‘How did it come to be here?’: Nepal wants to bring lost wealth | Articles and Culture Issues

Professor Virginia Tech Sweta Gyanu Baniya saw a beautiful Nepali necklace of the 18th century at the Art Institute of Chicago, shed tears, bowed, and began to pray.

Now, a video posted on television has made the photo one of the latest in a series of online fights. thousands of items came out for decades from the Himalayan world.

The return trip is made up of only a handful of leftovers, but it has come from some of the world’s top organizations and the pressure to demand more is increasing.

The then king of Nepal presented a bronze bead, adorned with precious stones, to Taleju Bhawani, the goddess of the Malla family, about 1650.

His Kathmandu temple is only open to the public on one day a year, but the authorities removed the work for safekeeping in the 1970’s – after which it disappeared.

Baniya told the AFP news agency she visited a museum in Chicago in June “it was a great success”.

“I started to cry,” she says. “I started to pray more and more, as was the custom in the temple.

“I had so many questions. As it is, how did it get here? ”

Signs of red color used in Hindu rituals are still visible, and Baniya’s Twitter video urged Nepali officials to contact the museum to return.

The Art Institute of Chicago has not responded to AFP’s request several times, but its page says the bead was donated by the Private Alsdorf Foundation, which was purchased from a California retailer in 1976.

Priest Udhav Kamacharya has been serving at the temple for 26 years but the statue of Baniya is the first to see such relics.

As he looked around, he said: “I saw that the goddess was still here.

“Sometimes we say gods don’t exist, but they do exist. That is why it was discovered even though it was in a foreign land. ”

Nepal is a religious community, as well as its Hindu and Buddhist temples entry point remain an integral part of people’s daily lives.

However, many do not have the old statues, paintings, decorative windows or even doors, which were stolen – sometimes with the help of corrupt officials – after the country opened up to foreign countries in the 1950s to feed the technical markets in the United States. States, Europe and elsewhere.

“Our talent for us is not just art, but gods for us,” said heritage expert Rabindra Puri, who is campaigning for the return of the stolen Nepali heritage and has collected the artifacts of the museum.

Puri stood during an AFP interrogation at his home, in Bhaktapur near Kathmandu [Prakash Mathema/AFP]

In June, the Paris branch of the Bonhams shopping mall was forced to ban the sale of five copper-plated statues, which had been removed from a temple gate in the 1970’s, under pressure from Nepali officials and freedom fighters.

The sale was first spotted by Lost Art of Nepal, an anonymous Facebook page that lists hundreds of antiquities and religions, showcasing their new location from museums to museums in Europe or America.

“We have seen empty temples, empty temples, bare metal and toranas torn apart,” in Kathmandu province, the site manager said in an email.

“In search of answers, I picked up old photos from … [all] possible sources, ”he added. “The amount of our heritage is greater than what is known or published.”

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Proponents of her case have been working to make the actual transcript of this statement available online.

With the return of a legacy that is growing in museums around the world – the ancient Greek Elgin Marbles and Benin Bronzes from Nigeria perhaps with some well-known conflicts – the occasional recovery of the Nepalese population is intensifying.

Six pieces have been restored this year, and governments are seeking more information from France, the US and the United Kingdom.

Nepal is a very religious country, and its Hindu and Buddhist temples and shrines continue to play an important role in the daily life of the people. [Prakash Mathema/AFP]

In March, the Dallas Art Museum and the FBI recovered a 12- to 15th-century stolen stone of the Hindu god Laxmi-Narayan in Nepal.

This month, it will be rebuilt on its temple site, where it disappeared in 1984.

The museum has had the statue for 30 years, but a tweet written by crime professor Erin L Thompson questioning its origins prompted an investigation.

“These are things that people worship until they are taken away from them,” he said.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York unveiled a 10th-century stone statue of the Hindu god Shiva in September, the third object he has returned to Nepal since 2018.

In Bhaktapur, worshipers worship an ancient Laxmi-Narayan statue, preserved behind a metal gate.

Expectant mothers continue with the ancient practice of giving oil to determine their child’s gender.

But it is a metaphor. The early 15th century disappeared in the early 1980’s.

Badri Tuwal, 70, recalls the tears of the people on the day the statue disappeared.

“We do not know where it is,” he said, “but I hope one day we will celebrate his return.”