KATHMANDU, NEPAL, January 24, 2024 (The Guardian): Flicking through a newspaper in 2020, Sanjay Adhikari read a story that changed the direction of his life – a Nepalese statue of Gods Lakshmi and Narayana, was on display at the Dallas Museum of Art. He recognized it as originating in Nepal. “I could not sleep. Our God was locked inside a museum in the US,” he says. Adhikari, from Kathmandu, spoke to conservators, activists, journalists and museum curators, and launched a campaign to see the 10th-century statue returned to Nepal. “I wrote dozens of emails to the foreign ministry, archaeology department and the US embassy,” he says. The 28-year-old got the mayor of Lalitpur town, in Kathmandu valley, to file a police report about the missing statue, and spoke to priests at Patko Tole temple, from where it was taken 40 years ago. He sent all the documents to the Nepalese and US authorities. In 2021, the statue was brought home and reinstalled at the temple.

Thousands of centuries-old artifacts have been looted since Nepal opened up to international trade and tourism in the 1950s. Objects have turned up in museums and auction halls in the US, Europe and Asia. “Kathmandu valley was an open museum,” says Rohit Ranjitkar, director of the Kathmandu Valley Preservation Trust. “There was art everywhere. Besides temples or monuments, there were centuries-old treasures. I think the local people did not value it or there was less awareness. So many things were knowingly or unknowingly gifted or thrown out or sold by local people.” The past few years has seen a concerted effort by Nepali heritage hunters to get these objects back where they belong, helped by the changing attitudes of Western governments and institutions, which have become more willing to return disputed artifacts. Buoyed up by his success, Adhikari launched the Nepal Heritage Recovery Campaign (NHRC) and, as one of the country’s leading heritage lawyers now, has helped to recover about 30 pieces of art.

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https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2024/jan/24/our-god-was-locked-in-a-us-museum-the-heritage-hunters-bringing-home-nepals-lost-treasures

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