Our guest today is S Vijay Kumar, co-founder of the India Pride project, which is working to stop theft of Indian heritage, loot of Indian temple art. Vijay, tell us, how did it all start? First of all, thank you Rahul and Piyush for spending time and hosting India Pride in Delhi this April. And it was a great event we had in the press club and as you know, we are all sons of the soil though we live abroad.

So the heart is still Indian, the passport is still Indian and as you see from the passport, every time I pick it up, I look at the lines and we would like to see India back to the rolling lines, not just make in India, but stay in India. So, it's been quite a while since we as a small citizens initiative have been working at highlighting the problems, the loopholes and the apparent disregard for protection of cultural sites in India. And our road has been thorny for the last 10 years where we worked at documenting temple sites.

What started off as a small hobby, blogging, couple of friends went into writing a story fiction, couple of friends went into reading actual inscriptions. And slowly as we started moving along on this journey, we realized that what little has been documented in India was not actually presented in the sites that we rented. So, just imagine, we have covered a very minuscule percentage of heritage sites and even in those published works, the pieces that were celebrated and found good enough to be featured in these research papers, catalogs, publications and these kind of books, were not there when we visited the sites.

And when we enquired about, people were not even bothered to come back to us, there was no reports, no theft reports, nobody actually knew where these sacred objects were. That's when we realized that there is some gap, something is wrong. And instead of waiting for somebody to just come up and do it, we as a small team said let's see what we can do and that's how I think the Genesis of India Pride project was formed.

But you started many years ago, I believe you have an interest in documenting temple art and there was a case of serendipity, so could you go back and share what your hobby was and when did you form that hobby of documenting temples? See, I was always interested in temple art, not just Hindu temple art, anything that was beautiful. As we are young, we all had ambitions of becoming painters, artists and it took a long while for me to realize that I will never be a match for my ancestors. So then the easiest alternative was photography, which at that time was expensive, probably not like today.

And I used to go around all these amazing sites back in my home town in Tamil Nadu and what was really surprising for me was we had these amazing monuments with stunning works of art and there would hardly be one visitor, two visitors and even those that are currently under worship, people would just go inside, place their demands before the Lord, pay their fines or dues, hoping to reap their fixed deposits at the end of the time and come back. Not even spend a few minutes in appreciating the beautiful sculptures around and then I realized that there was a small gap in what we look at art and what a sacred art and the space of the young India was lacking in art appreciation. I am not saying that art appreciation has to be taught formally, but it was not included in our history books.

If you remember what we were taught, we were taught about wars, we were taught about people trees being planted, but nobody talked to us about what is sculpture, what is the beauty of sculpture. And the few books that were printed and published by experts, scholars, they are more like PhD theses which scare away an early audience, that's when I realized that there is a small gap which we could actually fit in where I could document my own learning process like how I was studying as a layman, my introduction to sculpture and Indian art, I thought I would document it as a blog. That is Poetry.PoetryKingstone.in And after a few blogs, I found that this was not just an expression for me, it was a congregation point or a rally called for similar like-minded individuals to come along and slowly we started finding that social media is a fertile fishing pool to cast our nets into and a lot of like-minded volunteers came along and scholars came along.

I think that's the largest takeaway, it's not just the blog, it's that we made good friends. Great. And so, there was a, I mean, when did you first realize that there is theft going on in these temples? I believe there was some incident when you were reading a magazine and something you documented or was it? I've always been, you know, you always want to be James Bond and the moment you realize that piece is missing.

My first and even today unfinished objective is what is today cited as the example of the most studied restitution in India, which is the Sivapuram Nataraja. Now, the Sivapuram Nataraja is a unique case where it was found as a buried hoard and was part of a series of six branches and an FIR was filed only after 13 years of the death and that too because a British museum curator who came down to India in 1963 to write a book on Indian branches mentioned in his book that it is what you have in the temple is a fake and the originals are with a dealer in Bombay. And the switch happened when the temple authorities gave the branches for cleaning out to a craftsman and the craftsman made replicas and sold the originals and apparently our systems and bureaucracy and law enforcement was as lax as it is today, even then in the 1950s, that they took eight months to reach Bombay from Chennai.

By the time the branch was sold for close to a million dollars to the Northern Samaritan Museum and the Northern Samaritan Museum formally acquired the branch in 1972 and there was a protracted legal battle between the government of India and Northern Samaritan Museum and the surprising fact in this case is that the Indian government and Northern Samaritan agreed for an out-of-court settlement and in the out-of-court settlement, the Northern Samaritan Museum was allowed to keep the branch for a period of 10 years on display in a public museum and then return to India which is good and he doesn't get paid anything. He loses his million dollars in those days but there was a very vague second clause which basically said that Northern Samaritan could buy any Indian art for a period of one year. If it is already out of India, no questions will be asked by the Indian government which is quite funny.

There was no need for that clause to be inserted. So my legal brain started clicking and I went and checked, okay, he had this loophole, how much did he use it and I was shocked to read that he had bought close to say 40 South Indian broadsides and about another 100 odd Indian art in that moratorium period which include a lot of pieces which were of shady provenances and as I was going through it, I was more shocked when there was another bronze with a provenance plate which said Sivapuram and the date of acquisition was 1972. I was like, you have this Nataraja and then you have another bronze from Sivapuram.

You are talking about the Northern Samaritan Museum? All the same museum. Oh, you were at the museum and you saw them? Okay, so what we did was, I went to the French Institute at Pondicherry as I normally do and asked them for the photographs if they have documented it earlier. As luck would have it, the French Museum went to document it only in 1987 by which time the switch had already been made.

Oh, the switch was not made in 63 but the book was written in 63, the switch was made earlier. Much earlier. So the French Institute at Pondicherry basically had photos of the fakes.

So when I looked at the fakes, so they had this fake Nataraja, they had the fake Somaskanda and they had a Ganesha, a Sambandhar and two Uma bronzes. So I went and dug up the old FIR which was filed in the 1960s and it lists that six bronzes were unearthed, not one bronze and it gives the names of the bronzes, one Nataraja, one Somaskanda, one Sambandhar and one Ganesha and two Uma bronzes and that only one was recovered. All others have been made, the rest of the five items are still open as of today.

So then I went and dug more and then I found a book called South Indian Bronzes written by the then creator of Nataraja Museum, P. N. Srinivasan and he had a photograph of this Somaskanda in an unclean condition as it was excavated which is available even today at the Chennai Museum for Rs. 270 and it's this thick a book and that book had this photograph which is a direct match to the object that is on display in the Northern Saiman Museum and when I went and looked at it, okay, so one, the Indian government bothered only to return the Nataraja, the family was still back in Northern Saiman, not only that, the fakes were made to closely resemble the original and then we looked at the rest of the four bronzes which unfortunately is not there in P. N. Srinivasan's book. We find Northern Saiman Museum has similar looking bronzes which resembles the replicas with them already which has been bought in 1972.

So I published this as a paper and then the surprising fact was the same Douglas Barrett, the British Museum creator who wrote this book in 1963 which originally ticked off the police saying this is a fake, had visited the Northern Saiman Museum around the 1970s and he had written a monologue of these bronzes but they were never published and after 25 years they were published in a small magazine for which a friend, volunteer contributed to us where Douglas Barrett himself has quoted that this Somaskanda and Ganesha are part of the famous Sivapuram court and to date there has been no attempts made to bring this bronze back. Are those still lying in the Northern Saiman Museum? Yes. Still to date? Yes.

Like 40 years? With the provenance plate saying so from Sivapuram. What is the provenance? Provenance is Sivapuram. Okay.

You are asking what is the provenance? Provenance. Okay. Say you want to go buy a property.

Okay. You ask for the katha or the parent document. Okay.

So provenance is basically a parent document which is currently used as a convenient loophole. When I say a loophole, many countries have this issue of, the source countries which I mean that countries that are rich in heritage and culture which was prime target for looters, lobbied the UN to come up with a strong statuette to stop this rampant theft of cultural property. In 1970 the UN came up with a statuette which said that anything over 100 years is treated as an antiquity and should not be removed from the source country.

And if the source country can prove that it was illicitly removed, the buyer should return it to the origin country without compensation. And for that matter of fact, it is not a grandfather's loss. Meaning anything before 1970 does not become untouchable.

It just means that you need to do more to find the case. So the other case in point is the London Nataraja case which was from a temple site called Batur. It is very interesting in the sense that this was bought by a corporation in Canada again in the same time period, 1970-1980 and similar large numbers.

This Nataraja was actually bought back because of the help of termites. Okay. What happened was this was a buried hoard and you know the buried hoard is a subject that is close to my heart because during the unfortunate events of 1314 when there were raids by invaders in South India, these priests basically tried to protect these bronzes.

They used to bury these bronzes for safekeeping. Because they were being destroyed. For gold or whatever.

And the very fact that even today every year we find about 50-60 buried hoards, bronzes is a testament to the fact that the custodians sacrificed their own lives in guarding their secrets rather than give it up because otherwise after the threat had passed, they would have gone and brought out the bronzes and reinstalled them. So these guys gave up their lives to protect these bronzes so that someday they will come back into worship. So this bronze, the Patrul Nataraja was dug up by a farmer, greedy maybe.

So he went and put this near a termite mound and negotiated the sale privately. And when he went out, he was sent to London for cleaning. And the British police and the Indian government got wind of it and they started asking questions.

So the first question that came up was who sues for it? Because it was not from a temple, it was from a buried hoard. And along with the Nataraja, two Ummas were found. And the Ummas were still there.

And the call was, the legality was can the wife sue for the husband? So it was decided that the Umma would sue for the husband to be returned back to work. But the question was there were two Ummas. So the legal brains got together and they said that this guy is a dancer.

He keeps dancing around. So the poor wife will be following him around. And they decided the one with the slimmer waist would be the pair and she sued.

And one of the important evidence was when they scraped the bottom of the Nataraja, the termite mound sand matched with the termite mound and Patrul. So that's why it's a termite site in the back of the Nataraja. So that's all the glitz of solving a case.

So Vijay, what I want to know is that, from what I understand, we are losing a lot of heritage and culture. But who is responsible here and who all are involved in this loss that we have? Because from what I hear, there are greedy farmers or busy people. And we are not losing it to people from outside.

Who all are involved in this loss? See, this is probably akin to ivory fortune. The fact that ivory fortune happens is because the ultimate buyer is poking out a ridiculous amount of money. As is right now.

And I was reading this post on Facebook. It said that the rhino population is down to less than 100. And the rhino is asking the guy, seriously, you think we have access to our produce yet? We can't even have our population up.

The point I'm trying to make is, the killing stops when the buying stops. And if you really look at the art market today, it's very different from the art market of a few decades ago. One, there is a lack of credible investment which can be moved around easily, swapped around easily.

And the kind of dollar monies that we are talking about, we are talking about options going to 5, 10, 15 million. And 15 million today is a ridiculously huge sum of money to corrupt even the incorruptible. And for 90 crores, for one ideal, it's going to be impossible for India to secure its borders, secure its temples.

So that's one aspect that we are working on. Basically, look at creating a strong deterrent for people to buy spurious, paperwork-packed Indian art knowing from experience that in the past, India was a soft target. So India would never care and go after the smuggling dream.

So if you, Indian art was fair game. So in fact, they would have like a workshop. This was like an assembly line.

People would be sent. Auction houses would send people here. They would come on an expedition, go out with their local dealers, pick and choose objects for loot.

Which basically means that if there are 10 objects, they'll say okay, these two are the best ticket. And then these would be shipped back to them. So it's an order-loot kind of subject.

And if you just keep going at this rate, every decade, we are losing 10,000, 20,000 prime objects. You can imagine how much India's poor are by their side. That is the estimate.

10,000 approximately every decade. Well, it's a subject that we can keep arguing. But you have to understand from the recent examples.

Just to give you a sample, one of the prime dealers that is currently being under threat in Chennai. His galleries was raided in just New York alone. Storage warehouses.

Which as of now is 12 in number. So there could be more. 12 storage warehouses of a medium-sized dealer in New York yielded $108 million worth of stuff.

Which is again a conservative valuation because in art market, it has to be a bit. So $108 million, 2,623 objects was a standing stock from disclosed seized. And this guy was in business for 35 years.

So you can just extrapolate it. This is just one dealer in America. And a medium-sized one.

Medium-sized one. Then you have this whole private collector market. And how are these people advertising or selling these products? Well, till recently, you will be surprised.

It's an open catalogue, internet brochures wherein we even have things that have been dropped from ASI site museums which have been openly advertised on catalogues. So ASIs, I mean from museums, theft happens and is an ASI. I mean, how can that occur? That leads us to the larger question of who is responsible for this.

If you quote the CAG report of 2013, the CAG actually says if the larger issue is 91, heritage sites were missing. Complete sites missing. So they don't know where the heritage sites are.

What does that mean? The entire temple structure or whatever, everything is wiped out. It's not there. And when is this? What date is this CAG report from? 2013.

The larger thing is the ASI says the CAG report says as of the decade ended 2012, not even a single Indian object was restituted back. And if you see in comparison what happens in other countries, source countries like Italy, Greece, Cambodia, Egypt. They have an active police force.

Italy has 3,000 people and they have had remarkable success. Remarkable success in the sense of not just in terms of money value in terms of quantity and in terms of how they actively chase the smuggling network. So they don't value the token returns.

They value in actually going after the dealers and even curators and breaking that network down basically. So they want to scare people from doing optical due diligence on purchasing those art forms. Unfortunately in India the Antiquity Act which is a much maligned act everybody is blaming the Antiquity Act.

I have actually looked at the Antiquity Act and there is nothing wrong. Much of India's antiquity and in fact every other law is better than British law. So everybody is looking at Antiquity Act.

The only problem is there is no one to enforce that. The Antiquity Act places the role of ASI as a custodian but then there is no enforcement powers and there is no detective powers to go and actively look at auction catalogs look at auction records look at magazines that people are advertising and these are very creative. What do you mean? There is no police, there is no departments who are responsible for this? There is no detective, there is no department, there is no police and there is no modus operandi.

In fact when one of the Natarajas which I talked about came back to India Indian customs did not have a provision for an object to be returned because there was no entry for its exit. So obviously a smuggler is not going to put a bill of entry for its exit. So it stayed inside customs for 10 years.

Oh my! In some go down. So Vijay, what would be a viable model to put back these artifacts back to their temple and would there be a standstill where the temple or the village council would be held responsible for this? Right now I think technology has moved manifold. Gone are the days where you have to put titles on the lock.

It's a demonstrated fact that a documented object is as much as a veteran has a Nataraja lock. And today you can invest in three dimensional scanners where you can do a full three dimensional scanner. So you don't have to go and say this temple and inscribe it like what they do in restaurants.

So there is technology available where we can completely document it. I think it's high time. In fact the UN statuette basically says that source countries should have a national archive plus they should also publicize a national theft database.

Sadly India does not have both. So we don't have a custodian, we don't have a national archive, we don't have a policing force, we don't have a dedicated squad and it's no wonder we are losing pieces at this point. You said ASI is a custodian.

So we do have a custodian but we don't have any police. No state department. There is no accountability.

Even with the CAG report I don't think there is a formal answer that has been given to this 2013 report. And who is responsible for giving that answer? I guess it is the audit of the ASI and the Ministry of Culture and History. And is this an agenda item in the Ministry of Culture? I am clear of my agenda.

So our agenda is basically going to a larger scale. We want to make sure that these auction houses, dealers stop looking at India as somebody who doesn't care for its heritage and treat us as jokers. I mean literally jokers.

We have got everything with us. We have source photographs, we have objects that have been stolen right in front of our noses and somebody in Europe is advertising it in an open art show is giving television interviews with the object behind them. And sometimes they know it is stolen 100% they know it is stolen.

100% all the art galleries or is it that they sometimes do not know that they are stolen? To give you an example if a curator or a dealer doesn't know a freshly excavated piece to something that's been exhibited so coming back to the provenance question Provenance basically it has to be exhibited so if it is exhibited before 1917 it becomes good provenance. If an object which is sold for 5 million dollars has not been seen for 50 years and miraculously comes up somewhere in New York obviously it should have a red flag. The second thing when you look at an object that has been continuously under worship for 1000 years compared to something that has been off worship for 100 years those experts should be able to find out that this is a specialty and there are tests that can be done to basically look at the process of the stone basically to do further tests so are these museums overlooking the fact that these are stolen pieces and yet going ahead and missing anything? Well it's a question of having the necessary paperwork and the paperwork today is not in existence so there is no international standard which is basically looking at the loophole.

This is like one thief came he robbed one of my objects so I don't have to remove my lock change my lock. The idea is unlike countries like Australia which have been publicly shamed in the media to return the Nataja back along with Arunachala where they went and did a comprehensive review. The more review they do the more dirt comes up and more difficult it is to clean whereas countries like Britain for example take the stand that if we start returning our museums will be empty so you have two spectrums like once a British colony which is now acting properly and the parent of all trying to say that I want to protect the stolen wood that is in my museum so the idea is people have to realize that these were not meant to be museums in the first place.

They were not created as pieces of art. They were created as pieces of worship and to remove them from their setting take off the context and show them a showcase few years and charge a fee for that. So even if you are an Indian you want to go and see any of these objects the Met says you pay as much as you want but suggested is $25 so why should I pay $25 to see an object that should be in my country So two questions here Vijay.

One is about what did the Australian government do or the Australian media how did it change the Australian government what changed and what are the repercussions of that second one is about the point you touched upon worship right these are not artifacts for art they are for worship so I would like you to touch upon I will take your second question first because it is easier to answer for me this time many people ask me twofold one are archaeological sites and today archaeological sites objects lose their importance if they are illegally dug up meaning the context is lost and it becomes a showcase to you so for example if an illegal digger goes and digs a site he gets a gold coin and then he grabs some ceramic plates with some random inscriptions obviously he is going to throw the rest and he will want to hide the site so he is not going to tell you which site he excavated from so we actually don't know what it is about probably he will melt the gold or send the gold coin out and the problem is amplified in currently conflict zones like Syria and Iraq where terrorist groups are actively going and digging at an industrial scale even in Syria it is poke marked like a golf ball if you really look at it we were actually attending this UN conference on cultural crisis where we had senior archaeological experts from Syria real monuments men of art to combat this destruction of cultural property in the Middle East and the satellite photography that we see before and after is shocking the scale that is happening is so extensive that I am sure millions of dollars are moving through the wrong channels how does ISIS know where to excavate? well they hold a gun to your head and ask you to take to the site don't they have already been dug out? well that's the problem like in India in Delhi every 500 meters if you dig you will get something so there is the same happening in those countries and it's like the classic godfather question either the site detail is on the table or your brain is on it and there have been cases where they executed a few people who refused to divulge the locations is it an international mafia ordering somehow conniving with the ISIS well I think if you are short of funds you try everything so that's something of great concern that's happening right now that's number one whereas in India the shameful reason is neither are we an occupied country nor are we under a war zone and we are still losing objects at this scale and we are losing objects that are under worship so most of the pieces we are currently looking at such as temples have been broken into by criminals and objects that have been under worship for a thousand years are being sold out as curios and most often you mean like live temples I mean they go in and we have cases where the priests have been hacked to death resisting the theft so that's the scale at which we are talking of plus also archaeological sites we have sites that are under the UNESCO protected list and all these like recently Rani Ki Vav and we have traced off a beautiful Rani Ki Vav so a lot of these are objects of faith like Chola Pranthas which today command millions in the antiquities market are considered and the creators the original creators and the custodians denoted them to be bodies of God that's what they called literally in the local language so they were living deities and in fact when they are woken up by singing songs they are bathed, they are dressed they are actually wiped with a towel and they are fed and then in the night they are sung to and put to sleep so they are treated by these custodians as living breathing Gods and to make them as pieces of art and put a price tag on it is something that hurts very deeply Coming to Australia now Australia initially also took the normal stance which is being defined in fact the curator Ron Bradford went on record to say that there are hundreds of Natarajas and you guys don't know what Nataraja I have is a stolen Nataraja as luck would have it the French Institute of Pondicherry had a photograph when it was still inside the temple and one of our volunteers went down to the National Gallery and brought us a high resolution photograph thanks to technology we could map every break, every crack at 38 points and put it up as a YouTube video and said now it's your choice if you think this is right you were involved in that? it was my video it was my passion so I am happy that it has happened that this was up and this constituted a larger review within the Australian network and the culture minister asked for a detailed due diligence report on all the requisitions from this one dealer to start with so when they started doing this due diligence and they put this data up for experts to look at it and it was rather pathetic all the 30 objects even on first look, within half an hour you know that 17 objects have taken proper work then you have dealers brass shop owners, single room brass shop owners in Delhi Old Delhi who have been put as people who have sold 5 million dollars worth of stuff and the same names are put one after the other as simple rules if somebody had just applied their mind to say that it cannot be that one dealer and one Sundanese diplomat could actually hoard 70 million 70 million dollars worth of stuff and kept it quiet for 40 years because all of these have to be dated before the UN convention conveniently they come up with this letter pad so it's all bought between 1969 and 1970 by this diplomat and it left India and nobody thought about it it was given to one of the dealers girlfriends and incidentally she is being charged in the US court for providing fake provenance so all this worked together and Australia realised that they have a problem and they took these objects off display so apart from the two that have been returned already by Abbot once this video went out and the Vrindachal of Madurai the large equation is for 2 years these objects have been off display meaning that they realised that this is stolen and wouldn't be here no longer and we have managed to find proper photos where these objects have robbers holding dhotis behind it just after it was looted which is basically the South Indian version of Europe so you have all these photographs also to prove that these objects illegally left India though we have not been able to trace for some of these items where exactly their source temple has been which is thanks to the lack of national archive but the UN statute is very clear all you have to do is you have to say that it illegally left India and it's part of this smuggling network and the same dealer has given you fake proof so the paperwork is false, you have a robber photo and the museum has taken it off display and you have a due diligence report which says this is a problematic piece so all it takes for Indamma to ask for his return is there on public domain and sadly you have not asked for 2 years and why? if you mind the answer let me know and what happened was as we were digging all over the H&R complex we came across this Kushambuddha which was sold by another dealer and when we looked at the provenance it was also optical and this started alarm bells and they sued the dealer the dealer went for an auto she repaid then a million dollars with a promise or a guarantee to turn it to India so the gallery is paid, the object is off display waiting to be shipped to India nobody has asked for the Buddha as well because it never left India so there is no way for it to come back because the law is so confusing maybe wait for the next Australian Prime Minister to come back and check his claim but the larger thing is after this they appointed a Supreme Court judge in Australia to do a review of the 1200 objects of Asian origin? of Asian origin which is when we realised that even a small museum in Australia would hold 1200 objects and these are cases that keep happening everywhere and I think the Australian example is one way good, one way bad one way good meaning I think it is high time museums adopt fair practices and be transparent in their provenance detail and start working closely with experts to ensure that the house is cleaned up the second part is if you start opening it up they have to be confident that they are going to have a large amount of returns and that acceptance is there to sink in in some of these so called museums which consider themselves to be repositories of world cultures without realising that indirectly they are fueling illicit things and through that all nefarious activities It's almost patronising that they are anyways taking care of your art which you would not otherwise Is it? These monuments have lasted a thousand years and two thousand years without any patent without any air conditioning, without any chemical treatment without any of these so called highly qualified conservationists and all that they just need some tender loving care by this priest and they have survived we were in the National Museum today and these bronzes are better off sitting in the temple rather than being inside the showcases because they were living gods, now they are reduced even now museum to being showcases so I think one thing you have to realise that these have been made by artisans who relived art for god so they created these images putting generations of experience into it so that they could outlast your view my view and our entire generation's view and to even understand that a work of art can stand its beauty and grace like a smile and the downward glance for a thousand years, it's not a simple act when today we can't even build a bridge that stands till it's open so I think we have to give credit to the artists who realised that they did it, they did a good job they did the job for the artefact which we today call an artefact to be inside a temple which is their abode so you don't go into an abode and see something and say don't worry I will take good care of it so I have two questions on this point the first one would be that when these objects are leaving you know Indian shores are these provenance being produced at that point and if they are, are we technically sound enough to figure out at that point that these are obviously nobody is going to declare that I am selling out antique items so they are going out as garland furniture as decorative items or they go out as smuggled along with coconut husk containers or as used stationary items, plus some of them are couriered out so they are air freighted out and they go through multiple points which hide the provenance like Hong Kong, Thailand Switzerland, London so it's not too difficult if you have the will to do it unfortunately the current working system doesn't incentivize law enforcement to actively pursue theft and leisure property so coming to the second question which would be what would be the incentive or why should as an Indian citizen I'd be worried about it I mean if it's leaving, it's gone If somebody pickpockets you, would you just say it's gone and keep, why are you chasing for this but you know I want to know for our viewers why is it important for us to conserve our heritage First of all it is not your heritage it is a shared wealth of India and as a citizen of India it is your sacred duty to protect it as a custodian and pass it on to the next generation so not only are you not taking care of it now you are allowing it to be robbed and what will you tell your sons to say that there was a beautiful statue here when I was young, now it's not there you want to see it, go to Denmark go to Los Angeles then you will see it You know this is related to because they are living gods to us they are living deities who like you were saying were sung to morning, evening and prayed to temples have been sort of living, have been pivots around which communities have thrived in India what happens to the impact of such theft on village communities See there was once we met with a priest who had lost his main deity and he was agreed on two points he didn't know that it was stolen he knew it was stolen he was agreed on two points because one, he felt it was a great loss because for generations together their family had been taking care of the lord the second part was there was a hint of suspicion of his on himself so he wanted to clear the air and what he was saying basically, roughly translated would be that maybe all the misfortunes that are happening today to our village the rains are not coming on time you could say it's gullible, a poor uneducated person talking but you should understand the power of faith the power of faith is you have a problem, you don't jump into a well or river and die you go and put it in front of the rod and then pray and then you go back with peace of mind and this guy was basically saying my village is having this problem I prostrate to all foreign governments because some people are saying my Nataraja is in America, some are saying it is in Australia, somebody please find it and return it back to me so that I will take better care of it henceforth and that to me ends the argument he is the custodian and he says please return it back he says I will prostrate to you and future generations will keep prostrating to you please return this object back to us because it is God for me for you, we can make another one but do structures break down because of temples dying like this because these are living temples you know, one visits temples all over the place, for example I have been to Khajuraho three times myself, there is only one Shiva temple which is dying, all the other temples are not actively worshipped so I assume that if a living deity is stolen out, then those temples eventually are not places of worship anymore or community you know, temples were see the legal stand if you ask me Hindu temple continues for perfect meaning it continues to exist like for the London Nataraja case, they bought the Nataraja back, they instituted the temple oh they instituted it with the ruling that the temple continues to exist and that is one aspect, so I think we have to understand that taking away the living deity is an act of sacrament but doesn't mean that under value is it helpful in any way but having said that a poor replica or a fake acknowledging the fact that I have lost the original and I don't even file an FIR and to see my God being openly auctioned when people are bidding openly to an object is something that we cannot accept and once an object is properly documented there is no reason why it has to go in a safe security locker all of a sudden it can very much go back to the temple like the case of the Jain temple once a thief knew that it has been documented the art market realised that they can't buy it or sell it documented in public spaces like on the internet as much, you just have to say there is a photograph that's it they know they have touched it, they want to get it back as per the UN convention I just need a dated photograph and so it's and there is no national archive, no initiative to actually make an archive and that's the pathetic or the apathy in the government with even national manuscripts like here and even the medicine and plants database it's all over the place don't even get me started on manuscripts because there are paintings and today paintings in US markets is a larger hold on the culture because it's easier to take them out, you just roll a painting and take it out and these paintings are being sold in these international markets for half a million dollars, three hundred thousand dollars so the idea that and today if you don't have a document documenting a sculpture or a painting, a sculpture is very difficult to create a replica a painting, you just say Radhakrishna your catalogue main entry says Radhakrishna so what stops you from having an amateur paint Radhakrishna and nobody checks no audits are done, end of the day you just need a roll of paper which says this is Radhakrishna done, so I think that has to be first of all a realisation that a large amount of Indian art is currently moving all over the country not just sculptures but tangible cultural property openly traded and with technology that is coming in the earlier days when there are photographs which were sent out and now it's all in e-groups whatsapps and these are blasting the rubber photos out to world over and within hours vids are happening so we have to be able to combat this claim under much larger ways to stop these objects being vandalised so I think it requires a larger effort and other countries have taken a lead role in this which I would expect and they are willing to share the culinary art force conducts regular courses free of charge where they discuss their models apparently how they track out houses and how they use technology to monitor the sale of Italian antiquities in the global art market and if you see every month they are stopping and seizing art all over the world and India doesn't have a force like that it's not even made an effort to start a force and there are few small entities in regional context where it's more like a punishment post so you are doing what the government should be doing essentially trying to do at least the more we do it there is a lot of value brought but the problem is we are all doing it our day jobs so we are doing it in our spare time and there is a limited amount of time that it costs for this activity but we are very happy that even though we might not have demonstrated success during the previous regime in the current regime we have had clear successes meaning end to end we have proved where it was stolen and the objects have been returned back and in fact they have been gone back to the temple sites and to put a number we are talking about 7 to 9 that have already come back and it's not my effort it's a team's effort so there have been 3 that have come back from the US there have been 2 that have come back from Australia one from Singapore, one from Germany so there is a lot of such a large number of items have been taken off display and have been seized which are technically the property of India and how has this current regime you mentioned things have changed so how is that supporting you and my question if you are okay being politically incorrect how was it not supporting India how was the last regime to give you an example we have had cases in Switzerland and in Brussels where we approached the dealer who had Surunar and he wanted to return it back to the Indian embassies there, they were not asked or told anything and they just did not return because they were not accepted till date these objects have not been returned and we have cases where when we wrote to a US museum and the museum obviously wrote to the Indian embassy and for 3 months they did not get a reply they wrote to the Indian consulate and for 6 months they did not get a reply and then basically they said give it to the US customs atleast these guys are off my back this was the case in the previous regime atleast in the current regime when a prime minister goes or comes he is accepting these so called gifts which I strongly object to these are not gifts these premiums are not technically owners of this property, it is a property of India and Australia for example technically these objects were already for free to India because they did not have any reply to India's retaliatory for 30 days, so they were technically property of India, so I have not saved us the shipping costs by bringing it in but the larger issue is there is lot more the government and that's where we really see we could actually be doing ideal of a city one ideal per state two ideals per state and we can do about one for every state every 6 months what needs to be done? what needs to change? the first realization that we need to look at is our system has got basic flaws a confessed smuggler like Varun has been let off by a lower court after having confessed to selling 10,000 pieces of Indian art via Sotheby's, no action was taken against the international players and even the main accused has been acquitted saying that not even a single object has come back, imagine somebody has stolen and confessed 10,000 pieces the Rajasthan police had all the database, had all the basic investigation work done the ASI submitted its expert report and then we are not even appealing the case for two years so it sends all the wrong signals to the world market to say that India is back to its ways number two, you take the case of Subhash Kapoor now, we have had cases where we have identified objects that have been stolen from ASI site museums in Madhya Pradesh, in Gujarat in Rajasthan and for example the 50 million Bharat Stupa, which was stolen from a private worship site, which was a registered antiquity in 1978, it was stolen there is an affair that was stolen in 2004 it has been seized in the US in 2012 so it has been four years since an object which is valued when it is returned will be the most expensive restituted piece in the world has been sitting with US customs for four years taken from India's side and the sadder part is somebody has raided and seized 2600 objects valued in 108 million dollars and Subhash Kapoor has been charged with two cases for a total of 14 objects and charged in the US? he has already been charged in the US but in Tamil Nadu, he has been charged with just 14 objects two cases why? because they want to avoid the paperwork I presume because we have cases and it is considered to be a state subject so everybody thinks in the national media that Subhash Kapoor was somebody who was taken, robbed at two temples in Tamil Nadu, which is not the case Kapoor's loot and arms reached all over India in fact if you analyze the seized objects list bulk of it is from Rajasthan Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh from Orissa, from Chandraghe Togar from, we have had cases from Nizam's arms stolen from Hyderabad, from Bangalore from Karnataka it was a banned country loot and this case ideally should be moved to the national capital wherein all the state government should be whipped into action to find out which object is mine from where it is looted instead it is being put to the sideline and basically they just want to close the case two pieces have come back this guy, he's already served he was arrested in 2011 he's already been under 10 to 5 years maybe he'll get one more year and he'll be out which is something that we should oppose at all sides because like Vaman Gaya the message it sends out to the international community and especially our dealers and curators is very wrong basically you can get away with all of this so stealing heritage and gold isn't really considered a crime we're not bothered I think it's more an understanding of the legal aspects and I think it is high time that the Indian government takes help because there are international experts there are international conventions that happen for which India is not participating and these experts, scholars are willing to offer their expertise whether it be redrafting if they are going to redraft the antiquity law and to put in place an active idol, sword at the central level, there are government entities law enforcement who are willing to work with India unfortunately they don't even have a platform to engage themselves and they're just going around the place and they're being put to the ministry of external affairs, to the ministry of culture to CBI, to the state police and you can imagine the frustration, he's not doing his job he's actually doing your job you should be pushing them to do your work but I think the larger issue as I told you is that, first of all you have to make aware that the scale of this route is pan country and there are multiple dealer networks involved which are not going to stop by just a few 200 tons unless we take a concrete action to dismantle these smuggling networks go after the banks that are getting their involved remittances go after the forwarders who are shipping their goods, go after the custom brokers who are filing their documents go after the restorers who are basically sticking back their hands and legs, go after the expert scholars who are writing their catalogs including a few Padmasrees who are writing their catalogs so that's also there, the Padmasrees are also involved not involved, they're writing their catalogs so it gains more weightage when a Padmasree says this is a good piece, so I think at some point of time you have to realize that we need a more active engagement by the government with expert scholars A. Be it in legality in terms of actual being aware of what is happening in that market tech savvy personnel who can tell them what's happening, how this information is being spread and generally build capacity within the various be it customs, be it the DRI be it the Enforcement Directorate because this is not just object moving out money is being transferred and today there are three ports that can just hold these pieces for you, so a million dollars can just move over a wire transfer and the object can move from one ownership to another ownership so unless you raise all these monies these guys are not going to get this, a million dollars and give it for charity or a local school, these guys are going to use it for obviously bad deals and that's going to hurt India more so it's not just a few pieces which are being robbed this is a larger network which has to be dismantled so you know, yes, government if they are not acting so you are acting and your team, what can an average person like me or you share, what can we do? what can we do, say building the national database see the first thing is be aware of what is around you sadly people don't even visit the few heritage sites that are around and the idea is if you go there you take a photograph, you take one photograph with you as a selfie and take one without you and just keep it one without you, probably if you have a date stamp it's better, so that at least there is somebody, because half the problems we have in Indian antiquities, restitution is we can't find the source page and similarly build appetite within the government by tweeting and being active on social media about this problem, if at all you come across any theft reports make sure, because right now there is a general apathy towards this cause because people don't realize that there are in a country this size, you cannot have heritage thefts happening almost on a weekly basis, but no record of it if you want, somebody asks you how many temples have been robbed you have to come out with a guesstimate Vishay, another question that I had, especially for our viewers is that in their locales they figure out that something has been stolen how do they go about it? see the first thing that we need to be clear about is we are only assisting the armed forces the first thing you need to do is report the theft and to report the theft you need to have a photograph and the main problem that we have in most sites is they don't have a photograph and temples under active worship most likely they discourage photography and even if they have photography they have all the ornaments and clothes and all that so my first request is for the temple authorities and the site guardians take a photograph and keep it with them and if possible make a copy and give it to the local police station if at all there is a theft at least you have the photograph and if these so called custodians fail to do this as local citizens if you have a theft report go and try to lodge an FIR and if they don't do that go to the media and once you have this FIR and a photograph you could probably get in touch with us on our twitter handle or if there is a media report where there is no FIR filed you could probably tweet us with the media link to the media report then we would follow up on that the idea is to first of all record that such a theft has happened because in the past we have seen that it's been dismissed our claims that there are so many stuff that's been looted there is not even a theft report and it's very easy for people to say that there is no FIR, there is no theft report so everything is hunkered away. The idea is for volunteers who are looking at this to know that this is your project it is your village's warehouse and if something that is stolen we can help in the phase 2 so we don't replace the current setup, we will only assist and you can rest assured that if it is escalated to us we are the watchdog and we will ensure that atleast that piece is not openly traded, that's number 1 number 2 is basic awareness to quote you a thing in why photography and archive is important currently they are searching a hill in Maghre an entire hill has been quarried and that hill unfortunately had a 3rd century BC inscription that's how lax our awareness is and we have to wait for the entire hill to be quarried and today the government is doing an enquiry and they are searching for a photograph of the hill that is not there so the idea is a. we shouldn't have allowed quarrying in such a site b. we should have atleast photographed the destruction as it was happening so that it could have stopped it. Atleast now book the criminals who have done it and we have failed basically in all these 3 so the idea is and a larger effort which I want to talk about is one of my friends in Madurai again and they are doing this project which is called a field walk where they encourage people who have gotten tired of visiting malls and shopping complexes basically to take time off on a Sunday morning where people would probably come on their own vehicles and they locate a site and they just get there and probably have a small meeting together, get an expert scholar who are today looking for such activities to do short talks and get them to talk about that object bring your family along, bring your kids along so that you go down there atleast you are passing the responsibility to the next generation.

Atleast there is a record that you are there and you have been to those places. A little bit of tourism happens. You would atleast have a chai pani nearby that site so the villager atleast knows that he has got something of value in this place.

So I think that kind of citizen initiative can easily be replicated and in fact these guys have done their 60th trill, which means for 60 months they have religiously done this and there is so much to do and the last time I was there we had 330 people fly over a 2.5 hour trek to see this 3rd century BC inscription which basically talks nothing much but that a sugar merchant and a salt merchant got together to create a jain bed for a jain monk but it is 2300 years old and it talks a ton that I can read so that's something that I have a lot of identity with and today that lack of identity is what affects us very deeply because if there is something untoward that happens on the road today you just walk away you have broad daylight murders that are happening and people just walk away harassment that happens people just walk away because you don't feel that it's a problem because we are raping a culture which is not even 400 years old wherein you were basically creating monuments that are standing to this day and these guys were basically relieving themselves in the open and using grass as toilet paper our guys were already building tall temple towers so our culture is much more deeper than that and that's where I feel that the sense of Indianness will come when you realize what a great culture and tradition that you come from and the valuation and to quote you an example which is not from India I was in Mizan in central Vietnam and central Vietnam is a place which is very difficult to access even now and in the 4th century a local king converted to Hinduism and he built a temple for Shiva and he called himself Padravarman and he created a temple for Shiva and installed a Shiva linga in his name as Padreshwaran in the 4th century in central Vietnam and he inscribed there saying to my future generations this is my endowment to you it is your sacred duty to ensure that you take care of this endowment in the case you don't take care all my sins will add to you and if you take care your good deeds are with you I think we should implicate that model here to say that A. this is your ancestral treasure it's your duty to safeguard it and to feel proud that you belong to a nation that has a written probably history going back millennia a oral tradition that goes back even older and that's the kind of pride that will come back to each one of these villages where we restore these treasures that come back to India and that to me is the largest goal is to make sure that people feel proud that somebody stole my object I didn't let it go lying down I fought, I got it back and I have restored it back, my temple back to its former glory now when you say that tens of thousands of artifacts going missing we definitely need in the meanwhile that there are no processes in place we definitely need more volunteers what does it mean to be a volunteer? well you have to feel strongly for your culture you have to have a sense of belonging to India belonging to India doesn't mean that you just share a few Facebook posts, retweet a few stuff and think that you have contributed to the cause, though it does add to the cause and that's thanks to it that we know what is trending, but the awareness building has to reach the right gears so we would like, first of all for you to understand what the project is about, to read about it there have been countless media reports where our work has been covered there are actual restitutions that have happened and several museums have taken their items on display plus we are also working on reporting thefts and all that and how reporting thefts have solved crimes the next step basically is to ensure that we form a volunteer database where people sign up with their skill sets so maybe you are good at photography you would be good at documenting sites, writing about them because there is such a wealth of information that is available dispersed all over the land so we need everyone to take ownership of their own sites and then come up with some sort of basic documentation which involves today with the modern phones you have a GPS link monograph that takes care of half the properties so all you need to do is have a site and click to upload it and today we are talking to a few IT majors to come up with this bare platform sadly again the commercial interests are the priority and this becomes part of CSR which usually takes a back burner but that's huge CSR for them so is it still, I mean 2% of profits of some large IT major would run into several hundred crores I hope I hope are you close to I am optimistic these conversations have been going on for how long about a year and a half that's a lot right no the prototype is still a work in progress but I think today's technology I would say that the technological advancements are keeping pace so half the activity of visual matching is all done with say technology now which takes the hard job of creating an archive which is the hardest job assembling together 100 people to take 1000 photos is no big deal but to be able to catalog it and have it in an archive is the latter and I think today we have to leverage technology and that's why we need techies like you and Srijan to maybe take on an active role in advising us what is the best way to go ahead but I think A, it is the government's role whatever we do as a business initiator end of the day we need to have the blessing and with digital India I think it is high time that this is taken as a priority project and universities have to support it today colleges basically have very slack focus on cultural heritage and what stops them from giving a few accreditation points for a week of documentation efforts done by a team of all India's I think this is something. Number 2, short courses one of my colleagues in this business Dr. Dona Yates came up with a online free course on future learn on anti-peace trafficking 11,000 people signed up all over the world it was a two week course, we learnt a lot and it was next to nothing to put up such an activity for India and I am sure once we do that people will get interested and know this more. I think universities today are sitting on a pool of people who have a lot of free time and if we can aggressively get them involved into such projects I think a lot of the bad things that are happening, the university guys will not be focusing and get diverted to the other unworthy causes.

What kind of well that was a nice comment ok so what kind of colleges are you talking about? I mean are these art colleges or are there actually colleges in India which I have no formal qualification in art in art history and to me an art object appeals to me because these objects were fashioned by craftsmen to appeal to everybody. So if you tell me that a person can see a Chola Brahms or a Kajra piece and be happy which is what it is supposed to be he is as much a candidate as a PhD scholar so to me I think any college or any school for that matter should encourage visits to these sites use it as a curriculum magazines or media should promote context instead of just going modern art they should have art heritage themed art contests, painting competitions, elocution competitions on that which will force the first step. See the problem is people are not aware because I am sure if somebody takes them there and shows them that they will get interested that's what is lacking today in the sense that we are not aware of the beauty inherent latent beauty and the depth of our civilization so people hardly ever visit an Ajanta or an Ellora so and people rush to Bangkok and so sorry just staying on the point about creating this national archives database is it is it only a database of heritage sites temple sites and the and the sculptures in them within them or is it actually connected to you know like you are saying documenting Ajanta Ellora as a tourist destination and then allowing documentation around that I mean are you seeing the commonality between the two or are they two separate See I have this problem in quoting Ajanta Ellora because I think there are enough books on Ajanta Ellora or the Tanjore Big Temple or the Taj Mahal I am focusing on the fringe sites where there is more beauty in these isolated sites and wherein the ASI or the government or the local bodies are not putting resources to safeguard other time when we go there there is no custody there is no keys we have to jump over the fence or you probably go down the farm hand and we will have the keys the idea is why because nobody visits them so in fact when we go to some of these sites we have to take a bucket of broom to sweep the bad robbings that's how bad these sites are for our keep because nobody visits them for months together the idea is like the green walk initiative I talked about first of all you have to popularize these sites and make it a viable alternative rather than hanging out in shopping malls or cinema hubs so the next step that we need to look at is building a cultural map an artificial atlas a cultural atlas which is GPS because you are going around near a place if your GPS says there is a heritage site which is like 3 kilometers away and you have an R you probably go there rather than you don't have anything so that is the kind of initiative that can easily be done in today's technology in fact I have a couple of friends from Switzerland or America who have probably visited more heritage sites than most scholars in India and they have already got these GPS tags so the idea is to see if we can leverage this to encourage people to visit these sites I think that is step number 2 3 is once we develop this archive even as a citizen initiative it can be handed over to whoever is interested may be if not the Indian government which I still am optimistic about to a university preferably in India or abroad who would want to give it the sanctity because if I have an archive it is not going to get the legal sanction so we need to house it in a place which is reputed enough which is the larger problem and how we utilize this is something that can be discussed with technology because today there are a lot of scholars who are coming to India to study and they don't have access to these sites and today with the high resolution photograph we don't have to actually be on the site to study these so we can easily create these once we have this database up and running it is very easy to create these archives I have another question that I have been thinking about which is you talked about how Australia has done something to see their due diligence part to see if this is artwork that was stolen or something that was stolen it's not just due diligence they have done a comprehensive review of their acquisition policy how many other countries say US has US done anything about it something in Europe that's been done about it just to add to that which means that I mean to your question that Australia is actually putting fences around any stolen artworks coming into their archives is that what you are saying? they are reviewing their policy earlier to quote it again it was optical due diligence you need 3 papers as long as those 3 papers are there you can buy it and you can buy it for millions of dollars now they are coming up with the most stringent way where they will pre-wet these pieces before passing through and I think there is nobody who is going to buy an Indian art piece in Australia for atleast the next generation so I think they have lost enough money close to 40 crores so far and another 35 to 40 crores in the right time so you are talking about a million dollars sorry about 100 crores from Australia that will come back to India shortly so the next step unfortunately has not happened and we have not been able to replicate the same amount of success in Europe because Europe is a black hole and we have had cases where in Brussels, Switzerland, London where still we have not been able to influence public policy because the law enforcement and the media have not been as supportive as has been the media in Australia so what about the US? see when Kapoor was arrested by Interpol notice in 2011 a general director was sent out to all museums and collectors saying review your purchases and having said that he was in business for 35 years in Manhattan and I am sure a lot of museums had this.

Unfortunately most of the museums in fact no museum came up on its own to declare its stuff even in the US which is quite surprising because even the general opinion about USA we expected many museums to come up because we already had the background data of museums that had Kapoor stuff both as purchases and as gifts so we had we went and dug deeper to find that Kapoor had actually donated millions of dollars to museums which makes no sense to me when a dealer is selling a piece for 700,000 dollars in the same year he is giving a gift for a million dollars along with that he gives 200 objects of terracotta from Chandragadh so these are things that are still we need to understand the complexities more because there are tax angles where there are tax breaks that people get if they gift an object but if you ask me point blank nothing has happened in the US voluntarily which is quite surprising unlike from our side we have been pushing and we have been successful in for example the Al Ibn Mufti returned by the Ball State Museum the Tolaga Museum returning the Ganesha and the gifts back but not back to India they have given it thanks to inaction from the embassy side they have given it to US Customs the Honolulu Museum of Art has returned objects so these are all objects that have been given in view of India to the US Customs which will hopefully come back there have also been one instance of a good sign where a private dealer voluntarily gave up one of the branches belonging to Tamil Nadu which is I think the first time where a dealer on his own has come up and given something and it's going to happen more because people know that we have access to data and the best they can do is probably have it in their bedrooms and not go and show this anywhere so this is going to be but we don't want to restrict it just to the Kapoor items I think the US especially the US and Europe has to do a comprehensive review of its acquisition systems and be open about the provenance because right now no museum is open about the provenance so be it in South East Asia. So like publish the provenance actually from where did you get this? Absolutely put up the document you have nothing to hide while you are and you are most of these museums are government funded museums so you are using taxpayer money so it is your moral obligation to put up those data sources. Is there any UN provision or is the UN working on some law making for doing this? See the thing is that is a big lobby so you have this collective lobby and you have this inside providing mediums museum will still think about partage which instantly means that you help in excavation you get to share the fees also.

So these are the colonial mindset saying that they are the world repository and they need to have it there. So it is very difficult part of the break because these museums technically have million dollar budgets and people sadly don't realize the cultural impact and the spiritual impact of these objects because as late as last week people didn't realize that these are objects of worship so the idea is people think that it is fair game it is an object of like if you go they buy it and they trade it. So I think there is larger realization.

A one is the stick and the carrot. The stick is basically saying that somebody is finally looking out for Indian art and the carrot is if you give it back voluntarily at least you have a reputation in that. How many museums are there around the world just a thought what would it take to write to all of them that Indian art is not like art forms forms of worship which are reaching you.

See I wouldn't want to I wouldn't want to brand all museums as that because there have been few museums and curators who support our effort and there are some museums who have been generally cautious in dealing with these leaders but the second point is museums buy a lot of stuff and they accept a lot of gifts and these gifts and objects are in storage including museums in India. So one way of curbing this theft is to come up with a very very robust scheme of long term loans. So why would somebody want to buy a Nataraja with dubious provenance with an option clause to say that if anything happens I am going to lose this 5 million.

If the Indian government were to give the major museums you have this Nataraja with you, keep it for 10 years pay me a token sum a dollar sum and use that to conserve heritage because otherwise it is lying in our godowns. So give one object, which one do you want? Give one per state or even whatever we are seizing they can rotate it. So these 3000 objects that have been seized from Kapur they can be rotated around the world so that it becomes property of India and is distributed among because these are objects that have been sold and bought so museums want to exhibit it so instead of bringing it back to India if they are not objects of worship like architectural fragments which we don't know where they are stolen from and the objects that are currently in ASI they can be given as active long term loans or permanent loans or permanent gifts.

I think that is a viable option to cut demand for Indian art. So if there is a long term program and tours which is currently happening among others like Italy is coming up with this good option where they are loaning their objects back to the US so that people get to see what a sample which is what these encyclopedia museums tend to put up as arguments from their side so instead we will give you a long term loan the second thing that we need to do is there is an MOU that needs to be signed by the Indian government with the US authorities enables the US government to share active information on these seizures and thefts and investigations which other countries including Cambodia Greece, Egypt and all have signed already and we are still lagging behind it's been on the agenda for a long time and it's something that the US wants to in fact we can even go to another extent to stop the import of Indian antiquities, ban the import of Indian antiquities into the US at the next step maybe wonderful unfortunately we are running out of time so just to summarize all of this what few things you know people who will be watching this video later what can they do I know you have talked about some of it already but if you could summarize a few action points that everybody can take away. The least you could do is help friend, bring our gods home on twitter share with your friends feel passionately about our cause and if you think it really adds value to Indianess in you make our voices heard, make your voices heard among the PMO, reach out to the PMO, let this be a subject that is discussed and from our side we promise you that you will have many more success stories and Idle Vapasis in this year and next year as well wonderful, thank you congratulations and all the best for you know more Idle Vapasis.