The new ethics and restitution policies of some European countries offers hope for postcolonial countries to reclaim their cultural artefacts. Bangladesh must seize upon this opportunity.
In the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, an ancient Hindu statue, Durga killing the buffalo demon, is on display. It was almost certainly smuggled out of Bangladesh. If nobody moves, the Durga will always remain in the Dutch capital.
Why has the museum, which has returned looted objects to Indonesia and Sri Lanka, never acted on the information that the object on display is a tainted one? Why has Bangladesh never claimed it, and what does this say about Bangladesh’s position in the global debate on the restitution of stolen collections?
In 1602, the Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie (VOC, Dutch East-India Company) was founded in Amsterdam. They shipped precious cargoes of pepper, nutmeg and mace, tobacco, coffee and tea, as well as textiles, opium and porcelain, building an impressive trading empire.
One of the areas where the VOC gained a foothold was Bengal, where the company had several trade posts between 1627 and 1795 and was notorious for corruption. Bengal became the source of half of all textiles and more than three-quarters of the raw silk the Dutch brought from Asia.[1]
Many mansions in Amsterdam, Groningen and other Dutch cities, built with profits from colonial regions, recall this period. VOC servants filled them with cultural and historical treasures that came from these areas. One of them, Jan Albert Sichterman (1692-1764), is said to have brought two shiploads of artefacts and other goods from Bengal and other VOC locations in Asia at the end of his stay and to have set up his residence in Groningen as a private museum for that purpose.[2] Some of these officials’ collections moved to Dutch museums. The Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, near the mansions in the Dutch capital, is one of them. Without their colonial collections, it would lose some of its lustre.
Unless someone can prove otherwise, it is almost certain that the Durga statue in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam — ‘Ex Collection: David Nalin’ — left Bangladesh via smuggling. In 2012, I passed on the contents of Haq’s ICOM report to the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam and asked if the museum thought there was a problem with the statue. A staff member needed three words for an answer: ‘Nice to know’, and that was it. Apparently, the museum did not care about the provenance of the Durga statue, and neither did the American gallery. The museum claims to subscribe to the ICOM Code of Ethics and so should have done more research into the object’s history.
Discovery
During a visit in 2012, I saw an exceptional masterpiece, which I had not noticed earlier: Durga Killing the Buffalo Demon, stone, eleventh century, Bangladesh (inv.no. AK-RAK-1992-1). The caption told of the ‘fight between the Hindu goddess Durga and the demon’ described in various Sanskrit texts, and that ‘the demon could change shape’. The Durga had beheaded the buffalo; I saw its head lying on the ground. ‘When the demon assumed human form, the goddess killed him again, this time using a trident.’[3]
As I had worked in Bangladesh from 1973 to 1975 and visited the country regularly thereafter, the sculpture drew my attention more than others. I asked the museum for background information and learnt from the transfer formula that the museum had purchased it from the Peter Marks Gallery in New York in 1992 for 65,000 dollars.
At first, I saw nothing special about it until I read the following short note at the bottom of the formula ‘Ex Collection: David Nalin’. Immediately, a red light began to glow because the name David Nalin sounded familiar to me. In 1968, the US Peace Corps sent this young American doctor to what was then East Pakistan. At the Cholera Hospital in Dhaka, he helped to distribute ORS for dehydration caused by cholera and diarrhoea. When I arrived in 1973, East Pakistan had become the People’s Republic of Bangladesh, and Dr Nalin was still working there.
Double complication
Most ex-colonies have complicated histories, but Bangladesh had some additional complications because it had been colonised first by the Dutch and the British and thereafter by West Pakistan, while the departure of these foreign forces led to radical changes in the composition of the population.
In 1947, British India was partitioned into a Hindu-dominated India and a Muslim-led Pakistan, whereby Pakistan was made up of two parts hundreds of miles apart, with one part dominating and exploiting the other. Millions of Hindus left from West and East Pakistan for India, and about as many Muslims exchanged India for either part of Pakistan.
This exodus continued during Bangladesh’s war of independence of 1971. Soldiers from West Pakistan killed countless Hindus and Buddhists in East Pakistan or expelled them to India. They destroyed or took away many of their possession, including their religious heritage.
The number of Hindus has rapidly declined. From over twenty per cent shortly after 1947 to less than eight per cent nowadays. Buddhists have always remained a minority of less than one per cent. The result was and is that the supervision of their temples, shrines and house altars quickly deteriorated, and statues and other objects ended up in local art shops or being smuggled abroad. Even the statues they had buried in their compound, hoping to worship them on their return, did not escape this fate.
This continued in the post-independence period, when violence, several (attempted) coups, and a very severe famine scourged the country, and the looting of Hindu and Buddhist treasures did not abate. In Dhaka, Bangladeshi art dealers with Islamic backgrounds had no difficulty with this.
During a visit in 2005, an art dealer used Shamsul Alam’s Sculptural Art of Bangladesh – actually a government publication! — to show photographs of statues in Hindu temples to inquire which type I am interested in.[4] Among his customers were many ‘expats’ — diplomats, aid workers, researchers. He also inquired whether I had a friend among Dutch diplomats, as the diplomatic pouch was the easiest way to ship objects to Europe.
One name stood out
There was also a champion of Bangladesh’s cultural heritage: Enamul Haque. He was attached to the National Museum (1962–1991) and one of the few who was worried about the vulnerability of the country’s heritage. He raised this with the International Council of Museums (ICOM), and ICOM asked him to produce a report on the seepage of it in 1980.
In this report, Return of cultural property to their countries of origin: Bangladesh. A preliminary survey of a national situation, Haque mentions only one ‘perpetrator’ by name: Dr Nalin.[5] He was one of those expatriates. Because of the instability and insecurity, the US government allowed Peace Corps members to use the diplomatic pouch to send their purchases back to America. If this did not work, customs employees would turn a blind eye ‘in exchange for a small gift’.
Unless someone can prove otherwise, it is almost certain that the Durga statue in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam — ‘Ex Collection: David Nalin’ — left Bangladesh via smuggling. In 2012, I passed on the contents of Haq’s ICOM report to the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam and asked if the museum thought there was a problem with the statue. A staff member needed three words for an answer: ‘Nice to know’, and that was it. Apparently, the museum did not care about the provenance of the Durga statue, and neither did the American gallery. The museum claims to subscribe to the ICOM Code of Ethics and so should have done more research into the object’s history.
More than a decade later, it is still part of the museum’s collection and on display in its Asia Pavilion.
Cultural policy of Bangladesh
I have been searching through the government’s documents to find out whether Bangladesh has an active restitution policy. [6] The Ministry of Cultural Affairs’ cultural policy mentions the importance of the rights of minorities, archaeological sites, the Liberation War, and the contemporary period. Still, I found nothing about claiming objects belonging to the two other major cultures or religions of the country that had disappeared during the country’s colonial period.
Bangladesh seems to be focussing more on internal issues than new external options. In August 2024, the Bangladesh National Committee of the ICOM informed the country about its ‘deep concern’ over the damage to the ‘many priceless museums — Independence Museum, Bangabandhu Memorial Museum, Genocide Museum, Shashi Lodge and various heritage’ destroyed by arson and widespread vandalism. No word on other treasures lost in other periods.[7]
Worldwide restitution debate
This internal focus is remarkable at a time when former colonised countries are developing restitution policies and building an administrative infrastructure to submit claims for lost treasures.[8] In 2023, Sri Lanka successfully claimed a cannon and five other ceremonial weapons from the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, which VOC soldiers had captured from the King of Kandy in 1765. In 2024, India submitted a claim to the Netherlands for the return of inscriptions on copper plates, held together by metal rings books, which are almost a thousand years old and are currently in the Library of Leiden University.[9]
The good news is that the Netherlands and other European countries are developing policies to return objects and ancestral remains appropriated in the colonial period. Dutch policy is that if it is proven that a collection has been improperly acquired from a former colonial territory, it will be returned if the country of origin claims it.[10] So far, Indonesia has benefitted the most from this new policy. The country has retrieved over eight hundred objects, mostly ceremonial weapons and jewellery – almost all war booty – and a number of temple statues – smuggled out of the archipelago in the colonial period.
Silence in Dhaka
Why has Bangladesh never claimed the Durga in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam? Is it because the cultural authorities are not aware of the possibilities offered by the new ethics and restitution policies of some European countries? Or is it because, in a country with an increasingly strong Islamic tradition, it is hard to protect the heritage of non-Islamic religions. And has this even become more difficult recently? Since the fall of the pro-India Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League government on 5 August 2024, there have been reports of attacks on the Hindu minority and their properties. Is the country suffering from amnesia in relation to its multi-religious history and culture?
Silence in Amsterdam
Why has the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam returned looted objects to Indonesia and Sri Lanka, but never acted on the information that it is displaying a tainted object in its Asia Pavillion? The museum is one of sixteen national museums in the Netherlands and is best known for its collection of Dutch art and history, including works by 17th-century Dutch masters such as Rembrandt, Vermeer and Hals.
However, the museum also houses an extensive collection of weapons and sculptures from former colonial regions and newly independent states, especially in Asia. Most of the statues in its Asia Pavillion are on loan from a foundation, the Asian Art Society in the Netherlands. The museum has nothing to say about them as they are not the owners. However, the museum does own the Durga Killing the Buffalo Demon, which stands in the midst of the other temple statues. It apparently does not want to proactively investigate the provenance of the Bangladesh object, and as long as the Bangladesh authorities do not claim it, not much will happen, and the Durga will spend its life in the capital that once ruled Bengal.
References:
[1] B. Sur (2019), Keeping corruption at bay: A study of the VOC’s administrative encounter with the Mughals in seventeenth-century Bengal, https://scholarlypublications.universiteitleiden.nl/handle/1887/76854 (10.01.2024)
[2] Frank Lequin (2005), Het personeel van de Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, Canaletto, Alphen aan den Rijn, p. 173.
[3] https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/collection/object/Durga-Killing-the-Buffalo-Demon–523402dfe2766ca3dcf0db5bcea1aece(10.01.2024)
[4] A.K.M. Shamsul Alam (1985), Sculptural Art of Bangladesh – Pre-Muslim Period, Department of Archaeology and Museums, Dhaka
[5] Enamul Haque (1980), Return of cultural property to their countries of origin: Bangladesh. A preliminary survey of a national situation, ICOM, Paris, https://icom.museum/en/ressource/return-of-cultural-property-to-their-countries-of-origin-bangladesh-a-preliminary-survey-of-a-national-situation/ (10.01.2024)
[6]https://mof.portal.gov.bd/sites/default/files/files/mof.portal.gov.bd/page/5e31763f_f5b2_4ecb_bf9a_edc8609d2f3f/G-3_12_34_Culture_English.pdf (10.10.2024)
[7] https://icom.museum/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/ICOM-Bangladesh-National-Committee-Request-for-Collective-Efforts-and-Awareness-to-Protect-Museums-and-Heritage.pdf (`10.01.2024)
[8] Jos van Beurden (2024), The Empty Showcase Syndrome – Tough questions about cultural heritage from colonial regions, https://www.aup.nl/nl/book/9789048564071/the-empty-showcase-syndrome (10.01.2024)
[9] Dutch national daily Trouw, India wil eeuwenoude koperen boeken terug en voert de druk op Leiden op, https://www.trouw.nl/binnenland/india-wil-eeuwenoude-koperen-boeken-terug-en-voert-de-druk-op-leiden-op~b86a5122/(10.01.2024)
[10] Dutch Cultural Heritage Agency (2022), Policy in the Netherlands https://english.cultureelerfgoed.nl/topics/cultural-goods-from-a-colonial-context/policy-in-the-netherlands (10.01.2024)
