{"id":2639,"date":"2014-07-25T12:14:30","date_gmt":"2014-07-25T16:14:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/clearit.ca\/?p=2639"},"modified":"2014-07-25T12:14:30","modified_gmt":"2014-07-25T16:14:30","slug":"indian-statue-allegedly-held-department-canadian-heritage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/clearit.ca\/canadian-customs-broker-blog\/indian-statue-allegedly-held-department-canadian-heritage\/","title":{"rendered":"Indian Statue Allegedly Held by Department of Canadian Heritage"},"content":{"rendered":"

The High Commission of India in Ottawa says that the Department of Canadian Heritage<\/strong> has been keeping a 12th<\/sup> century statue from Khajuraho at its district office in Edmonton since 2011, and that it has requested its return. According to the Commission, it received a letter about the statue from Canadian Heritage three years ago, but only recently passed it on to the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), the agency within the Indian Department of Culture in charge of preserving cultural monuments.<\/p>\n

What is the Statue?<\/h2>\n

The ASI quickly determined that the statue \u2013 a life-sized woman with a parrot on her shoulder carved from red sandstone \u2013 had most likely come from the Khajuraho UNESCO World Heritage Site<\/strong> in the central Indian state of Madhya<\/strong> Pradesh. The Commissvion then asked Canadian Heritage for the statue so that it can be returned to India.<\/p>\n

However, the ASI says that Canadian Heritage now refuses to give up the statue without some proof of ownership. The problem is that the statue was never reported stolen and the Indian side has no idea how it came to be in Canada<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s assuming it is in Canada. Canadian Heritage has declined media requests to confirm that it has any such statue, but did say through its spokeswoman Mahtab Farahani that it stands ready to return any cultural property that was illegally exported from another country.<\/p>\n

ASI Looking into the Matter<\/h2>\n

In an effort to find some evidence that that\u2019s what happened to this statue ASI has been sending its picture to field offices around India. So far, none of them have returned any information about it. ASI also asked the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), India\u2019s federal law enforcement agency, to look into the matter. The CBI found nothing about the statue in its records, but has now opened a file on it \u201csince it appears to be a case of trafficking of cultural heritage property<\/strong>,\u201d said spokeswoman Kanchan Prasad.<\/p>\n

Prasad also said that while she didn\u2019t know how the statue got to Canada she believed it had been seized by the Canada Border Services Agency<\/strong> (CBSA<\/strong>) upon arrival and then turned over to Canadian Heritage<\/strong>. CBSA spokeswoman Lisa White, citing privacy laws, said she could not discuss specific cases, but noted that permits are required for the import of historically significant antiquities and cultural objects into Canada.<\/p>\n

The statue\u2019s probable origin, Khajuraho, boasts a number of Hindu and Jain temples dating from the Chandela Dynasty around a thousand years ago. It was declared a World Heritage Site in 1986 and is one of India\u2019s top tourist attractions. The temples are well known for their lascivious carvings, and the parrot woman statue is apparently of that type: the woman is described as having a \u201cvoluptuous nature\u201d and bare shoulders.<\/p>\n

Not the First Time<\/h3>\n

This would hardly be the first time an Indian sculpture has unexpectedly turned up outside that country. A statue of Vishnu and Lakshmi stolen in Rajasthan in 2009 was seized by American customs agents<\/strong> in New York a year later after passing through Hong Kong, Bangkok, and London. And the ASI is currently negotiating with German authorities for the repatriation of a statue of Durga that was stolen from a temple in Jammu and Kashmir and somehow ended up at a museum in Stuttgart.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The High Commission of India in Ottawa says that the Department of Canadian Heritage has been keeping a 12th century statue from Khajuraho at its district office in Edmonton since 2011, and that it has requested its return. According to the Commission, it received a letter about the statue from Canadian Heritage three years ago, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":2640,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[453,454],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/clearit.ca\/canadian-customs-broker-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2639"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/clearit.ca\/canadian-customs-broker-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/clearit.ca\/canadian-customs-broker-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clearit.ca\/canadian-customs-broker-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clearit.ca\/canadian-customs-broker-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2639"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/clearit.ca\/canadian-customs-broker-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2639\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2641,"href":"https:\/\/clearit.ca\/canadian-customs-broker-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2639\/revisions\/2641"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clearit.ca\/canadian-customs-broker-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/clearit.ca\/canadian-customs-broker-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clearit.ca\/canadian-customs-broker-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clearit.ca\/canadian-customs-broker-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}