Erasing Kashmir’s Past and the sinister case of a stolen Saraswati

This is not a story about the Saraswati river but of something simpler – yet more sinister. But before we go into the aspects of this proverbial smoking gun, we need to spend time on what has happened to the Heritage of Kashmir and start asking us some simple questions ourselves.

Kashmir has lost hundreds if not thousands of its heritage treasures and they currently line the displays of many prestigious museums including the Metropolitan Museum in New York and many a rich collector’s showcases.  As a case in point I had the good fortune of spending a few hours in the MET and these are what was one display – and the MET is really picky of its displays due constraints of space and hardly displays a fraction of what it actually holds.

The MET museums online archive lists many more from their stock and majority of them do not have provenance going beyond 1987.

On rare cases they do have provenance till 1970 for this bronze

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/39345

The provenance listed is Gift of Ben Heller, 1970

This is the same dealer – who bought the stolen (now infamous) Sivapuram Nataraja and sold it for a Million dollars to Norton Simon and was finally restituted back to India albeit in a slight of hand way.

http://www.tneow.gov.in/IDOL/judgement.html

To read more about this case, Read here:

https://www.academia.edu/17506520/Sivapuram_Bronzes_New_evidences_to_solve_the_still_open_theft_of_1956

This is just one museum in America!  How did so many of choice artefacts land up outside of Kashmir?  I leave the readers to frame their own questions as to attribute questions and find answers.

However, considering the seriousness of the issue I wanted to highlight the extant of the looting and we have not even talked of $! Who benefitted from this illicit trafficking?

Further this is not something way past that we are talking about. Presenting now a theft in a prestigious Museum - that is being investigated by the CBI monitored by the Supreme Court and yet no progress made for years!  Yes, sadly we see this repeated many times in India where heritage crimes don’t seem to whip up enough passion or traction amongst the law enforcement agencies nor the custodians.

A stolen painting seized in America for 3 years is crying out for action and yet we are blissfully unaware of the scale and size of this loot.

The museum we are talking of is the Sri Pratap Singh Museum – the same museum that received the stolen Tengupura Durga restituted from Germany in October 2015 ( how she came back and the struggle to get her back in detailed in our old post https://swarajyamag.com/culture/nobody-seems-to-be-bothered-about-our-heritage)

India has this habit of losing the plot when it comes to following up with international law enforcement on such.  A casual search on the progress of the SPS museum case shows the sheer lack of will to bring the perpetrators to justice.

https://kashmirobserver.net/2017/local-news/theft-srinagar-museumcbi-claims-some-breakthrough-20621

http://www.uniindia.com/file-factually-correct-report-about-missing-of-quran-from-sps-museum-hc-to-cbi/states/news/1144226.html

ttps://kashmirreader.com/2017/05/20/hc-seeks-inventory-artifacts-security-measures-sps-museum/

However, what is sad now is that despite credible information provided by American Law enforcement of surfacing of this painting for Sale in America the Museum’s curators claim that no theft happened and most of their paintings were lost during the 2014 Kashmir floods.

https://www.dnaindia.com/india/report-experts-concerned-over-damage-of-artefacts-in-valley-2024578

The base has a faint listing showing it was purchases by the Museum in 1918

Reverse of the painting with text

While the Supreme Court is focussing only on the stolen Quran – we would like them to see the larger picture. This one painting was listed for sale for USD 300,000 !! and along with the Quran we also lost two Buddha bronzes and a Jain Teertankara.

http://www.tribuneindia.com/2012/20121224/kashmir.htm#1

Some of the items stolen from the state museums include a manuscript of Holy Quran bearing the seal of Emperor Aurangzeb, a seated Buddha measuring about nine inches, standing Tara Bronze, a deity measuring around two feet in height, one brass image of Jain Tirthakar, one brass image of the Buddha seated on earth and one standing Buddha from Nagapatnam.