The Moplah Rebellion: The Outbreak of the Rebellion, the Course of Events and the Suppression PART II

The Memorial for Henry Vallentine Conolly

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

PART II

The Moplah Rebellion that shook parts of southern Malabar in 1921 was in many crucial ways a continuation of the Moplah Outrages which erupted with unremitting regularity throughout the nineteenth century. At least 45 serious instances of violence are documented in the two massive volumes entited Correspondence on the Moplah Outrages published by the Madras Government soon after the 1894 Outrages.  The assasination of Henry Vallentine Conolly in 1855 was yet the most serious assault on the Administration and was instigated by an influential Moplah leader, Syid Fasal Pukkoya Tangal, the Koran Reader at Mambrum Mosque. The involvement of religious personalities like Ali Musseliar,Variyankunnath Kunjahammad, Konara Mohammad Koya Tangal in the 1921 Rebellion underscores the continuity with the events and trends of the nineteenth century. In fact, in terms of chronology itself the organization of Khilafat Committees in Malapuram, Tirunangudi, Ponnani and other places in South Malabar predated the announcement of Gandhi extending support to the Khilafat Movement as part of the Non Cooperation Movement. It is one of the many tricks of contemporary historiography to conflate the two and make it appear as though the Moplah Rebellion was an outcome of the Gandhian call to Civil Disobedience and Non Cooperation. It is on record that Gandhi's nominee to the Khilafat Committee Shri Narayana Menon   hardly commanded any respect from the agitators.

The Malabar Knife

The outbreak of violence thoughout the nineteenth century had the charecteristic feature of religious violence with the oath of becoming a "shahid" being taken in the Mosque in the presence of a tangal, a ritual meal and a ritual dedication of the murder weapons. The use of the Malabar Knife, a sharp heavy baded curving cleaver with a keen penetrating end was ubiquitious in the Outrages committed in the 19th century that mere possession of them was enough for conviction according to the special legislation enacted to proscribe them: The Malabar War Knives Act 1854. Incidentally this Act was passed even before the brutal killing of Conolly. There is an unfortunate tendency in so called "progressive" historiography to downplay the religious ideology underpinning these acts of violence and ssimilate them to an undifferentiated "protest " politics and marinate that protest politics with what they consider a "subaltern consciousness". This kind of History Writing is both tendentious and false as it completely negates the historical reality underlying such events. Of course B R Ambedkar was not taken in by the fake ratiocinations trotted out by Gandhi and Nehru to explain away egregious acts of Violnce carried out individually and collectively by the Moplahs. The Newspapers of the day carried reports of what was happening and yet Gandhi and his cohorts did not once condemn the colod blodded fanatical killings. Lord Curzon estimated that 10,000 indigenous persons and around 2,500 Moplahs were killed and around 1000 forcibly converted to the Moplah religion of Islam. He gave these figures in the House of Commons and they seem accurate. 

The Tirurangadi Mosque

The immediate provocation, if provocation was needed, for the outbreak of the Rebellion was the defeat of the Ottoman Empire and the break up of the Middle East Possessions, particularly the uncertainity over the fate of Mecca and Medina. The abolition of the office  of Caliph and "Protector of the Holy Cities" adopted by the Ottoman Emperor was discussed in the Karachi Conference where the idea of protests in India were first discussed. Hence it is clear from the sequence of events that the context of the Rebellion was Religion to which Gandhi in his great wisdom added a dose of heady politics transforming the Khilafate Movement into a mass movement of Moslems asserting their collective identity thereby starting the jaggernaut that finally led to Partition and Nehru's "tryst with destiny".

From April 1920 onwards, long before Gnadhi's call, Khilafate Committees began to be organized in several parts of India where the Shafi School of Islamic Jurisprudence held sway. The highest concentration was in the Malabar and Khalifat Committees were set up in Wallavanad, Ponnani, Ernad and Tirurangudi. The last palce hled particular significance for the rebels as it was there that the rebels of 1894 outrages were burried. Contemporary accounts speak of men being mobilized by the beat of drums and women encouraging even young boys to go out and prove their manhood by killing. This feature of the Moplah Rebellion is rather peculiar and needs further research. The Moplah Rebellion began on the 20th of August 1921 and continued in fits and starts until December of that year when the rebellion was crushed. The Mappila Rebellion Report  provides all the details of the events that transpired. Unfortunately most "Historians" prefer to use oral sources and vernacular material to official records. The vernacular material come prefigured with an interpretation tht is usually attrractive to the so called "progressive" historians, and they accept that version without any dissent. The Government Records, however, document in considerable detail the horrendous suffering endured by the indigenous people of Malabar during those terible days.

The Moplah Rebellion and its History: Real, Invented and Imagined

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

PART I

Importnat events in History appear in three distinct forms, avatrs: the real, true and experienced in reality, the invented one that lives in popular memory, around which ballads and folk tales are created and become the collective memory of a social or political group and then there is the imagined, the most dangerous of all. Imagined events are those that are curated for the purpose of political propaganda,a tool for collective mobilization and political legitimation either for appropriating political power or for subverting it. The Moplah Rebellion, unfortunately, has a great deal of the Invented Histories and Imagined Histories, but little by way of actual lived Historically verified and accurate Historical narrative, In India, professional writing on matters Historical are deeply marinated in political ideology that sustains the National consensus of 1947 one that ignored the reality of events and took refuge in slogans, labels and rhetoric. Asking questions about the past invited retribution from the High Priests of Secularism who were  ever ready with their fatwas against any overt questioning of the accepted narrative. Thus the Moplah Rebellion shorn of his History of gruesome massacres, ethnic cleansing barbaric killings has been domesticated in Indian Historiography of what pretends to be "Modern History"as a part of the National Movement, the Khilafate Movement encouraged by Mohandas Gandhi and  his two Muslim collaborators, Shaukat Ali and Mohamad Ali.

Who were the Moplahs? The Moplahs were a non indigenous group of Arabs who settled in the Malabar coast sometime in the ninth or thenth century when the trade between Malabar and Arabia was quite propsperous and the Arabs were the only major community involved. Though we do have in the Geninza Records evidence of Jewish participation in the trade, the Arabs dominated and  their kinsmen along the Malabar coast who had married local women were participants in this trade. Added to this was the strong ideological ties built between the Hwadramath region of Aden/Yemen Peninsula and throughout the medieval period Moplahs and their Hwadramath interculators were riding the Arabian Sea surf towrads commercial and maritime prosperity. We do not hear of any outrage committed by the Moplahs during the period when they dominated trade, shipping and commerce. With the coming of the Portuguese inthe late fifteenth century and  with the imposition of the "cartaz" or kagaz or permission system by the Portuguese, Moplah participation in the inter maritime shipping and commerce of the Indian Ocean declined rather sharply. Kagaz nahin dikayenge , did not work with the Portuguese and given the fact International Law was only an extension of Cannonical Law in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Portuguese treated the moplahs as pirates: rounded them up and sank their boats along with the cargo. Grand dreams of a coalition against the Portuguese first of several "infidels" in the ever expanding Moplah list of enemies, ended in the first political justification for an aggressive war against the Portuguese set out by one  Zainuddin al-Malabari, a Hwardamath scholar settled in Malabar and perhaps educated in Cairo.  His Tufat al Mujaahuddin was the first articulation if "jihad" for purely political and commercial  purposes. Nothing came of these fantasies. 

There is a great deal of fanciful histories of the Moplah Rebellion which casts tha Moplahs as "peasants". Dilip Menon in his undreadable book has argued at length about how the Moplahs constitued a "community of religion" and were oppressed  savagely by the jeminns. We  have already shown that MOplahs were essentially a maritime trading or commercial community. Not a peasant community or society. A false history is created by using the category of "peasant" to analyse the Moplah  Rebellion. In the southern part of Malabar, during the last decade of the eighteenth century, when Tippu Sultan expanded into the region his savagery aganist the Nambudris, the Tiyyas and the Nairs resulted in a large exodus of indigenous people from the region and since the Moplahs supported Tippu Sultan in his aggressive war of expansion they were rewarded with some "land rights" in the tangled skein of land rights studied meticulously by Logan. And when East India Company defeated Tipu in 1799 many of the old indigenous land holders returned to reclaim their possessions. And this was the first of many factors that lay at root of the violence unleashed by the Moplahs against the indigenous people of the land.

TO BE CONTINUED in PART II

The Moplah Atrocities and National Memory: The Dictionary of Martyrs

The Moplah Rebellion

The Prime Minister Hon ble Narendra Modi released Volume V of the Dictionary of  Martyrs of India, a project of the Indian Council of Historical Research undertaken by the council when the Congress regime was in power. It speaks poorly of the plitical advice received by the Prime Minister that he was personally embarassed by being made party to the Dictionary which is full of names of the Khilafat rioters who indulged in wanton massacre of the indigenous population of the Malabar. Annie Besant and Dr B R Ambedkar both have drawn attention to cold blooded massacres of indigenous people belonging to the Nambudri, Nair, Tiyya and other social groups carried out by Moplah mobs which were agitating for the restoration of the Khalifate which  had been aboilished after the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire following the defeat in the War I (1914-1918). The Prime minister shuld have been warned about the contents of the Dictionary and he would have been saved the embarssment of having to answer for the excesses of an inept Historical Council which is clueless about such a sensitive issue.

Almost all contemporay accounts spek of the brutality of th Moplah hordes which killed wsith abandon after the Revolt began on August 20, 1921. What is really alarming is the fact that Moplah women were often seen near the site of the killings encouraging their men folk on. No wonder one of the prominent Moplah women leaders of the anti CAA riots in New Delhi publically acknowledged her debt to the Moplah Rebellion. Nearly 10,000 people were killed and that includes Mem Women and Childen. Annie Beasant and Dr Ambedkar were strident in their denunciation of the barbaric violence that accompanied the Rebellion. There are far too amny sourdes which record that pregnent women had ther stomachs ripped open and killed. Maybe in the interest of social harmony we may need to suppress the true horrors of the Moplah Rebellion but to make them "martyrs" for India is not just disingenous but rather fake narrative fabricated for political convenience.  "Are they human beings or Monsters?' asked Annie Beasant. Similarly Dr B R Ambedkar wrote in his Pakistan or the Partition of India :There was carnage,pillage, and outrage of every species perpetrated by the Hindus against the musallmans and Mussalmans against Hindus, more perhaps by the Musslamans against Hindus, than by Hindus against the Mussalmans. This bland statement recognises the enormity of the crimes that took place during those dark days and to thow a veil of amnesia over them and to justify and glorify the perpetrators of such henious crimes as "freedom fighters" and "martyrs" is itself a blatant atrocity and happening now when the Congress and its minions are not in power, adds insult to injury. The Government must dismiss the entire Council for this utterly biased and shameful publication. The response from Gandhi, who hijacked the Khilafat Movement and tried to pass it off as Non Cooperation Movement, was cynical to say the least: Be the Moplah, ever so bad, he wrote, they deserve to be treated as human beings. Not a word of condemnation for the naeless victims of the Malabar Horror called the Moplah Rebellion.  He went on to justify their violence in the follwing words: They are fighting for what they consider as religion and in a manner they consider religious. And such statments from a man regarded as the Apostle of Non Violence exposes the callous and thoughtless anner in which the Congress jumped into political agitations.

The Dictionary lists neraly 40 names of Moplah killers who by no stretch of the imagination can be called "martyrs".  Many of the 60 odd victims of the Tirur Wagon Disaster were convicts on their way to Bellary for internment in the Special Prison set up for Moplah convicts and several of them participated in the killings in Ponnani,Tannur, Pokkottur,Tirunangudi and even Calicut. Their death in the wagon was an accident and even these "accidental martyrs" are showcased as freedom fighters in this book launched by the Respcted Prime Minister. The Indian ouncil of Historical Reseach must be dismissed for this egresious act.

Eugen Hultzsch and the Rediscovery of India's Past

Dr Eugen Hultzsch

India's past seemed like a forgotten dream as ancient India did not write Historcial Chronicles in the manner in which the Western World did. Dates, Dynasties, Events, Kingdoms and Empires fade in and out of view like a vaudeville stuck in an erratic routine. Reflections upon the past, if it happened at all, took place against a literary tradition framed by the Great Epics and distorted images created by court poets, geneologists and bards. The situation was so full of dispair that Hegel even though that India was extra territorial to History and his favorite "pupil" Karl Marx even triumphantly declared that "India vegetates in the eeth of time". The person who rescued India from such charecterizations is Dr Eugen Hultzsch, a Prussian, who made India his Karma Bhumi. 

Eugen Hultzsch was born in Dresden on the 29th of March 1857 and died in Halle on the 16th of November 1927. During the course of his life he transformed the very study of Indian History by undertaking extensive and detailed researches on various aspects of Indian Epigraphy and Paleography,  His Inscriptions of Ashoka was the first major investigation towards establishing the chronology of the great emperor and the inter relationship between the Major and Minor Rock Edicts. Th text of the Inscriptions published by him have not been improved and till this day Historians plunder Hultzsch' work for material on the reign of this Maurayan Emperor. Unfortunately, in Indian Universities, thanks to the dominance of the Marxists who sought to make the younger generation as ignorant and dogmaic as themsevlves, ensured that training in Epigraphy and Paleography is abandoned. In India we have "Historians" like Romila Thapar and others who write on Ashoka without having read any of his Inscriptions in the original. If the Emperor is known today, it is largely due to Hultzsch.

Indian inscriptions on stone   and copper plate surfaces were known from the time of the Antiquarian, Col. Colin Mackenzie. While the more recent Vijayanagara epigraphs written in Telugu or Kannada scripts were read and published by administrator scholars like Elliot, Ravenshaw and others, early inscriptions especially in the Tamil region remained a closed book until Eugen Hultzsch arrived on the scene. On 21st of November 1886, Hultzsch took charge as the Epigraphist of the Archaeological Sorvey of India, Southern Circle. His remit was to document the rich corpus of epigraphs inscribed on the walls of Temples in the region and he undertook this task with vigour and great determination, ably assisted by V Venkkaya, his loyal assistant. The first major task that he undertook was to decipher and publish the inscriptions at Mamallapuram. He wrote in an article in Epigraphia Indica vol X thta "Mahabalipuram can be reached by boat from Buckingham Canal". How distant that seems when we imagine the scene today. Hultzsch collected all the inscriptions found in the site and published them in the very first volume of South Indian Inscriptions, a series that is still extant and has now reached volume 37. Dr.  S. Swaminathan has continued the tradition and has published 3 volumes of Chola Inscriptions in this series. The outstanding contribution of Hultzsch lay in his identification of the biruda, Atyantakama, with the King Narashimhavarman,a Pallava monarch. This method of dating monuments based on the inscriptions found inscribed on its surface or fabric has remained the backbone of ancient Indian Historiography. Hultzsch turned his attention to the Great Temple constructed by Rajaraja I (985-1014) at Tanjavur, his Capital. The Rajarajesvara Temple contains 56 Chola Inscriptions the majority of which were issued by the King and his immediate family. Hultzsch not only published all the Inscriptions found in the temple, but also translated them into English, a feat no other Epigraphist since has achieved  and published them in three volumes. Apart from these works, Hultzsch wrote extensive articles on important inscriptions in the flagship journal devoted to Indian Epigraphy, Epigraphia Indica. His attempt at recovering the dynastic succession of medieval dynasties like the Alupas, Rashtrakutas and the Chalukyas set the framework for the study of the medieval history of South India.

Dr Eugen Hultzsch arrived in India on October 22, 1884 by steamer sailing to Bombay, now Mumbai, from Trieste, Between 1884 and May 1885 he extensively toured the country in search of Sanskrit, Pali texts and documents. He presented two reports to Government on his discoveries and his Reports can still be read as specimens of critical texual criticism. Both his Reports are availbale on archive.org.  He paid particulat attention to the Saivite Mutts at Tiruvidaimaradur and Tiruvisainallur. His predecessor Brunell worked around the Saraswathi Mahal Library and Hultzsch extended the scope of his search. His notes sugget that the medieval period, particularly the Vijayanagara Period, witnessed the creation of a large corpus of commentaries on the various Srauta texts. The  reasons for this have not yetbeen ascertained. Using the colophons of the texts, Hultzsch notonly identified the author but endeavoured to fit him in a tree of texts and he is thus a pioneer in manuscript research in India. 

In the field of Numismatics, Eugen Hultzsch made a singular contribution by arranging the coins of the Madurai Sultans in a chronological framework. Starting with the enigmatic reference to moslem rulers in Madurai, a region traditionally associated with the Pandyas in the Rahela of Ibn Batutta, Hultzsch reconstructed the sequence of rulers almost to the end of the Sultanate follwing the attack by the Vijayanagara prince, Kumara Kampana. 

Looking back at the contribution of savants like Eugen Hultzsch it is certain that Edward Said was wrong when he postulated a direct link between knowledge and political power. It is certainly true that Hultzsch worked in a colonial framework but his contribution certainly trascended an imperial power structure. When Eugen Hultzsch returned to Europe he took with him 483 Sanskrit Manuscripts which he sold to the Bodleian Library, Oxford Universty.

He took up a Professorship in the field of Indology at halle University upon his retirement and died in that city where he is burried.

The Mitrokhin Archives : The KGB, The Indian National Congress and India

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

The Mitrokhin Archives II

The Mitrokhin Archive II is a very important work and all important policy makers in India, particularly those involved with the not so glamorous but necessary world of Espionage, and those involved in making and analysing policy alernatives must read this book. The authors include the reputed historian who has written comprehensive histories of British Intelligence Services, MI I and MI IV,and a life time KGB Vasili Mitrokhin who created a huge archive of secretely copied KGB Reports from the field agents located in different parts of the world. This book contains a great deal of information on KGB operations in Africa and South America as well. But I will concentrate on what the Archives reveal about India, the Indian National Congress and the manner in which the fellow travellers associated with the CPI acquired a stranglehold on the Indian print media and the academic institutions. This sad situation continues until this day.

The Soviet Union for some reason did not take Indian struggle for Independence seriously. Probably the Marxist ideology had somehing to do with this. An underdeveloped colonized country without a "bourgeoise"can scarcely aspire to "Nationhood" has always been an article of faith amongst traditional Marxists.  And hence the Soviet Union dismissed Indian leaders as having litte impact on world events. Gandhi was particularly savaged in the pages of the Soviet Encyclopedia. Right from the beginning the KGB started trapping Indian Embassy officials, usually by honey trapping them, exploiting the well known Indian weakness for white women. Almost all documents transmitted to New Delhi were read by the kGB operatives as an Indian diplomat code named  PROKHOR was recruited by the secret service, Mitrokhin records that this diplomat was provided a monthly retainer of 4000 Rupees. Apart from bribing Indian diplomats, the KGB was successful in recasting Indian political parties particularly the Indian Communist Party (CPI) as a subsidiary of the KGB, Important Cabinet Ministers, Members of Parliament and even the Prime Minister's Office were drawn into an ever expanding web of bribery which extended all the way to the KGB Office in the Soviet Embassy. The authors argue that by the 1960s the KGB had succeeded in completely subverting the Indian Intelligence Bureau (I B) and had turned it essentially into a prop for its own activities. The CPI  an   received regular subventions from the Russian Embassy though the communist leaders pretended to follow an independent "Indian Line". When Ajoy GHosh was the Genneral Secretary anImport and Export Firm was set up so that the profits could be used to carry out Party Programmes in India. It did not strike anyone at that time that such diversion of funds was both illegal and undemocratic. When Rajeswar Rao was the General Secretary of the Party, he was summoned to the Embassy in Delhi to receive his instructions from the "Centre" there. One direct and unfortunate effect of the closeness of the cPI with the Soviet brand of "Communism" was to be felt in the fields of the Press and Higher Education.

Lenin was a great believer in the efficacy of Agit Prop, Agitation and Propaganda and for successful implementation of its propramme the Soviet Union needed "useful idiots" and intellectuals and journalists came in handy. The Mitrkhin Archives documents in great detail the manner in which the Soviets penetrated the Indian Press and used it to carry on propaganda against the US while simultaneously protecting their own image, Articles critical of USSR were seldom published in Indian Newspapers and the Soviets were able to buy the support of the Indian Press by large scale use of money. Forged documents were regularly supplied to select Indian journalists who published "exclusive" exposes based on forged documents. The KGB succeeded in convincing Indira Gandhi that the Khalistani Movement was being funded by the CIA though it is well known that Zail Singh her Home Minister encouraged the separatist faction in order to slip the Skh vote which was tilted heavily in favour of the Akali Dal. The shadow of the Soviet patronage of the Press was long lasting as till this day the English Press is inherently leftist in its ideological underpinnings. 

Indian intellectuals did not redeem themselves either. In the 1960s, a cabal of leftist supporters members of the CPI perhaps with money taken from the Soviets established the Seminar, a journal which was pro Soviet and pro Congress. The power couple, Raj and Krishna Thapar provided a platform for left wing "intellectuals" to propagate their views which were largely in tandem with the Soviet view. Te left ward swing that took the shape of Bank Nationalization and the Abolition of the privy Purse were all populist measures which were first discussed in the Sminar. And with the appointment of the CPI member Nurul Hasan as the Minister of State for Education the entire educational apparatus was staffed with fellow travellers and till this day the sterile domination of the left continues.

This book mst be read by all those who want to know the sordid reality of Indian politics under the Congress rule. Mitrokhin even states that a Cabinet Minister in Indira Gandhi's cabinet offered a whole trance of secret documents for 50,000 US Dollars. The Soviets did not take the offer only because they had already acquired the documents. The role of the defense lobbyists which almost derailed India's Military took shape during these dark years.

S S Indus, India's Claims over "Cultural Property" and UN Conventions

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

The Departure of the Prince

The Steam Ship Indus set sail from Calcatta Port with a priceless treasure of Indian Sculptures from the Buddhist site of Bharut, near Nagod in today's Madhya Pradesh in India. Sir Alexander Cunningham had chosen the finest pieces for the Exhibition in London. Since the [lace of origin was India and the ship registered in the Capital of the Indian Empire, London, India has certainly rights over the ship. From the point of view of Cultural Property Conventions too India has definitie claims.

There is sharp difference between scholars on Heritage whether Successor States have rights over the "Cultural Property" removed from its terrotory, legally, illegally or by any other means. The 1954 UNESCO Convention reognised movable and immovable property of great importance to the cultural heritage of every people". The terms used herein are extrmely vague and are open to different interpretation. For example what constitutes the "people". The 1954 Convention recognized the role of the State in protecting the heritage. However, this Convention remined silent over legal claims over Cultural Property and its restitution to the "people" who could legitimately claim such property as being vital to their identity as a people or culture, The legal lacunae in this instrument of 1954 was sought to be addressed in 3 subsequent conventions: 1970 Convention on the illegal Import, Export and Ownership of Cultural Property, 1972 World Heritage Convention which embodied the idea or concept of cultural or natural sites possessing outstanding universal value and finally the 2001 Convention on Protection of Underwater Cultural Heritage. Indian authorities, if they choose to stake a claim to the Sculptures in S S Indus must make their claims under the four corners of these conventions. And how?

The 1970 deadline is important as it freezes claims of theft or illegal transfer prior to that date. This date also recognises the participation of the newly independent countries in the proptection of their cultural property and also to set aside the niggling and contentious claims made by Greece for  the return of the Parthenon Marbles. Changes in Sovereignty impinge in the manner in which all these Conventions are invoked to claim restitution of Cultural Property. In the case of India Culture/ Cultural Property/ Protection/ Conservation is in the hands of two Constitutionally defined agencies: Central Government with the Archaeological Survey of India as its primary arm and State Departments of Archaeology and Culture. This dual responibility is due to Archaeology being on the concurrent List of the Indian Constitution. Obviously this confusion over roles has to be removed. The UN Convention defines sites of Cultural value and importance as res sacre which include (a) monuments of art (b) sites of architectural and archaeological significane representing both the tangible and intangible heritage of Mankind (c) sites, structures objects, artifacts, that are important for national or a group's identity and memory. These conditions make a realistic case under existing Conventions difficult and hence India must stree certain unique features about the particular site of Bharut.

Firstly, the sculptures were removed from the Stupa and most of the sculptures that were detached were from the railings that went right round the stupa and were votiv gifts from donors who wanted their gifts to be remembered in perpetuity. Culture ans the European Courts have repeatedly argued is too important to be understood only in terms of "legal technicalities". Buddha has a living presence in India as he is a divine entity for a large number of indegenous people and therefore dismantling or tearing down a structure deeply wounds the feeling s of the indegenous people and now International Law is beginning to define "indigenous people" as those who live on the land before Invasions or  colonial settlement. Thus a specific claim on behalf of Heritage of a Living People has to be made in order to make a case for the repatriation as per existing Conventions. Secondly, there is also the question of counter claims. Sri Lanka is a practising Buddhist Country and there is no doubt that Sri Lanka will not treat the Sculptures the way Muslim Afghanistan treated the Banyam Buddhas. And Sri Lanka can make an equally strong case for the retention of the sculpture on the grounds that Buddha is part of their Cultural Tradition and the wreck of S S Indus lies within the territorial limits of Sri Lanka, close to Mullaithivu, where the last battles of the Sri Lnakan Civil War were faught. 

India has not yet made any formal claim and this is disturbing as the more it ignores the less pursuvasive its claims become. First, the Government must formally recognise that a part of its Cultural Property has been removed and lost in the sea. A bi lateral agreement with Sri Lanka on an equitable distribution of the sculptures must be worked out and this agreement will further enhance the International Jurisprudence of historic wrecks.

A large number of Bharut Scultures are found in Museums all across the world. If these pieces were acquired by the Museuls prior to 1970 as perhaps is the case with the Freeer Gallery and the Metropolitan Museum of Art New York the Government must set in motion the process of restitution of such pieces as were smuggled out illegally after 1970. In the present scenario the documentation maynnot be too difficult as Captain Waterhouse has photographed the monuments in sit situ.

The unfortunate wreck must be reclaimed and the incredible treasure brought back to India where they belong.

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