthenon was turned into a church; a thousand years later, in 1458 AD, the Turks converted it into a mosque.

Lord Elgin was the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire in 1801 and an inveterate art collector.  The potentates of Constantinople were happy to "sell" him the art work of the Parthenon. Lord Elgin dismantled about 274 feet of the original 524 feet and carted away about 120 tons of it.  Now known as the Elgin Marbles, the art has a home in Britain, and has been restored  -  some say, ineptly.

Now two hundred years later, the Greeks want it back.  The art, they say, belongs to the people of Greece; it was looted by the Turks and illegally sold to Lord Elgin.

This is hardly the only story of stolen art, even if it is the most dramatic. 

During the Second World War, Germany plundered 427 specimens of rare art from Soviet museums and collections.  In the aftermath of the war, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., acquired 202 of those pieces.  Frances Taylor, then the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, claimed that "in this war, the American people have earned the right to such compensation as they choose to take it".  Luckily, other officials demurred and called such appropriation "morally untenable". President Truman agreed, and the material was subsequently returned.

But few cases end so simply or happily.

Peru wants the relics from the 500-year-old Incan city, Machu Picchu, returned from Yale University, which now houses them.  There is no question that they are well protected and preserved at Yale, and that it was an American, Hiram Bingham III, who made the hidden city known to the outside world.  The case for getting them back rests on the claim that the rightful owners of the relics are the Peruvians. They dispute that these artifacts are best preserved and studied at Yale, away from the culture of their origin.

Readers could not have missed the ongoing attempts to locate and return art that was stolen from the Jews during the Second World War.  Recovery and restitution are not easy matters, and the process remains unfinished.

Western powers have used a variety of sophistry to justify their plundering of vulnerable civilizations.  One only needs to look at the great Western museums and the endless collections of private art connoisseurs to realize the extent of their power in their heyday, and how ruthlessly they used it. 

Private collectors especially, and even museums, have often behaved as robber-barons in their quest for relics from across the world.  But it is now a politically correct world, and one counter-argument clearly says that if you didn't pay for what you took, then you stole it.

Similar arguments prevail in the case of lost and stolen Sikh art.  The Indian government removed plenty in 1984 from the toshakhana (treasury) and the Central Reference Library collections of the Golden Temple, and returned none of it.  The irony is that none of the art has so far surfaced in any national gallery, academic or private collection.  So, wherever it is now stored, it serves no purpose. 

Could it be that some of it has entered private collections of the political honchos or the generals of the day?  The pity is that there is no accounting of it.  True to the lackadaisical modus operandi in the Indian culture, no exhaustive listing of the missing artifacts exist; perhaps none was completed either by the custodians of the art when they had their opportunity, or by the army that stole it.

Like most empires of the day, the British Empire, too, was notably rapacious.  The very impressive collections of Indian art in British holdings do not surprise us. We remember collectors of Sikh art like Lockland Kipling and Lord Dalhousie.  When the British annexed Punjab, they did what they have done in much of the world that they ruled; they carted away art, relics, and many of the finer things of life.  Consequently, British museums have benefited from shiploads of  Sikh and Punjabi art. 

Countless hand-made phulkaris, shawls, paintings and examples of folk-art enrich British castles.  The aigrette (kalgi) that reputedly adorned Guru Gobind Singh's turban is now housed in the British Museum, along with many of his personal weapons.  Also found there is what may be the handwritten version of the Damdami Birh - the definitive rescension of the Guru Granth.  A painting of Guru Tegh Bahadur, said to be made during his lifetime was, for many years, in a museum in Bangladesh. And then, there is the Kohinoor itself ...

Now, many Sikhs worldwide are clamoring to have them returned to Punjab.  Is it best that art remain close to or embedded in the culture of its origin?  Not that I have any answers, but I do want to open that topic for exploration. 

Within the past decade, I have heard that rare manuscripts of early Sikh period have been lost or misplaced from academic libraries in India.  I also know that many historical documents like the Kartarpur rescension of the Adi Granth, the precursor of the Guru Granth, are the personal properties of certain families.  That makes them not so easily available to scholars.  This also means that they are not so well preserved. 

And don't forget the treasures that the Indian government and its army confiscated and misappropriated in 1984.  How well preserved, protected or available are they now? Some credible observers of the Indian scene indicate that a number of the stolen artifacts have indeed surfaced in the marketplace, and that some illustrated manuscripts, e.g., pothis and janamsakhis are being sold surreptitiously, page by page, at horrendous prices. I would not be surprised if some of that lode is on the market, albeit under the table; some might already have been spirited out of the country.

I understand full well that Sikh relics belong to the Sikh people, and not to any government or political institution.  The Sikhs now have an international presence; their religion and its artifacts speak of universal values in ways that have eternal meaning. 

Better yet, these markers of Sikh religion, culture and history are treasures of mankind. Art and artifacts best serve their purpose when they are freely available to people worldwide, to Sikhs and non-Sikhs alike, and where governments and foundations protect and preserve them for posterity.

Even beyond the constraints and consideration of preservation and safe-guarding, wouldn't a small Sikh museum, perhaps in Punjab, only limit and imprison them to a cultural/geographical enclave, when they really need and deserve the free marketplace of people from around the globe?

Could it be that trying to limit them into our tight little fist would only diminish us into a small toad with a constricting presence in a well of our own making?

[All images are of Sikh historical objects currently in British hands  -  Photos: Courtesy, Anglo-Sikh Heritage Trail. Top of this page  -  the legendary golden throne of Maharajah Ranjit Singh. Bottom of the page  -  part of the Kohinoor diamond, now ensconced in the Crown of the Queen Mother. Second from bottom  -  Illustration from a manuscript, depicting Guru Nanak and Mardana. Third from bottom  -  the sword of Ranjit Singh. Thumbnail  -  illustration depicting Guru Nanak, Mardana and Bala, from the Gutka of Rani Jind Kaur (Jindan). Home Page  -  a cannon belonging to Ranjit Singh's army.] 

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