The return of the treasures stolen from temples were announced during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Australia
Australia will return three ancient artefacts stolen from temples in South India, the country’s prime minister announced Friday.
In a return gesture, an Indian museum will return the remains of a First Nations ancestor it holds to Australia.
The repatriations were announced during Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s just-concluded visit to Australia.
The three antiquities housed in the National Gallery of Australia are being returned after police in the southern state of Tamil Nadu established that they had been removed from temples there and trafficked overseas.
One of them is the stone image of Shanmukha, the six-headed form of the god Karttikeya, known differently as Murugan, Skanda, and Subramanya. It was carved during the period of the Cholas, a 9th century south-Indian maritime empire that stretched up to present day Bali.
The other two items are a ceremonial metal trident, crowned with a figure of the goddess Bhadrakali; and a stone sculpture of Nandi, the sacred bull of the god Shiva.
Tamil Nadu police said in a statement that the artefacts were being repatriated under the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty and will be handed over to the temples from where they were stolen.
The skull of the First Nations ancestor in the Government Museum in Chennai was received in 1935 when India was under British colonial rule; and it had sent a skull of an Indian male to Australia in return. Such arrangements were common among colonial territories.
The ancestor’s remains will be “voluntarily and unconditionally repatriated” by India to their traditional custodians,” Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said in a joint press statement with Modi.
Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has made it a mission to reverse the cultural conquest of colonial British and other Western powers, who plundered India’s treasures for centuries with impunity. The Indian government has made it a diplomatic priority to bring back antiquities stolen or looted from India as it pursues its nationalist agenda – “history belongs to its geography.”
