Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum returns stolen Tirumangai Alvar idol to Indian authorities in London

CHENNAI: Days after the US-based Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art decided to restitute bronzes stolen from Alathur and Veeracholapuram temples in Tamil Nadu, the University of Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology in the UK has returned a stolen 16th-century bronze to India following research into the object’s provenance and liaison with Indian authorities. The handover of the statue of Saint Tirumangai Alvar happened on Tuesday at the Indian high commission in London, UK, said an official release.

Thanking the Ashmolean Museum for its partnership and for its decision to return the 16th-century bronze icon to its original purpose as an object of worship, an Indian high commission spokesman in London said enabling the return of the bronze statue to the Tamil Nadu temple demonstrated the museum’s commendable moral clarity.


“The return of the bronze is an important step,” said India Pride Project co-founder S Vijay Kumar. “The identification was made by India Pride Project by matching the Ashmolean bronze with 1957 temple photographs preserved at the Institut Français de Pondichéry (IFP). The evidence was shared with Tamil Nadu Idol Wing CID and Indian high commission in London. The process from identification to repatriation approval took nearly eight years,” said Vijay Kumar.

IFP photographs show several bronzes from the same temple are now outside India. S Aaraamudhan, a priest at the Soundararaja Perumal Koil, located in a village in Thajnavur district, told TOI that the idol was stolen from the temple in 1952. “There are seven more idols that were stolen from the temple and should be repatriated,” he said.

With the return of the Ashmolean bronze now approved, the remaining bronzes in overseas museums and in the art market must be returned to the temple, said Vijay Kumar. The Ashmolean acquired the idol in 1967. According to Sotheby’s catalogue, the bronze was sold by private collector Dr J R Belmont (1886–1981). There is no information on how the bronze entered his collection.

In Nov 2019, an independent French scholar alerted the museum to research, indicating that a photograph of the bronze, taken in 1957 in the Soundarraja Perumal temple, had been identified in the IFP archives. The scholar identified the bronze as one of a number of objects in collections in Europe and US in the IFP archive.



Although no formal claim had been made, the Ashmolean wrote to Indian high commission on Dec 16, 2019, requesting further information, including any police records, and indicating the museum’s willingness to discuss the possible return of the object to India.

On Feb 11, 2020, a temple executive officer filed a police report noting that a modern replica had replaced the original bronze. No previous police or news reports of a theft of this object had been recorded in India. The Indian high commissioner then made a formal claim for the return of the bronze on Mar 3, 2020.

“The Sundararaja Perumal temple has only fakes now, and this handover should fasten the returns of Vishnu icon from Kimbell museum, Kaliya Krishna from Asian Art Museum and help trace the buyer of the Devi idol,” said Vijay Kumar.

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