ASI report reignites Dhar Bhojshala push to bring idol back from British Museum after 150 years: 'Vagdevi is ours'

DHAR: When the Archaeological Survey of India's long-awaited survey report on the Bhojshala-Kamal Maula Mosque complex was made public on Monday, it set off more than just a legal debate in the courts. In MP's Dhar, it lit a fire — reigniting a decades-old demand to bring back the idol of Vagdevi, the goddess of learning, from the British Museum in London, where it has been on display for nearly a century and a half. The ASI team, working over 98 days using the latest scientific techniques to excavate, study and document the site, concluded in its report that the Bhojshala complex was constructed using the remains of ancient temples and hinted at the existence of a Vagdevi temple. The finding, for many in Dhar, was not merely an archaeological observation. It was vindication. And, within a day of the report becoming public, the demand for the return of the Vagdevi idol had, as one observer put it, spread like wildfire across Dhar. Kamla Solanki, a Dhar-based devotee who was in Bhojshala to attend the evening aarti — which the ASI permits on Tuesdays — said, "My only desire now is that the idol should reach Bhojshala as soon as possible. My request to PM Narendra Modi is that he gets all our relics back to India. He should get the idol back," she said. For Ashish Goyal, state vice-president of Hindu Front for Justice and one of the petitioners in the Bhojshala case being heard by the Indore bench of the Madhya Pradesh high court, the ASI report has only strengthened the case. "Vagdevi is ours. Once the court clears the title based on the ASI report and hands over the complex to Hindus, we would urge the Madhya Pradesh govt and PM Modi to initiate efforts to bring the goddess back to her original place," he said. The Indore bench of MP high court has fixed Mar 16 as the next date of hearing to receive objections, opinions, suggestions and recommendations on the ASI report.The idol, at the centre of this demand, stands in the British Museum under museum number 1909,1224.1. According to available records, it was excavated from Bhojshala and taken to London in Oct 1879 by Major General William Kincaid (1831-1909), who served as political agent, Bhopawar, and commandant of the Malwa Bhil Corps. The British Museum describes the idol as a "Standing figure of the Jaina yaksini Ambika carved in a coarse white marble." Its description goes into considerable detail: "The goddess, originally four-armed, is carved in high relief against the plain ground of the slab; the base has been given offsets and is inscribed. The goddess wears a tiered crown of the beehive type with her long hair tied into a small bun on one side. Two arms of the goddess have been broken away; in the remaining arms, she holds an elephant goad and what seems to be the bottom of a noose or the stalk of a plant. On one of the stepped faces of the base is a small incised figure of a kneeling female donor with an inscribed label above." Goyal contests the British Museum's characterisation of the idol, citing Indian archaeologist Vishnu Sridhar Wakankar. "Eminent archaeologist Padma Shri Vishnu Shridhar Wakankar had visited the British Museum and confirmed that it was the same statue of Vagdevi created in the year 1035 using sphatik (crystal quartz). We can prove it when needed," he said. The call to bring Vagdevi home is far from new — it has surfaced periodically in political and cultural discourse for years. In Oct 2022, then Madhya Pradesh CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan made a public commitment on the matter. Responding to a demand raised during the Young Thinkers Conclave organised in Indore, he declared: "I assure you that the initiative to bring back idol of goddess Vagdevi would be taken effectively."