Sir Alexander Cunningham, the Bharhut Sculptures and the Law: Can India get back the Bharhut Sculptures

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books

Sir Alexander Cunningham, the son of the Scottish poet Alan Cunningham now all but forgotten, was an incredible archaeologist. As the first Director General of the Archaeological Survey of India, he excavated several important Buddhist sites in Northern India in the decades following the mutiny of 1857 and his Reports are still the most authentic Excavation Report/ Documentation.

The S S Indus

The visit of Sir Alexander Cunningham to the dusty plains of Nagod in today's Madhya Pradesh in November 1873 was a fateful one. For some years past, Sir Alexander Cunningham was reaing the travels of the Chinese traveller Xuan Zang in India, He probably read Beal's translation of the famous monk's account of his visits to various Buddhist Monatries in quest of the Pitakas, the Texts of Buddha's teachings. The purpose was to use the description of places in order to locate stupas constructed by the great king Ashoka after he converted to Buddhism. In Nagod Cunningham discovered the ruins of the Bharhut Stupa which he dated to the period from 250 to 200 BC. The unique feature of this Stupa was the detailed sculptures all along the Vedika or Pilgrim's Path illustrating the birth stories of Gautama the Buddha. Known as the Jatakas, the Barhut Stupa offers an almost complete corpus of Jataka tales,  Below I have illustrated two panels taken from the railings of the Stupa, now held in the Freer Art Gallery, Washington DC. The panel is a unique example of narrative art and these narrative panels Cunningham determined were the most unique feature of the Stupa. The newly invented art of photography was deployed with full vigour to make a visual record of the Stupa and the Military Photographer Captain Waterhouse was deputed for the purpose. Unfortunately the Archaeological Survey of India has neither confirmed nor published this unique set of records and the ASI must take the visual evidence seriously of it hopes to make a case for the repatriation of the Bahrut Sculptures. After the task of photographing the antiquities which included statues, railings, figurines, pillars, votive objects, terrocotta fifures and sandstone sculptures of Yakshas, Nagas and Devatas Cunningham decided to shift the antiquities to the Indian Museum at Calcatta now Kolkotta. His assistant Belgar protested saying that the "scheme carries with it a certain aroma of vandalism" and likened Cunningham's decision to carting away the Stonehenge. Over the protests of his field Assistant, the Director General had the entire lot shifted to the Museum built by the East India Company at Calcutta. He decided against the Asiatic Society of Bengal as the Society had not cared to display an earlier gift of a sculpture of Sravasti in an appropriate manner. The Raja of Nagod, of course was  gracious enough to present the entire lot to "Government" meaning the Imperial Government at 

Calcutta. A question that arises is: Was Sir Alexander Cunningham acting on his own or did he have the conset of the Secretary of State for India to relocate the sculptures. THe Museum in Calcutta still houses a large number of the Barhut Sculptures and Majumdhar has published a detailed monograph. Apart from Calcutta, Allahabad, Lucknow and the National Museum at New Delhi have a fe pieces taken from the "collection" of Cunningham. It must be stated that some of the pieces selected by Cunningham are extraordinarily valuable in that they carry in Kharoshti script the marks of the artisans who worked at the site. 

Sir Alexander Cunnigham reponding to Belgar's criticism about the "aroma of vandalism" justified his actions saying that he had "saved all the important sculptures'. He may have been right as the site of the Stupa was being raided for bricks and nearly 200 houses in and around Bahrut including the residence of the local raka yeilded traces of bricks, or spolia extracted from the Buddhist Stupa. But Cunningham was not done with the Sculptures yet. In 1886 he decided to send the best pieces to London and had them packed on SS Indus, an Ocean going Steamer registered with Lyods Shipping and Insurance. This copany had its headquarters in London. Wether the consignment of Sculpture was insured or taken as ballast weight is not known.

On November 9, 1885 S S Indus sank off the coast of Sri Lanka taking with it a rich treasure of Indian Cultural Property in the form of Buddhist Sculptures of unique cultural importance. Shri S M Nandadasa a Sri Lankan marine archaeologist has located the wreck and has published his priliminary findings. My point is: Does ndia have a claim on these Antiquities.

To be Continued in Part II

Sir Alexander Cunningham 1814-1893

The Politics of Memory and Remembrance: The Relocation of the Statue of Dupleix (1697-1763)

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books

"The voices are kinda garbled. Can't make sense  out of it.

"Probably a bunch of post medernist theorists"

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Adrian Praetzeliis, Death by Theory,London: Rowman and Littlefied Bublishers INC, 2011.

The Statue of Dulpleix in its original form and location,Pondicherry
               

The world is haunted by the spectre of the past. Statues are tumbling faster than the rate at which COVID infection is spreading. In USA alone 12 major Sites of Memory have been torn apart and the Blaack Lives Matter has another list of "heores" to knock down from their marble pedestals. So far the targets have been Confederate Statues and it is only a matter of time before other slaveowners like Thomas  Jefferson face the same fate.   In Richmond, Virginia, th statue of Jefferson Davis was pulled down on the grunds that memoralizing the Confederate leaders is a nod towards the Jim Crow Laws by which the Blacks/ African Americans were deprived their their basic Civil and Constitutional Rights. Fort Bragg another controversial name will be removed and American soldiers will not be permitted to display Confederate symbols on Army bases. Good. The Civil War was over more than 150 years ago, but the political and ideological heat it generated has been rekindled, all over again.

Public Memory is extremely volatile and can be made malleable to any hegemonic political or ideological agenda and both in UK and in USA we are seeing increasing evidence of Public Memory being recast in the image of a new political and ideological gloss of woke liberalism. Destroy the statues. The Past is rewritten. The injustice of the past, especially of Racism and Colonialism, was not borne by the citizens of the countries that are out on the streets protesting. The cost of Racism and its conjoined twin, Colonial Rule, was borne by non whites, Asians and Africans all over the world. Until we learn to write our own History, the agenda will always be set elsewhere. Like the Africanproverb that Wole Soyinka quoted: Until the lion writes its own Hstory, the Hunter will represnt the Hunt in his own terms. Historians are now leding their voices to the cacophony on the streets. The American Historical Association even said that the removal of statues "is not to erase History but rather to call attention to a previous interpretation of History". As society changes and new questions are asked of the past new perspectives emerge which as E J Hobsbawm states in his autobiography, Interesting Times  is the stuff of historical research/ Inquiry. That said: Is it possible to eradicate the Memory of the Holocaust on the grounds that th memory is too painful for an oversensitive people to carry. Is History a Nightmare from which we have to awake. No History is the painful, turgid, monotonous quest for a slice of time and therefore statues, books, documents and other artifacts all have a place in recreating the lieux de Memoire, Places of Memory, as Pierre Nora and Jacques Le Goff argued. And a Place of Memory, is a site of rememberance both good and evil which come with the human condition. With this background I want to examine the politics which led to the removal of the Statue of Dupleix from its proud site facing the sea in Pondicherry. And let us start with the statue itself.

Dupleix was the Govrnor General of the Frech Territories Outre Mer that included Pondicherry, Chandranagore and a few other parcels of land along the two coasts of India. He served in India from 1742 to 1754 as Governor and it was during his regime that Madras, the city of the English East India Company was captured in 1746. Much against his will the city was returned when the War ended.His regime, like that of the English East India Company, was notorious for its corruption. His dubash, Anand Ranga Pillai has left a detailed account of his Administration is the first record of scripted consciousness in India, in his Diary which has been published in 13 volumes. When Pondicherry was beseiged by the East India Company and its troops, Dupleix ordered the pulling down of a famous temple, the Veda Purisvara Temple, perhaps at the instigation of the Jesuit Priest, Croeduex. This fact is recorded in the Diary of Anand Ranga Pillai and not a "discuscive statement" as post colonialist would say. Unfortunately a cloud of amnesia has settled and no one remembers where the temple stood. However, Dupleix was the Governor at the time and that fact was seared in the public memory or Collective Memory. And it was waiting for an opportunity. The removal of Dupleix was over certain allegations of Corruption and he was led into the ship. t is said in chains.

How dis Duleix become such a hero to the French that a bronze statue was commissioned and installed near the Beach (we have provided a photo of the statue). The short lived Second Empire of Napoleon III, (first time a tragedy second time a farce, in the words of the bearded prophet) that came to power in 1848 after the collapse of the Revolutions that swept across Europe in that year, wanted to proclaim its status as a "Great Power" by high lighting the imperial conquests and Pondicherry was natrually the choice for commemoration as it was in French hands and after the Peace Settlement of Vienna in 1815, Pondic herry was returned subject to the condition that it would not be fortified. And Napoleon III launched an ambitious programme of beautification and in fact almost all the major buildings and public places in Pondicherry were the result of Napoleon III and his policy.

The statue of Dupleix was installed on July 16, 1870. It was a bronze statue depecting Dupleix as a warrior with a sword, a map rolled up in his hand and behind him rather incongruously, a bag of money. While the statue itseld was not very controversial, the pedestal was a site of intense opposition. Pillars from vandalized temples of the indigenous people were broken and those depeicting Gods were shosen to form the rectangular base on which Dupleix stood. A European conqueror standing on a base consisting of granite pillars vandalized from temples was intended as a monument of racial pride and arrogance. And no wonder, the indigenous people demanded that it be removed. After the merger of French terrotories with India, the statue was removed and exiled to the far end of the beach where it was reinstalled with the back to the sea. No longer striking the heroic pose as he did in his earlier avatar atop a pile of Indigenous gods and deities.

Another important public space decorated with and created with spolia taken from Temples of indigenous people was the Place de la Republique, a name given after the Third Republic began after the Fraco Prussian War of 1870-71 which resulted in the collapse of the regime of Napoleon III.

Thus in Pondicherry too there is a story to recount. The fall of a statue and the politics surrounding it.