Nepal’s Stolen Gods Seek New Homes

Now, two decades later, the apsara has returned home.

In 2022, the Rubin Museum of Art in New York returned the artifact to Nepal as part of a wider effort in Western museums to trace and restore looted or illicitly acquired antiquities. But restoring the stolen gods to their homes isn’t an easy process.

On a bright July morning, the monastery courtyard of Itumbaha echoed with the sounds of bells and religious chants as Buddhist priests and locals performed rituals for the apsara’s return. The monastery—one of the oldest in Kathmandu—was also commemorating the return of another artifact, a 13th-century wooden temple strut that was stolen decades ago and handed back by New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art last year.

Both objects are now part of the Itumbaha Museum, Nepal’s first museum in a vihara, or monastery, which also displays 150 other religious and cultural objects previously locked in storage and out of public view.

“The items that were stolen and returned highlight the repatriation at Itumbaha, which is one of the most important bahas [monastery courtyards] of Kathmandu,” said Swosti Rajbhandari Kayastha, the curator of Itumbaha Museum, in an interview with Foreign Policy. “This will raise the community’s awareness of their heritage. It will also send a message about conservation and illicit trafficking of our heritage.”

An 11th-century statue of the deity Shiva, known as the Uma Maheshwor idol, that was returned to Nepal from New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, is pictured in its delivery crate at the Department of Archaeology in Kathmandu on April 4, 2018. Gopen Rai/AFP via Getty Images

Referred as an “open museum,” Kathmandu and its surrounding areas were dotted with religious and historic relics that were mostly unguarded—while some of them were inside temples, others were located in public spaces. The open access thus made it easy for smugglers to dislodge the objects of faith. A massive demand from art connoisseurs in the West, coupled with high-level corruption inside Nepal, facilitated the  transfer of those artifacts abroad, according to conservationists.

After being looted, the statues and other artifacts were smuggled from sacred to sanitized spaces. They started appearing in auctions for thousands of dollars, ending up as decorative pieces at the homes of the wealthy or gifted objects of admiration at some of the most famous museums in the United States and Europe.

“Since it’s a living heritage, those who steal from us are committing crime against humanity,” said Rajbhandari Kayastha, a museology lecturer at Lumbini Buddhist University, located in Lumbini, the birthplace of Buddha.

In recent years, Nepal has seen a renewed interest in the repatriation of its stolen gods, largely due to growing public awareness boosted by citizen-led campaigns and social media sightings relocating the historical and religious objects. Books documenting hundreds of looted artifacts, including Nepali art historian Lain Singh Bangdel’s 1989 work, Stolen Images of Nepal, have also helped to identify hundreds of vanished artifacts.

Ram Bahadur Kunwar, a spokesperson for the Nepali government’s Department of Archeology, told Foreign Policy that 143 stolen antiquities have been returned to Nepal so far (though police have recovered many others that were stolen but found within the country’s borders). Of them, only 35 have been reinstated at their original site, which requires approval from municipalities and district administrations where they are located.

Kunwar said that many returned idols and artifacts are either stored or on display at Nepal’s museums. However, the ones claimed by communities­­ ­are handed over after approval from municipalities and district administrations where they are located­.

“Our main goal should be to restore those returned objects that were stolen in their original place,” said Rohit Ranjitkar, a leading heritage conservationist and the Nepal program director of the nonprofit Kathmandu Valley Preservation Trust. “It will be meaningful if it’s there, where it belongs, rather than at a museum.”

But heritage conservationists said that the process of reinstating stolen idols is complicated and has its own set of challenges, and not all communities are willing to take the returned idols back.

Ranjitkar said that some communities are concerned over security issues. Others, he added, were unhappy about accepting damaged images, as idols that have been chipped or broken are deemed unworthy of worship and considered unlucky.

In 2021, a discussion ensued after the androgynous idol of Laxmi-Narayan was brought home from the Dallas Museum of Art nearly 40 years after it was stolen. There were questions of whether the eight-handed idol, somewhere between five and eight centuries old, should be reinstated at its temple in Patan, adjoining Kathmandu. It wasn’t just that one of the statue’s hands had been broken off; locals had created a replica of the original statue and had been worshipping it for decades after the original one was stolen.

Hindu and Buddhist statues are an integral part of daily ritual for many Nepalis and more than just stone sculptures with hundreds of years of history. Devotees see them as a living heritage and believe that the idols of gods and goddesses have life—they offer the sculptures food and flowers as part of their daily worship.

Left: The Laxmi-Narayan temple at Patko Tole in Patan, a community adjoining Kathmandu on Oct. 31. Right: The original and replica of Laxmi-Narayan statues at the temple.Bibek Bhandari for Foreign Policy

Eventually, there was a compromise, and the Laxmi-Narayan idol made its way from a museum, where it was initially stored, to its original abode. Locals organized a chariot procession to welcome the restored Laxmi-Narayan after nearly four decades in December 2021 and placed it alongside the replica. Today, both idols are worshipped side by side at an unguarded two-story temple surrounded by old residential houses in Patko Tole, near Patan Durbar Square, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Ranjitkar said that returned sculptures are unlikely to be stolen again, as they are well documented. Some temples also now use CCTV cameras to guard their idols, while others are chained or locked behind bars for additional safekeeping.

But some communities are still reluctant. Locals have been hesitant to reclaim the head of Saraswati, the Hindu goddess of learning, after it was returned anonymously from the United States in 1999. Looters had decapitated the 12th-century statue at a temple in Pharping, located at the edge of Kathmandu, in 1984, probably to sell it separately.

Sculptures with unclear origins or those unclaimed by their home communities are usually housed at Nepal’s National Museum in Kathmandu or the Patan Museum. There are about 50 objects exhibited in a separate section of the National Museum, including the 10th-century stone sculpture of Uma Maheshwar, another name for the Hindu gods Parvati and Shiva, that was returned from Denver Art Museum; the head of Saraswati; and the 13th-century wooden strut returned from Australia in May 2023. The Patan Museum houses a version of the Uma Maheshwar statue from the 12th century that was stolen and sold to a German museum in the 1980s.

“We need to create a balance—if all the broken items are kept in the museum, there will be a lack of space in the museum,” Ranjitkar said. “If we start replacing them with new objects [in the temples], the place will be of historical significance, but the objects will be replaced with new ones. So that could become an issue.”

Three artifacts returned to Nepal on display at the National Museum in Kathmandu on July 19. Left: The 10th-century statue of Uma Maheshwor that was repatriated from Denver Art Museum; Center: An undated statue of Buddha at the National Museum that was returned from the United States in 2018; Right: The head of Saraswati, the Hindu goddess of learning, after it was returned anonymously from the United States. Bibek Bhandari for Foreign Policy

“It’s important they know that broken things have value—they are a part of history; they tell a story,” she said.

At New York’s Rubin Museum, which returned the apsara and another artifact to Nepal in 2022, 18 percent of its total collection is defined as Nepali art. A representative of the museum said that it doesn’t acquire any material known or suspected to be stolen or looted, and investigates any claims to determine the next steps, including repatriation to original countries.

“Just as artworks are unique, so is their provenance,” said Jorrit Britschgi, the executive director of Rubin Museum. “We must do this justice and look at cultural property on a case-by-case basis. We also hope that this project [the Itumbaha Museum] can heighten both local and global awareness around the importance of documenting and protecting cultural sites and their collections throughout the Himalayan region.”

And while doing so, the Rubin Museum is also attempting to create goodwill by offering support to local communities. It contributed $20,000 to help set up Itumbaha Museum—while also angering a few conservationists.

On the museum’s opening day in late July, dozens of protesters silently stood with placards a few blocks away. They denounced Rubin’s involvement in Itumbaha and demanded that the U.S. museum review its entire collection.

“What the Rubin did in Nepal to whitewash their image is very shameful and deplorable,” said Sanjay Adhikari, a public interest litigation lawyer who works at the Nepal Heritage Recovery Campaign, a nonprofit working to bring back stolen cultural heritage.

“This action has further demonstrated how low Western institutes can stoop to retain our looted items of worship. The international community needs to act proactively to make institutes like Rubin accountable,” Adhikari said.

This is where citizen-led initiatives such as the Nepal Heritage Recovery Campaign and the Lost Arts of Nepal have stepped in. The latter, helmed by an anonymous activist, has served as a crusader to locate Nepal’s stolen antiquities abroad, sharing the findings on various social media platforms.

Most recently, Lost Arts of Nepal has located a variety of stolen artifacts, including a 15th-century wooden strut that was auctioned at a Christie’s auction in New York in 2001, a 17th-century four-faced idol of the Hindu god Shiva that was sold at a Galerie Zacke auction in 2022, and a 17th-century statue of the goddess Tara that was auctioned by Christie’s in Paris in 2017.

These nonprofits mostly work behind the scene to locate stolen artifacts, gathering documentation and evidence for the authorities to start the process of repatriating them or stop auctions abroad. And they have successfully done that on several occasions.

In 2021, activists were able to stop an auction of Nepali antiquities by Bonhams within 24 hours of listing. The Rubin Museum also credited the Nepal Heritage Recovery Campaign for bringing the claims involving the two returned objects to the museum’s attention. And in October, the Metropolitan Museum of Art announced that it will return an 11th-century stone sculpture of Vishnu flanked by Laxmi and Garuda, as well as the aforementioned wooden strut dating back to the 13th century, after determining “that the works should be returned.”

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Meanwhile, activists are also working to bring back a 17th-century necklace of Kathmandu’s patron goddess, Taleju, from the Art Institute of Chicago. The museum said in an email that it had communicated with the Nepali government in May 2022 and is awaiting a response.

“Just that stolen objects are back in Nepal doesn’t mean the repatriation is complete,” Sijapati said. “It’s just a transit point. They should go back to the community where they came from. It’s completing a circle of repatriation.”

At Itumbaha, that circle is almost complete, as the two stolen objects were reinstated. But other items from the monastery, including three life-size 17th-century paubha paintings, which have been located in a private collection of a New York-based art dealer, are yet to return home.

But for now, community members are proud to display their thousands of years of heritage in the form of a museum.

Ranjitkar said that other communities could follow the footsteps of Itumbaha. He added that this would not only be beneficial in preserving the heritage sites, but also for safeguarding them from thefts.

“If the unused monasteries are put into use, it’s likely that people are going to maintain them,” he said. “If they’re turned into museums, the objects will be in public view and well documented, minimizing the risk of thefts. It will also help generate funds for restoration. Monuments should never be kept unused—they’re our living heritage.”

Update, Nov. 16, 2023: This piece has been updated with more current information on the number of statues reinstalled in Nepal.