The Idol Thief The True Story of the Looting of India's Temples

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

The Idol Thief: The True Story of the Looting of India's Temples
S Vijay Kumar
New Delhi: Juggernaut, 2018.

The Idol Thief

The book The Idol Thief is an account of the nefarious, though highly successful crime spree of Subash Kapoor, a New York based art dealer who was responsible for looting and smuggling out of India more than 200 metal and stone sculptures to USA, France UK and other countries. There was a time when the offices of the white world was not complete without a Chola Nataraja standing incongruously in the meeting rooms and board rooms. Display of looted art from the non white world was seen as a mark of Education and refined taste and American multi millionaires like Rockefeller and others paid huge sums of money for the acquisition of plundered Indian art. And in India, there was hardly any awareness or even recognition that large scale smuggling of Indian antiquities was the only growth industry that the country could boast of. The Archaeological Survey of India which is the Government agency mandated to protect, preserve and conserve the cultural heritage of India was often complicit is proving the documents that facilitated such illegal transfer of cultural property. As the legal custodian of Indian antiquities, ASI often certified genuine Chola bronzes as modern imitations and after the antiquities reached the destination, usually a rich white nation, there were experts who re validated the art genuine and Auction Houses like Southey's were in the game of selling such stolen antiques by providing documents of provenance and ownership by which the law could be subverted. This game has been going on for a long time and only after the election of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has the Government of India tightened its mechanism and has succeeded in repatriating no less than 30 pieces of stolen art.

Vijay Kumar is an executive in a shipping company based in Singapore and has written a well researched book on the art smuggling network of Kapoor who is now in jail in India.  The modus operandi of this art smuggler was very simple. He identified ruined Chola temples using S R Balasubramanium's excellent catalogue of Chola temples published in 3 volumes--Early, Middle and Late Chola Temples. Once identified, a set of men were deployed to break into the temple steal the metal utsava murthis stored in the store room and they were sent in containers to Hong Kong or Singapore for onward transport to USA. It is extremely fortunate that an immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official who is called Indy to safeguard his identity came on to the seen and he meticulously followed up every clue. It must be said that USA is extremely diligent in tracking down stolen art and if the case of Roxanne Brown is anything to go by, pursues its quarry even to the point of death.

Subash Kapoor lived well and accumulated a large army of angry women who were waiting for an opportunity to turn him in. And when the suspicion that he was involved in the robbery and illegal export of the Nataraja idols from Vriddhachalam hit the headlines one of his jilted lovers alerted the Indian Government and an Iterpol red corner alert was issued and Kapoor was apprehended.

This is a well written and interesting book.

The absurdities of Indian Archaeology: The Temple of Gloom and the ASI

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The Archaeological Survey of India which was established more than a century and a half ago has earned a name for itself and  its history has been ably documented by the Prime Minister's daughter, Professor Upinder Singh in a fascinating book, The Discovery of Ancient India Sir Alexander Cunningham who was the first archaeologist to uncover the material past of India realized that there were no written records on which a reconstruction of the historical archaeology of India could be based and so he turned to the Chinese pilgrims who visited India in the early medieval period in search of Buddhist manuscripts. It was left to another great archeologist, Sir Aurel Stein to discover the letters written by some of these early pilgrims in monasteries all along the famous Silk Road. Archaeological discoveries stimulated anb interest in the past and it was only a short hop step and jump to "nationalism" underpinned by a robust historical base in which India was imagined in myriad forms and one of the forms was that of a nation state.  History and Archaeology were inscribed in the very start of the long and tortuous journey to "nationhood" as articulated by politicians like Nehru and Jinnah. Apart from the political uses of an "ancient" past to justify Indian "nationhood" there was also the "medieval|" past to legitimize the quest for nationhood by the Islamic minorities of the Gangetic plains. Further, the discovery of the early urban civilizations in the Indus River Valley led to the appropriation of the ealy urban culture to the so called Dravidian cultural strand of India whose most vehement exponents were the Tamils of the deep south. One enterprising IAS officer, Mahadevan, even created cult following for himself by "reading" certain symbols on the seals of the Harappan civilization as Tamil characters and this man before he slipped into dotage even "deciphered" a seal as the representation of the Tamil god, Muruga. Therefore, Indian Archaeology is full of twists and turns and one is not totally surprised at the present rather strange developments.

On the banks of Ganges there is the non nondescript temple illustrated above. The temple has been the scene of a most bizarre treasure hunt.  A local god man declared that 1000 tonnes of gold was hidden in the temple and he claimed that the last king of the region had appeared in a dream and instructed him to dig out the gold. In any other part of the civilized world this story would have been dismissed with the contempt it deserves. Indian Universities like the infamous Jawahar Lal University which was in the forefront of the so called Ramajanmabhoomi Controversy have maintained a stony silence over this alacrity with which the UPA Government dominated by the Congress pary ordered the Archaeological Survey pf India to excavate in the area suggested by the godman. The last king of the kingdom was hanged by General James Neill when his forces reconquered the area with the help of soldiers from Madras. And so the king is a martyr to "Indian Nationalism".  The last week has seen hectic activity at the site. The Geological Survey of India used ground penetrating radar and declared to anyone who cared to listen that there were solid metal objects under the thick vegetation lenmding a degree of credence to the story of the god man, Om Swami as he is styled. A congress member and a Minister in the Cabinet of Man Mohan Singh instigated the ASI to order an extensive dig at the site of the temple. The result is that a major historical site has been vandalized as a consequence of governmental actions and decisions. No one has ever heard of an archaeological  excavation taking place anywhere in the world on the thin foundation of a senile god man. The frantic pace of digging has not unearthed a single piece of copper and the site,a  potentially important medieval site has been utterly devatated.

The Government of India bypassed all regulatory agencies governing the management of archaeological sites. At the whim of a Minister who happened to be a follower of the senile god man the excavation was ordered. Not a penny was found as there is no hoard buried there. Already the smae god man has spred stories of another treasure waiting in a place closeby the Unnao, Fatehghar. The upcoming Parliamentary Elections which is certain to see a landslide in favour of the Opposition has made the Government of India undertake this ridiculous excavation as the snile god man enjoys a strong support among the backward castes of the region. Indian Government is in the news all for the wrong reason: scams, scandals and now the mad cap treasure hunt.

TREASURE TROVE IN THE PADBHANABHA TEMPLE, TRAVANCORE

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Travancore,a princely state that tried to become a member of the United Nations after the declaration of Independence in 1947,has always been an example of good governance thanks to the efforts of Sir T Madhava Rao, the Prime MInister in th second half of the nineteenth century. The kings of Travancore devised a novel legitimizing strategy for their rule. They ruled in the name of the Deity, Padmanabha, one of the forms of Vishnu. The kIngs claimed to be the deputy of the deity. Such a political theory was obviously inspired by the political practices of the the Vijayanagara Empire. The wars with the Dutch, the Portuguese and the expanding sultanate of Mysore especially under Tippu Sultan made the kingdom of Travancore an early entrant into the subsidiary alliance and the Rajas of Travancore were firm supporters of the Company like the Mahratta chieftains, Scindia, Holkar and the Gaikwad.

The good administration together with the prosperity engendered by the trade and commerce made the kingdom extremely rich. The discovery of the treasure trove in the Padmanabha Temple reflects this.

Two days back i.e. 30th June 2011, the ante chambers near the sanctum sanctorum of the temple was opened and a veritable treasure trove was discovered. Nearly 1000 golden chains,bag full of diamonds,golden plates, fabulous jewelery,and a numismatists' delight in the form of hundrens of coins dating to the medieval period down to the rulers of Travancore. The inventory of this treasure trove is being done under the direct supervision of the Supreme Court. The Archaeological Survery of India has lost its credibility due to its partisan role and politisised nature of its functioning. In fact the suspicion that many entertain that the ASI and its top brass are involved in smuggling of antiquities makes us extremely apprehensive of any cultural property which is in the hands of the ASI.

The temple was the personal property of the ruling family and therfore the situation in Travancore or Trivandrum is much different from that of TamilNadu where tEmples became state property as soon as the Company established itself. The various instruments of accession signed at the time of Independence are specific to Government property and excluded religious holdings. This being the case the ruling family can make a good case for the restoration of the jewellry to the descendents of the last raja of Travancore. The precedent in this case is similar to that of the Nizam of Hyderabad who was permitted to keep his personal wealth.

The discovery of the treasure trove provides a major opportunity for historians to study a hug cache of historical antiquities. Numismatists must take the opportunity to analyse the coins using the methods that Peter Spufford has outlined in his Money and its Uses in Early Medieval Europe (Cambridge 2009).