India seeks to block the auctions of Buddhist religious relics

The jewelry is delicate, some of the thousand of millimeters, arranged in complex models of circles and lines. Taken from India occupied by the British in 1898, the jewelry was discovered alongside bones and ashes, which would be the remains of Buddha. The collection may be one of the most sacred relics in contemporary religion.

Now he is on sale, triggering a legal battle between the government of India and that of Sotheby, the international auction house which should sell religious treasures during an auction. The artefacts are sold in the name of the English descendants of the explorer who dug them over 120 years ago.

On Monday, the Indian Ministry of Culture issued a legal order, claiming that relics should be returned to India for “religious preservation and veneration”.

The sale cuts to the heart of an uncomfortable question which disturbed post-imperial nations: how should the invaluable relics be looted there are generations from occupied territories?

“We have been in this long-term movement for a long time, to rethink the status of culturally significant art,” said Ashley Thompson, art teacher from Southeast Asian at the University of London. “Who do they belong to?” What are they worth? Can they even be considered as products? ”

A multitude of countries have struggled with such questions in recent years. Some American institutions have slowly started to return relics to indigenous tribes. Dutch museums have returned artefacts of the colonial era to countries like Nigeria and Sri Lanka. Through Great Britain, museums have gradually repatriated looted artifacts, including some linked to Buddhist funeral traditions.