Meanwhile, after 15 years of investigations the United States authorities have returned 307 antiquities that were stolen by multiple smaller trafficking networks to India. The antiquities are valued at nearly $4 million in private market prices. The Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg Jr. announced that they are returning these antiquities to the people of India, and the majority of them were seized from disgraced art dealer Subhash Kapoor.
According to the statement, five of the antiquities were seized according to the officer’s investigation into an individual known as Nancy Wiener and one according to the investigation into another individual known as Kniv.
All the antiquities were returned during a repatriation ceremony at the Indian consulate in New York. This, of course, has been a major breakthrough which is building slowly over the 10s of 1000s of antiquities that have been stolen from India.
And imagine the amount of our history that has been lost because of this.
From the Elgin Marbles that were taken from the Greek Parthenon to the plunder of Egypt. The plunder of India has also happened the Kohinoor Raj is one of them, but the reality is from the temples of India from the archaeological sites of India, even to this day, 80 years after independence, there has been a roaring multimillion-dollar trade.
It’s a very good sign for India and at the international level also, as we understand that, when antiquities are stolen, then, it is not only the money part of that matters.
It is used to steal a piece of history, you stole a piece of the culture of that particular land. And that is very important. And I said, I must welcome the comment, while returning it, it is said that we are proud of returning you. The sentimental attachment is very, very important.
And I wish, that there are other countries also especially I’m talking about the UK, which has been stolen, our history, which is part of our culture, and it should be returned to us.
Second, this entire operation has three layers, one is the emotional layer, and the second is the academic layer. And the third is the intellectual one. The emotional as you understand anything is stolen from a particular person or the society the nation.
A person is most happy with something returned to him. When it comes to academics, it is very much necessary that when the antiquities come back to India, they are put in the right place, if possible.
So, we can see our history from the right perspective, which will help the missing link of our history, which is with antique it has gone and third is intellectual and it is a required see that culturally if we understand that we have very rich cultural roots, that gives confidence to a society that this confidence to a nation that we know this, how glorious our past was there. So for boosting our morale number one is for putting history in the right perspective, and the third is for our emotional welfare.
This is a very good move. And at the top of it, I’ll say I am all praised for the people, the district attorney that he should have been proud of returning it that shows the intellectual honesty of that country also.
I wish the same kind of intellectual honesty is shown by the UK also, which is the biggest looter of cultural antiquities of our country and they are sitting very tightly on that.
