This article was written by Catherine Hickley on August 9, 2023, for The New York Times. This extraction piece covers only the part from Nepal.
Nepal’s situation is different from that of the three countries above. Its heritage was not plundered in a colonial context: After a 1951 revolution overturned the totalitarian Rana dynasty that had ruled the country for more than a century, Nepal opened its borders to the world. Western academics and tourists bought statues and carvings looted by locals, often from temples in the Kathmandu Valley, then took their purchases out of the country. The trafficking reached a peak in the 1970s and 1980s.
Many of the looted objects have since entered Western museum collections via bequests and donations. “We are a poor country, and people saw how lucrative it was to sell their goods,” said Alisha Sijapati, the campaign director of the Nepal Heritage Recovery Campaign.
“Kathmandu was treated as an exotic playground. Communities lost something,” she said. “We rely on these statues — they have superpowers that help us with our lives.”
The Nepal Heritage Recovery Campaign, an activist organization, was established in 2021 and has already secured the return of more than 25 stolen religious statues, according toSijapati. Those include a 1,000-year-old sculpture portraying two Hindu deities from the Dallas Museum of Art. The campaign researchers have traced many more and are working toward their return, Sijapati said.
The group traces plundered statues around the world and uses social media to get tips, circulate photos of missing sculptures and carvings, and to publicize its campaigns. It passes its findings to Nepal’s Department of Archaeology, which in turn works with the foreign ministry to issue claims to museums or institutions.
Sijapati said the Nepal Heritage Recovery Campaign helps to streamline this process: “We try to do the homework very well so that their work is easier.”
Nepal has reached a clear conclusion about where its restituted heritage belongs — a subject of global debate in the light of Nigeria’s decision to give the Benin Bronzes to royal descendants. Where it is possible and desired, recovered Nepalese heritage is returned to the community from which it was stolen, since the sculpted figures have a spiritual significance; Nepalese Hindus believe that their gods live within the statues.
“We see the museums in Nepal as a transit point,” Sijapati said. “The circle of repatriation is only complete when the statues return to the community. The community has the final say: If they don’t want something back, it will stay in the museum.”
So, in 2021, amid great festivity, the sculpture from Dallas was restored to the shrine from which it was taken, in Patan, near Kathmandu.
At the return ceremony, Riddhi Baba Pradhan, a former director of Nepal’s Department of Archaeology, said, “Tangible heritage as represented by the statuary is vital in keeping Nepal’s intangible heritage intact and vibrant.” The sculpture is now protected by surveillance cameras and motion sensors.
Extracted from the article “How 4 Countries Are Preparing to Bring Stolen Treasures Home“ from The New York Times.