Aiding and abetting theft
Next month's sale in London of treasures that belonged to Lord Robert Clive - regarded as the founder of Britain's Indian empire - will have a resonance for all Asians who sympathise with Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen's charge that the west has stolen his country's culture. But the event's real significance lies in what it reveals of Asian complicity in Asia's pillaging.
Clive's arrogant justification of his plunder rings down the annals of history. The puppet prince he made ruler of Bengal forced so much gold and jewels on him, he told the judges at his impeachment in London in 1773, that, 'By God, at this moment do I stand astonished at my own moderation!' The Manchu authorities were similarly guilty of the despoilment of China's heritage after 1890, when they allowed European and Japanese archaeologists full freedom to dig up the old Silk Road and pillage historical treasures under the Taklimakan and Gobi deserts. The British archaeologist Sir Aurel Stein transferred nine tonnes of artefacts, including the world's oldest printed book, to Europe.
Over a million and a half items of China's treasures are reportedly scattered among 200 museums in 47 countries. In 1860 Lord Elgin exceeded in the Forbidden City the vandalism that links his father, the seventh earl, with the sculptures taken from the Parthenon in Athens.
Predatory proconsuls have given way to predatory collectors and museums. They employ Asians to do their dirty work. Last year Chinese authorities executed four people for raiding ancient tombs for buried treasures. An Indian trader accused of smuggling antiquities on a massive scale confessed that his western clients tour temples and palaces and point to what they want ripped out and shipped to them. Locals regularly rob excavation sites and museums in Afghanistan, Nepal and Cambodia to cater to wealthy American, Japanese and European collectors.
Interpol says the clandestine trade in stolen treasure ranks behind only drugs, money laundering and arms trafficking. Antique American firearms and British furniture are also stolen, but visits to art galleries and auction houses confirm that ancient Asia is in vogue in international artistic and cultural circles. It is easier to rob Angkor Wat than Notre Dame. Moreover, there are many neglected piles like Angkor Wat not only in Cambodia's jungles but also in the remote interior of countries like India and China. Most thefts go unnoticed. Indian police reckon that only 2 per cent of losses are reported. Thus, the 300,000 lost antiquities that are registered annually represent a tiny fraction of the total. The collusion that makes theft possible in the first place ensures that it remains secret.
The Art Loss Registry, set up in 1991 by leading auction houses, art trade associations, insurance companies and the International Foundation for Art Research with offices in London, New York, Cologne and St Petersburg, might have afforded protection. But it limited its own scope for action, as shown in a 1997 episode. Though the registry knew that a Claude Monet painting that had been given to the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art was stolen property, it kept quiet on the basis that victims must stake their own claims. The registry sees itself only as a repository for reported losses.
Nor does the Met's assumption that everything presented to it is 'presented honorably' offer any comfort. The British Museum's general claim is that it 'has the resources to preserve [artefacts] better than the country from which they were taken'.
Understandably, the Chinese were annoyed last July when British Prime Minister Tony Blair shrugged off their request for the return of 23,000 relics in the British Museum. 'Sorry about that,' he quipped in Beijing. 'It's something that happened in history.'
But the case for a punitive international regimen is weakened if the citizens of victim nations continue to ransack and export their own past. True, some institutional checks have been introduced, but Britain and the United States have not endorsed the 1953 Hague convention protecting cultural objects in war zones. Nor are they helpful to efforts by Unesco to tackle the problem. The determination with which western agencies track down stolen Nazi hoards is not matched by their interest in recovering medieval Indian bronzes or Khmer carvings, because no other race demonstrates the grit with which Jews guard their past.
In this as in much else, Asians are their own worst enemy.
Sunanda Kisor Datta-Ray is a visiting senior research fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore. The views expressed in this article are those of the author
