An international conference on looted cultural objects in Nepal was strategising about how to repatriate sacred icons, when news broke that a 400-year-old jewel studded gilt-copper necklace stolen from Kathmandu was up for auction in Belgium. The Matrika Necklace from the reign of King Pratap Malla (1641-74 CE) was being auctioned at the Veilinghuis Loeckx in Gent and the event beamed live on <a href="http://invaluable.com/" target="_blank">invaluable.com</a> on 17th June. It was advertised for was €1,200.&nbsp; But that was before participants at the Kathmandu conference sent frantic emails to the Brussels auction house and the Dutch gallery where the necklace was sourced from. The item was withdrawn from the auction because of 'questions about provenance'. The auction house initially mentioned Astamangala Gallery in the Netherlands as provenance when it was actually stolen from a Kathmandu temple, and the item was similar to another rare necklace looted from the Taleju Temple in 1976, and now housed at the <a href="https://www.artic.edu/" target="_blank">Art Institute of Chicago</a>. The 400-year-old object has been taken off display there after Nepali activists started demanding its return. Interestingly, the necklace in Chicago was also in the logo design of the International Conference on the Recovery of Cultural Heritage held in Patan from 16-18 June where experts and activists from Nepal and around the world discussed the repatriation of stolen cultural artefacts. In Nepal, the idols were being worshipped when looted, and activists said their return helped in healing and reconciliation of communities.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250618140640_65c8453ff13d38de4292817bbe639416e4e4bca1d5d5e6ba9f6ef6fa10d57abe.jpg" data-media-id="editor_2" data-image-id="20250618140640_65c8453ff13d38de4292817bbe639416e4e4bca1d5d5e6ba9f6ef6fa10d57abe" data-rendition-name="original" width="1500" height="1272" loading="lazy" alt="Taleju necklace"> <figcaption>Taleju necklace</figcaption> </figure>  One panelist was Devendra Bhattarai, the journalist who broke the story of the necklace depicted in the logo. He found it ironic that the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was deporting undocumented Nepalis, while wanting to hold on to Nepal’s heritage items in its museums. “The US authorities want evidence that the object was stolen, and to prove that Nepal’s royal family is not allowed to sell or gift such artefacts,” Bhattarai said. “A cultural artefact cannot be gifted, even by the royal family, and there can be no such proof.” “We from the community are asked to provide proof when the burden of proof should lie with the holders of the artefacts,” said Kanak Mani Dixit of Nepal Heritage Recovery Campaign (NHRC) that convened the conference. “Collectors and museums prevaricate and want to run you down, your patience, your interest, your time, hoping that we will lose interest.” NHRC partnered with Nepal’s Department of Archaeology to organise the international conference, which also looked into the impact of cultural property thefts from Kathmandu Valley, Simraungad in the Tarai, Nuwakot, and monastic villages in the trans-Himalaya. “There were and are hundreds of monasteries in Mustang, but most of them are totally empty,” historian Ramesh Dhungel told one session. “It makes you want to cry. The monks sleep in locked rooms with their idols so they are not stolen at night.”  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250618140640_80a15c5bc9da2eaf8b96fcbb42fd7fdb9b78d00e2258e1995c21ac6f70211dbc.jpg" data-media-id="editor_3" data-image-id="20250618140640_80a15c5bc9da2eaf8b96fcbb42fd7fdb9b78d00e2258e1995c21ac6f70211dbc" data-rendition-name="original" width="3933" height="2381" loading="lazy" alt="cultural recovery conference"> <figcaption>Historian Ramesh Dhungel during his panel discussion. Photo: BIKAS RAUNIYAR</figcaption> </figure>  Most of the looting of cultural heritage items in Nepal took place during the absolute monarchy days in the 1980s. Dhungel remembers three helicopter loads of stolen thangka, idols and scrolls airlifted from Olangchungola to Kathmandu at the time. Most of them ended up with American and European collectors, and unsold items are still at the National Museum in Chhauni.&nbsp; There are documents to identify the powerful people in Kathmandu who sold the artefacts to smugglers and middlemen. But there were also the likes of Lain Singh Bangdel and Jürgen Schick who did pioneering work to document the pillage in their books Stolen Images of Nepal (1989) and The Gods Are Leaving the Country: Art Theft From Nepal (1997). Today, anonymous investigators at Lost Arts of Nepal have been using social media to document the whereabouts of stolen objects in museums so that repatriation activists can bring them back. Even as the international conference was ongoing on Wednesday, Lost Art of Nepal posted a finding about a 800-year-old Bodhisattva Avalokiteswar statue that had been at Thambahil in Kathmandu next to a Shiva Linga at the temple. It was stolen in the 1980s and auctioned by the Doris Weiner Collection at Christie's in 2012 for $2,490,500 and is now at the Berkeley Art Museum.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250618170620_415b139c11cbcee8c27cb9742d06882bc2468db682621fa2445b8c3797e1f81a.png" data-media-id="editor_4" data-image-id="20250618170620_415b139c11cbcee8c27cb9742d06882bc2468db682621fa2445b8c3797e1f81a" data-rendition-name="original" width="2044" height="1100" loading="lazy" alt="Heritage recovery conference"> <figcaption>800-year-old Bodhisattva Avalokiteswar.</figcaption> </figure>   <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250618170624_5884894a696f3bba6af228101ed26714433ae62d96dfea825a1dd48e99d4097f.png" data-media-id="editor_5" data-image-id="20250618170624_5884894a696f3bba6af228101ed26714433ae62d96dfea825a1dd48e99d4097f" data-rendition-name="original" width="1880" height="1166" loading="lazy" alt="heritage recovery conference"> </figure>  “Lost Arts of Nepal has been the biggest source for media and heritage activists. We must acknowledge them for their hard work in tracking down these items,” said Kunda Dixit, who hosted a panel on the role of media in combating illicit trafficking of artefacts.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250618140640_60e894c158867774cfc33ec09a76ebe2e022a9d273b5d157212f9eb6a61fbedf.jpg" data-media-id="editor_6" data-image-id="20250618140640_60e894c158867774cfc33ec09a76ebe2e022a9d273b5d157212f9eb6a61fbedf" data-rendition-name="original" width="3933" height="2664" loading="lazy" alt="cultural recovery conference"> <figcaption>Kunda Dixit during a panel on the role of media in combating illicit trafficking of artefacts. Photo: BIKAS RAUNIYAR</figcaption> </figure>  So far, 198 sacred objects have been returned to Nepal: 125 from the United States, 29 from China, 22 from the United Kingdom, 13 from India, 5 from Australia, and one each from Germany, Austria, Italy and a European collector. But there are 105 identified but not returned items in private collections, museums and auction houses in Sweden, the UK, France, Switzerland, the US, Austria, Australia, China, Singapore, Thailand and Belgium. And there are thousands of others which have vanished without trace. <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/stolen-cambodian-artifacts-american-museums-private-collections-60-minutes-transcript-2024-06-23/?ftag=CNM-00-10aab5j&amp;linkId=479097769&amp;fbclid=IwY2xjawK_NaJleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETF6MDVPZ1ZlV3NsQ3E4ak04AR7feaeuu4qaAq4mv3cpN4dGSEctsQr44vZjkkWkrKL57xQqo4Id0b_P1rLgog_aem_gS5R_PQyCvCgBLKGBHTrMw" target="_blank">Bradley J Gordon</a>, a lawyer with Cambodia’s Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts, was thrown out of The Met in New York last year during an inspection. He also spotted scores of antiquities from Thailand and Nepal in the storage of the museum only a few weeks ago. “Many of the art dealers selling a<a href="https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/30-looted-antiquities-returned-kingdom-cambodia" target="_blank">rtefacts from Cambodia</a> were also selling cultural objects from Nepal,” Gordon told the panel. Bruce Miller Antiquities of Sausalito in California with <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/22/arts/douglas-latchford-antiquities-trafficker-daughter.html" target="_blank">Bangkok-based Douglas Latchford</a> have been named as those involved in selling stolen objects from Cambodia and Nepal to collectors and museums. The conference also heard case studies from Cambodia, India, Poland, Vietnam, Lebanon, Syria and Afghanistan with a special focus on existing laws and international frameworks for repatriation as well as new digital interventions such as augmented reality, photogrammetry and data-driven provenance. Plunder of heritage items from war zones like Syria and Afghanistan is rife, said Amr Al Azm of the Shawnee State University in the United States. “Antiquities do not suffer as much in the actual battles as they do from thieves while a conflict is going on,” he added. “They sell the stolen items through social media accounts, the platforms are the great magnifier in this international trade in stolen cultural items.”  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250618160624_0677d2519b35f092dc017116cfeaa575bb2667770674a6d1c5c83a01d5489043.jpg" data-media-id="editor_10" data-image-id="20250618160624_0677d2519b35f092dc017116cfeaa575bb2667770674a6d1c5c83a01d5489043" data-rendition-name="original" width="3904" height="2086" loading="lazy" alt="cultural recovery conference"> <figcaption>Heritage conservationist Alok Siddi Tuladhar discussing a pauba depicting a Tuladaan ceremony the reign of King Pratap Malla of Kathmandu. The 361-year-old wsas stolen from Kathmandu and is now in Paris. Photo: BIKAS RAUNIYAR</figcaption> </figure>  There are often differing views when it comes to the prosecution of heritage theft. Some believe in punishing the perpetrators with jail time and fines, while others have prioritised repatriation itself, getting the objects back to inspire pride in youth to continue their tradition, to educate the community about the culture and spread awareness about the illegal trade. “We can use repatriation activism to increase the perception of risk, to convince people to not enter into the business because they don’t want to end up in jail or publicly humiliated, to make people think about their reputation either positively or negatively,” said Erin L Thompson, art crime professor in New York during her keynote at the conference.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250618140644_e65569f232b78e1daba5f5c7399de5f492afb772fe6882efc3a2ae51c8e10daf.jpg" data-media-id="editor_11" data-image-id="20250618140644_e65569f232b78e1daba5f5c7399de5f492afb772fe6882efc3a2ae51c8e10daf" data-rendition-name="original" width="3543" height="2858" loading="lazy" alt="cultural recovery conference"> <figcaption>Art crime professor Erin Thompson during her keynote. Photo: BIKAS RAUNIYAR</figcaption> </figure>  She added: “Things are just starting to come back, we will find so many uses of repatriated objects in the years, decades, and generations to come. It’s taken hundreds of years of theft for these objects to leave their culture of origin, and I think it will take hundreds of years to bring them back. But we have the opportunity now to shape what those hundreds of years will look like.” <h2>BREAKING: Auction halted</h2>  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250618140636_e6242c602340291c7af430144e17860ed8f44811c6ea14ad2c47a19451537556.jpg" data-media-id="editor_12" data-image-id="20250618140636_e6242c602340291c7af430144e17860ed8f44811c6ea14ad2c47a19451537556" data-rendition-name="original" width="960" height="960" loading="lazy" alt="Matrika necklace"> <figcaption>Matrika necklace</figcaption> </figure>  On the evening of 17 June, participants at the Kathmandu conference discussing Nepal’s stolen heritage items found out that a 400-year-old gilt-copper Matrika necklace donated by Pratap Malla was being auctioned in Belgium. This was a moment of truth, the very thing the conference was trying to shed light on. One of the participants, Emiline C H Smith, a lecturer in criminology at the University of Glasgow heard about the auction while at the conference. The pre-bid for the necklace was €1,200, but it would have sold for many times more. She informed the Belgium art crime police squad after gathering more information on the necklace. She found out that the item was up for auction that very day, 17 June, and it would be livestreamed. The necklace from Nepal was at lot 328, and the auction order was already at 250. Time was of the essence. Smith stepped out of the conference hall in Patan to try to call the auction house in Brussels, couldn’t get through and sent them an email, commented on their website, and posted on Bluesky and Facebook. She also emailed the Dutch gallery mentioned in the provenance. During the live auction on www.invaluable.com, the lot came up for sale. But suddenly the auctioneer got a message from someone off-screen. He stated in Dutch: “This piece cannot be sold because there are problems with the origin. Withdrawn.” After the dramatic cancellation of sale, Smith found out that the former owner of the necklace was a Tibetologist who acquired it in 1995 from a collector in Groningen, who had purchased it in the 1970s from a gallery in Amsterdam. “The art market needs to know that there is no excuse to auction off invaluable and inalienable Nepali cultural objects like this stunning Pratap Malla necklace,” Smith told Nepali Times. “Nepali activists have worked tirelessly to raise awareness about the devastating consequences of the market demand for Nepal's irreplaceable cultural heritage, so auction houses, art dealers and buyers should know better by now. We can all hold them accountable for their role in the looting and destruction of Nepal's heritage.”

Sonia Awale

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Repatriation for reconciliation

<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114101144/63720e209c7e80680e0b78fdjpeg.jpg" alt="" width="4032" height="3024"/><figcaption>The exhibition features 40 repatriated sacred objects, some of which had been returned to Nepal from abroad as far back as 1986. Photos: ASHISH DHAKAL.</figcaption></figure>The two-storeyed Buddhist Art Gallery in the National Museum in Chhauni is a conspicuous building, with its red walls, slanted roofs and vibrant windows. The torana above the door and the tundal supporting the roof are decorated with deities caught in floral waves that mimic the traditional designs found in the ancient Kathmandu Valley squares.On 21 March, the gallery opened a new temporary exhibition to mark the museum’s 83rd anniversary, featuring 40 repatriated sacred objects, some of which had been returned to Nepal from abroad as far back as 1986.As more and more stolen <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/nepals-gods-return-from-exile/">artefacts are being returned to Nepal</a> by collectors and museums in the West, museum chief Jayaram Shrestha feels that the exhibition is most timely.The stolen images of Nepal include sculptures of deities, temple struts, frieze, copper and ivory figurines, most of <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/who-looted-nepals-gods/">which were smuggled out of the country</a> in the 1960s-80s.<img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114101144/63720e249c7e80680e0b78fejpeg.jpg" alt="" width="4032" height="3024"><figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114101144/63720e289c7e80680e0b78ffjpeg.jpg" alt="" width="4032" height="3024"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>“In the last two years alone, we have been able to bring back many objects back through the works of citizen groups and heritage activists like the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/lostartsofnepal">Lost Arts of Nepal</a> and <a href="https://nepalheritagerecoverycampaign.org">Nepal Heritage Recovery Campaign</a>,” says Shrestha. “And we feel that the returned artefacts we hold in the museum should be shown to the public.”At present, most repatriated pieces of devotional art are mandated to be stored in the National Museum while they await to be reinstated in situ. Among the artefacts on exhibit are the 14th century flying Apsara/Gandharva (Biddhyadhar, according to the museum nomenclature) stolen from Itum Bahal and the upper section of the 17th century torana wrenched out of the main doorway of Yampi Mahavihara/I-Bahi in Patan, both of which were recently <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/latest/rubin-to-return-nepal-antiquities/">returned to Nepal by the Rubin Museum in 2022</a>.<img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114101144/63720e2c9c7e80680e0b7900jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="4032" height="3024">The torana is one of the first objects one sees upon climbing the steps of the gallery to the exhibition space, mirroring how it would have welcomed visitors to the Mahavihara before it was looted. The vast carved piece will also be returning to its original space.Another archaeological marvel is the 73x58cm 10th century Shridhar Vishnu (pictured above). Several broken fragments of the sculpture were returned from London in 1995 which were later assembled in Chhauni. Larger pieces from the stele are still missing, almost like an aposiopesis. But the image demands to be completed, at least by imagination.<img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114101144/63720e309c7e80680e0b7901jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="4032" height="3024"><figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114101144/63720e349c7e80680e0b7902jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="817" height="498"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>In the cabinets of curiosities sit several copper figures of the Buddha, Tara, a Lama and Manjushree. An ornate bronze Vajrakilaya which was repatriated from Kolkata in 1986 slants against a mirror that reveals the intricate designs on its reverse (pictured below). On a slab around the corner sits the disembodied head of the 15th-16th century stone Saraswati from Pharping, which was broken off in the early 1980s and repatriated in 1999 from Los Angeles (pictured above). In the middle of the room, stands the Shiva Parivar Yantra in ivory, returned from London in 1995.The overall atmosphere of the room is ambivalent: mixed with the feelings of joy and relief at <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/the-enigma-of-arrival-of-nepals-gods/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">the return of Nepal's divine art</a> is the bleakness of loss. This is visibly expressed in the pieces, some cracked, some broken, some missing – the marks of violent struggles to wrench the artefacts from their original homes. And some are quite literally lost and adrift, their original locations unknown.<img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114101144/63720e369c7e80680e0b7903jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="4032" height="3024">But on the brighter side, the 16th century torana stolen from Kumari Baha and the 18th century stone image of a donor from the Manjushree Mahabihar in Om Baha (both in Kathmandu) will be soon joining the exhibition upon their arrival in Nepal. The artefacts were returned to the Nepal Embassy in London by the Barakat Gallery on 18 March 2022.

Ashish Dhakal

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Remembering Nepal's lost and the found

<figure><img width="1926" height="1168" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221110141152/636d02749c7e80680e0a3680jpeg.jpg" alt=""/><figcaption>Nepali and international activists have begun the process of repatriating this 700-year-old wooden carving of a flying gandharva (divine singer) which was stolen from Itum Bahal in Kathmandu in the 1980s, and is now in the collection of The Rubin Museum of Art in New York. Photo: THE RUBIN MUSEUM OF ART</figcaption></figure>As the return by Western museums and private collectors of Nepal’s stolen antiquities gathers pace, two more religious objects from Kathmandu Valley shrines have been located at <a href="https://rubinmuseum.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://rubinmuseum.org&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1632102454748000&amp;usg=AFQjCNFJML5V4C5UeNEQo5QB_2Kw1R46GQ">The Rubin Museum of Art</a> in New York.The wooden artefacts between 400-700 years old were tracked down at The Rubin by the group <a href="https://www.facebook.com/lostartsofnepal/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.facebook.com/lostartsofnepal/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1632102454748000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHEyMVhw6GCFja2dBYxds74EIUajA">Lost Arts of Nepal</a> which has been investigating sacred objects so that they can be returned to the shrines from where they were stolen in Kathmandu.One of the items is a 14th century carved wooden architectural element of a flying gandharva (divine singer) that was stolen from Itum Bahal in the 1980s. The other is a wooden torana (frieze) that is 500 years old and was wrenched out of a doorway in I Bahi in Patan. <figure><img width="2528" height="1536" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221110141152/636d02789c7e80680e0a3681jpeg.jpg" alt=""><figcaption>Also at the Rubin Museum of Art’s collection is this 17th century wooden frieze stolen from I Baha in Patan. Photo: THE RUBIN MUSEUM OF ART</figcaption></figure>Both objects are exquisite examples of Newa devotional art and photographs in art and architecture publications in the 1970s of the objects in situ in Kathmandu shrines prove their provenance. It is not known who stole them, and how they came to be in possession of The Rubin, which has now been withdrawn from view.Announcement about the two objects was made at the official launch on Friday at the Patan Museum of <a href="https://nepalheritagerecoverycampaign.org/press-release/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://nepalheritagerecoverycampaign.org/press-release/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1632102454748000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHHoxtesx7a7tmcvW1niQu6UmUZ0w">The Nepal Heritage Recovery Campaign</a> by Lalitpur Mayor Chiribabu Maharjan. The Campaign aims to work for the return of sacred objects to the temples and monuments from where they were stolen, or to museums in Nepal. The Campaign has informed the Nepal consulate in New York about the objects in possession of The Rubin, and says it will start working immediately to facilitate the restitution of these and other antiquities. Lost Arts of Nepal is based in the US and has tracked down numerous other stolen Nepali antiquities, some of which have already been returned or handed over to Nepali authorities.Just last week, a <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now/bringing-our-gods-home/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now/bringing-our-gods-home/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1632102454748000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHpY421ywbOOFgXapmjt2QoYD1A4w">10th century stone figure of Uma Maheswar</a>, stolen from Gaa Hiti in Patan 50 years ago was <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/latest/us-returns-another-antiquity-to-nepal/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.nepalitimes.com/latest/us-returns-another-antiquity-to-nepal/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1632102454748000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHofehW3gN0MX0rnba9alweFOgclw">handed over to the Nepal Embassy</a> in Washington DC by the Denver Art Museum.In the past year, six stolen stone and bronze sacred statuary have been handed back to Nepal. They include the <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/the-homecoming-of-nepals-gods/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/the-homecoming-of-nepals-gods/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1632102454748000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHBcDXUFKcudpLqRBWzHkKPj58j9A">12th-century Laxmi-Narayan statue</a> from <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/the-homecoming-of-nepals-gods/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/the-homecoming-of-nepals-gods/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1632102454748000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHBcDXUFKcudpLqRBWzHkKPj58j9A">Patko Tole</a> in Patan returned by the <a href="https://dma.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://dma.org&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1632102454748000&amp;usg=AFQjCNEyvfIGtfey7dDxWS0dWVmmp0nDwg">Dallas Museum of Art</a>, a 13th century carved wooden Apsara from a temple eave, and a 700 year old Buddha. A 15th century Ganesh was also recently returned by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, and a 13th century Shivalinga stolen from Kathmandu was returned to the Nepal Embassy in Washington by the Art Institute of Chicago.These objects are temporarily stored at the Patan Museum or National Museum in Chhauni before being returned and consecrated at their original shrines.“We are committed to restore the sacred statues that have been returned to the temples from which they were stolen,” Mayor Maharjan said at the launch of the Nepal Heritage Recovery Campaign.The Campaign’s patron is historian Satyamohan Joshi and is chaired by Riddhi Baba Pradhan, former Director General of the Department of Archaeology. Other members include Dilendra Shrestha of Patan Museum, lawyer Sanjay Adhikari, Rohit Ranjitkar of the Kathmandu Valley Preservation Trust, Roshan Mishra of Taragaon Museum and journalist Kanak Mani Dixit.  <figure><img width="1650" height="1004" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221110141152/636d027b9c7e80680e0a3682jpeg.jpg" alt=""><figcaption>Members of the newly formed Nepal Heritage Recovery Campaign pose after the launch at Patan Museum on 17 September. Photo: MONIKA DEUPALA</figcaption></figure>The anonymous investigator of the Lost Arts of Nepal is in the Advisory Council with other international art restitution activists, including Art Crime professor at the City University of New York Erin L Thompson.  After news broke of the gandharva and torana at The Rubin, <a href="https://twitter.com/artcrimeprof" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://twitter.com/artcrimeprof&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1632102454748000&amp;usg=AFQjCNEySdWnWn2Alxdod01IO8SqF3ET4A">Thompson tweeted</a> on 17 September: ‘What do you say, Rubin Museum - will you join the Denver Art Museum and Dallas Museum of Fine Arts in repatriating stolen sacred artwork from Nepal?’  ,The Rubin Museum of Art was founded by <a href="https://rubinmuseum.org/about/founders" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://rubinmuseum.org/about/founders&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1632102454749000&amp;usg=AFQjCNEEs_YsnrZlTHmlp_5GwuiHpR5u4w">Shelley and Donald Rubin</a> who began collecting Himalayan 'art' in the 1970s, and has as its main mission, ‘inspiring personal connections to the ideas, cultures, and art of Himalayan regions’. After the 2015 earthquake, The Rubin held a <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/honoring-nepal-review-at-the-rubin-museum-of-art-1430950668" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.wsj.com/articles/honoring-nepal-review-at-the-rubin-museum-of-art-1430950668&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1632102454749000&amp;usg=AFQjCNEfmqxKKWmCmbeclfZJYb7WLZG2vg">special exhibition</a> of some of the  Nepali antiquities in its collection, including a gilded Durga statue from the 13th century, of which the museum says it is confident about its provenance. Last week on Ganesh Chaturthi, it highlighted a copper alloy <a href="https://rubinmuseum.org/collection/artwork/ganesha-2004-22-2" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://rubinmuseum.org/collection/artwork/ganesha-2004-22-2&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1632102454749000&amp;usg=AFQjCNFEfUBpYwxRF9LJmYoDHCnub1UOCQ" style="font-size: 16px; letter-spacing: 0.01em;">Ganesha figure</a> from Nepal in its collection. An <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0yKxj3KS3E" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v%3Dn0yKxj3KS3E&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1632102454749000&amp;usg=AFQjCNH27kpp8fD26ZsGfaw2h1K0Z51qXQ">Al Jazeera investigation</a> in 2018 of sacred antiquities stolen from Mustang titled ‘The Great Plunder’ led to police raids and probes of antique shops in Kathmandu and museums.  In a <a href="https://rubinmuseum.org/images/content/Response_to_Al_Jazeera.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://rubinmuseum.org/images/content/Response_to_Al_Jazeera.pdf&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1632102454749000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHTiuK4ypPt0Ub8oVqTh4-k5IPVIw">statement</a> at the time, The Rubin said that it ‘vehemently opposes the trafficking of stolen or looted cultural items and does not acquire any material known or suspected to be stolen or looted’.   <figure><img width="640" height="755" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221110141152/636d027e9c7e80680e0a3683jpeg.jpg" alt=""><figcaption></figcaption></figure>The Nepal Heritage Recovery Campaign is chasing up 15 other stolen Nepali antiquities in the possession of collectors and museums in the US, UK, Australia, Germany, <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now/nepal-wants-stolen-antiquities-returned-from-france/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now/nepal-wants-stolen-antiquities-returned-from-france/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1632102454749000&amp;usg=AFQjCNEcYNd1BoBLQqSnySau9lPcpODW3g">France</a> and other countries. It has started work on investigating the provenance of the stolen objects to provide proof for their repatriation to Nepal.<a href="https://www.manhattanda.org/manhattan-d-a-s-office-returns-three-antiquities-to-nepal/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.manhattanda.org/manhattan-d-a-s-office-returns-three-antiquities-to-nepal/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1632102454749000&amp;usg=AFQjCNFGsELjGlBwkHqPiGWMDoDtu7qMAg">The District Attorney Office</a> in Manhattan has been involved in an investigation of a $143 million antiquities smuggling ring that stole and sold artefacts from Nepal, India, Cambodia, Thailand and other countries. It seized some of them from the collection of art dealer Subhash Kapoor, who was arrested in 2012.  <figure><img width="640" height="327" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221110141152/636d02819c7e80680e0a3684jpeg.jpg" alt=""><figcaption>Statement from the Rubin Museum of Art in response to this report.</figcaption></figure>In July, the DA’s office arraigned 58-year-old British art restorer Neil Perry Smith after extraditing him from Britain. He is accused of preparing 22 stolen antiquities valued at $32 million for sale to Kapoor’s clients at his gallery, Art of the Past. Some of those objects were from Nepal, the indictment says.

2 more Nepali antiquities traced to US museum

<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221110141148/636d01f59c7e80680e0a3655jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="4032" height="3024"/><figcaption>Nepal Embassy in Washington receives the 10th century Uma Maheswar statue from Denver Museum on Monday. The figure was stolen from Patan neighbourhood fifty years ago. Photos: NEPAL EMBASSY WASHINGTON</figcaption></figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221110141148/636d01f89c7e80680e0a3656jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="853"><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221110141148/636d01fb9c7e80680e0a3657jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="853">Earlier this year, a <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now/bringing-our-gods-home/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">10th century stone figure of Uma Maheswar</a>, which had been stolen from Patan’s Gahiti 50 years ago was traced to the Denver Art Museum. This week, the museum handed over the antiquity to the Nepal Embassy in Washington DC.In an exclusive, the <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/nepals-gods-return-from-exile/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Nepali Times reported in January</a> that the statue that was an object of daily worship by the local community had been torn out of a shrine in Patan in the 1960s, and had found its way through a private collector to the museum in Denver as ‘art’.Nine months later, in the latest in a slew of stolen artefacts being returned to Nepal from the United States, the Denver Art Museum handed over the statue to Nepal’s Ambassador Yuvaraj Khatiwada in Washington DC on Sunday.The statue had been in the collection of the museum since the 1980s, given by Jane F Ullman and Edwin F Ullman.<img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221110141148/636d01fd9c7e80680e0a3658jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="768" height="549">In an interview with Nepali Times earlier this year, Babulal Maharjan, 82, remembered the deity that had been <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now/replicating-nepals-stolen-gods/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">stolen</a> from the shrine in his neighbourhood. For the past half a century later, Gahiti residents have continued to preserve the base of the structure below a graffiti-scrawled wall, hoping for its eventual return.When Nepali Times showed Babulal and his 78-years-old neighbour Babukaji Maharjan a photograph of the Uma-Mahesvar that is now in the Denver Art Museum, both immediately recognised the figure.https://youtu.be/XFzMHtqwZ3gThe thieves had failed to steal Uma-Maheswar in the first attempt, and the community managed to restore it to its base. But one morning when devotees came to the shrine to pray they found that their god had vanished.Since <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/nation/Nepal-needs-to-be-prepared-for-the-return-of-stolen-religious-figures,986" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Uma-Maheswar</a> was stolen more than half a century ago, youth in the community grew up hearing about the theft and knew that the preserved base held an importance, but they learned of its true significance only after the media reports this year that it had been tracked down to the museum in Colorado.<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221110141152/636d02009c7e80680e0a3659jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="2304" height="1728"><figcaption>The base of the Uma Maheswar statue in Patan's Gahiti that residents have preserved hoping for its eventual return.</figcaption></figure>Babukaji Maharjan had lost all hopes that he would ever see the homecoming of the lost deity Uma-Maheswar again. Even with the recent development, he has a hard time grasping its return.“Due to our economic condition we did not know how to file a complaint with the police, and nobody during the Panchayat era would have taken the theft seriously anyway,” he told Nepali Times. “But I am glad that the statue will now be returned to our shrine. We will celebrate its homecoming.”The Uma-Maheswar is just the latest in a series of objects of worship that have been <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now/nepal-wants-stolen-antiquities-returned-from-france/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">stolen from Kathmandu Valley</a> and are in private collections or museums in Europe and the United States.<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221110141152/636d02039c7e80680e0a365ajpeg.jpg" alt="" width="852" height="543"><figcaption></figcaption></figure>In the past nine months, six stolen gods have been successfully handed over to the Nepal authorities. A <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/the-homecoming-of-nepals-gods/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">12th-century Laxmi-Narayan statue</a> from Dallas Museum of Arts, a 13th century carved temple eave depicting an Apsara, a 14th-century gold seated Buddha in Bhumisparsa Mudra, and a 15th century seated Ganesh repatriated by the Manhattan’s District Attorney’s Office are already in Patan Museum and National Museum in Chhauni, respectively.A 13th-century Chaturmukhi Shivalinga was also handed over by the Art Institute of Chicago in April to the Nepal Embassy in Washington DC.

US returns another antiquity to Nepal

<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221110111148/636cd6ee9c7e80680e092dafjpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1554" height="954"/><figcaption>The original 12th-century Laxmi-Narayan stolen in 1984. Photo: LAIN SINGH BANGDEL In Sotheby’s catalogue in 1990. Photo: ERIN L. THOMPSON The deity in the Dallas Art Museum in 2014. Photo: ERIN L. THOMPSON</figcaption></figure>The stone figure of Laxmi-Narayan had been worshipped at a shrine in Patan’s Patko Tole for 800 years. But on one night of 1984, it disappeared.The holy androgynous composite of the two deities was so important to the community that local people replaced it with a poor replica.In 1990, the <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now/replicating-nepals-stolen-gods/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now/replicating-nepals-stolen-gods/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1614733523195000&amp;usg=AFQjCNGZOp-uVkLUv31wf1lQZfZ8T1ohrg">the 12th-century statue, which is also known as Vasudeva-Kamala</a> was spotted at the Sotheby’s auction house based in New York. After that it disappeared again until American artist <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/nation/Narratives-of-Faith-and-Memory-Remembering-the-Lost-Sculptures-of-Kathmandu-exhibition,987" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/nation/Narratives-of-Faith-and-Memory-Remembering-the-Lost-Sculptures-of-Kathmandu-exhibition,987&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1614733523195000&amp;usg=AFQjCNEspOXCRr77XIFGQB5cgNO81hoOrQ">Joy Lynn Davis</a> located it via a Google image search to the Dallas Museum of Art.The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is finally taking possession of the 70kg figure on Tuesday, and delivering it to the Nepal Embassy in Washington on 5 March, American Art Crime Professor, <a href="https://hyperallergic.com/530848/stolen-deities-resurface-in-a-dallas-museum/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://hyperallergic.com/530848/stolen-deities-resurface-in-a-dallas-museum/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1614733523195000&amp;usg=AFQjCNG-w4uPnw1nk_80MuQQmsrAACKjYQ">Erin L Thompson</a>, who has been tracking this and other stolen antiquities, told Nepali Times.“I am happy that the museum saw its retention of the work was unjust,” Thompson said. “I continue to be dismayed that museums and collectors demand the type of proof about the date and circumstances of theft that existed in this case, since this information has so often gone unrecorded elsewhere. No work of Nepali sacred art left the country legally, that is the essential fact.”<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221110111148/636cd6f39c7e80680e092db0jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1610" height="1130"><figcaption>The Laxmi-Narayan figure as memorialised by Joy Lynn Davis in 2015. Painting by: JOY LYNN DAVIS</figcaption></figure>Heritage activists and local communities in Nepal say the return of Laxmi-Narayan statue could be the start of a process of repatriating thousands of other religious objects from Kathmandu that are now in Western private collections or museums.“We are glad our god has been located in Dallas and is being returned, but we must also ask ourselves whether we are up to taking good care of it,” Bhairaja Shrestha, a social activist of Patko Tole <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now/replicating-nepals-stolen-gods/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now/replicating-nepals-stolen-gods/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1614733523195000&amp;usg=AFQjCNGZOp-uVkLUv31wf1lQZfZ8T1ohrg">told Nepali Times last year</a>, adding that the community’s festivals and rituals were affected after the god was stolen.The image of the 15th-century deity was first published in Indian historian Krishna Deva’s book Images of Nepal in 1984, followed by Nepal’s art historian <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now/bringing-our-gods-home/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now/bringing-our-gods-home/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1614733523195000&amp;usg=AFQjCNFeA52pRTDl2zmfdFDn_q3kuxEQOQ">Lain Singh Bangdel’s book</a> Stolen Images of Nepal.<a href="http://rememberingthelost.com/repatriations/">Artist Joy Lynn Davis</a> painted Kathmandu’s shrines and depicted the stolen deities in them in gold, and held an exhibition of her work in 2015 that included a painting of the Patko Tole shrine.She says, “The day the Laxmi Narayan arrives in Nepal, I will be the happiest person—so many people and organisations have worked on this. The only way to protect them is to increase awareness about their significance. We have a lot of work to do, Laxmi-Narayan is just the beginning.”<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221110111148/636cd6f69c7e80680e092db1jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1330" height="992"><figcaption>Bhairaja Shreshta at the Patko Tole shrine last year, with the replica of the Laxmi-Naryan.</figcaption></figure>The Lalitpur Metropolitan Office has <a href="https://www.himalkhabar.com/news/122418" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.himalkhabar.com/news/122418&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1614733523195000&amp;usg=AFQjCNGWCrhYsfr36aTj5vFMyePQQyKU9A">offered to pay for the shipment </a>of the Laxmi Narayan, and to restore it to its original shrine in Patku Tole after a ritual chhama puja.The Nepal Embassy in Washington has said it will start the process of sending the deity back to Nepal, and denied <a href="https://ekantipur.com/news/2021/02/28/161447682183787221.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://ekantipur.com/news/2021/02/28/161447682183787221.html&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1614733523195000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHc4H0lu6F3uy0HJKCt2LjPylD9Pg">media reports</a> that it did not have the money for air freight.<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221110111148/636cd6f99c7e80680e092db2jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1422" height="942"><figcaption>The 1993 exhibition East Meets West: Sculpture from the David T. Owsley Collection at the Dallas Museum of Art where the Laxmi-Narayan can be seen at centre, right. Photo: Dallas Museum of Art</figcaption></figure>Kumar Raj Kharel, the deputy chief of mission at the embassy, told Nepali Times: “I was misquoted. We have never said that we cannot pay for the logistics, just that we cannot send it to Nepal immediately. We had to look at the cost, insurance, and fulfil the lengthy bureaucratic process of consulting with the ministries of finance, culture, foreign affairs, and the Department of Archaeology in Kathmandu before dispatching it.”Thousands of stolen statues of Nepal to date remain in the display of international museums in many parts of the world and more that are found in the US, some may have provenance and some may not.Kharel added, “We hope the repatriation of the Laxmi-Narayan to Nepal will set a precedent for locating and returning other stolen images.”<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221110111148/636cd6fc9c7e80680e092db3jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1500" height="1002"><figcaption>The 12th century Laxmi-Narayan statue stolen from Patan in 1984 has been handed over to Nepal Embassy in the US. Deputy Assistant Director of FBI Timothy N Dunham and Nepal Ambassador to the US Yubaraj Khatiwada were present during the handover. Photos: AMITABH JOSHI</figcaption></figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221110111148/636cd7009c7e80680e092db4jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="428"><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221110111148/636cd7039c7e80680e092db5jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1500" height="1002">He said museums and collectors with stolen antiquities from Nepal need to be responsible and abide by the UNESCO’s Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property.<a href="https://hyperallergic.com/530848/stolen-deities-resurface-in-a-dallas-museum/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://hyperallergic.com/530848/stolen-deities-resurface-in-a-dallas-museum/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1614733523195000&amp;usg=AFQjCNG-w4uPnw1nk_80MuQQmsrAACKjYQ">Art Crime Professor Erin Thompson</a> agrees. She says, “Every art lover in America has a responsibility to look at the art we see and ask if it is right for us to have it here.”

US museum returns stolen Nepal god

Two 1,000-year-old stone deities return to Nepal, but hundreds of other stolen objects are still out there<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/2022110710110/6368c9ad9c7e80680e02f2c5jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="800" height="980"/><figcaption>HOMECOMING: The 12th century Uma Maheswar stele from Tangal Hiti, Patan, stolen in early 1980s.</figcaption></figure>In Yatkha Tole, Krishna Bahadur Tuladhar, 62 shows Nepali Times a brass crown belonging to the Standing Buddha that was stolen from a shrine in his neighbourhood in 1986. His family has worshipped the crown every day ever since the Buddha went missing.On Wednesday, the 10th century Standing Buddha of Yatkha Tole was one of two holy stone sculptures returned to Nepal by The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The other was a 12th century stele of Uma Maheswar stolen from Tangal Hiti in Patan in 1980.“This looks like the same statue missing from our temple,” says Tuladhar looking at the photograph of the Standing Buddha being returned. “If it is the same, the crown should fit it,” he adds.Since the sculpture went missing 30 years ago, the community has installed another statue in its place. But the open space the bahi once occupied has shrunk because of the private houses that tower all around.Shyam Dangol remembers playing in the bahi and praying to the deity when he was a child. “It is the same one that went missing from here,” he says looking at the photograph. “When the idol was stolen, the authorities came with big dogs and even the locals were accused of assisting in the crime. We never found out who did it.”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtN1KiH9Va0The epidemic of idol thefts started soon after the end of the Rana era in the 1950s, as Nepal opened up to the world. Over the next few decades, thousands of deities worshipped in temples and monasteries in Kathmandu Valley were stolen to be sold to collectors and museums in the West. The process accelerated during the 1980s.When Tej Ratna Tamrakar heard about the stone Buddha being returned to Nepal, he had hoped it was another statue from his clan’s Arya Naam Sangiti guthi that was stolen 30 years ago. After the Buddha was stolen from the Agan Chhen (sacred house housing the clan’s god) in Yatkha Bahal the guthi installed a much smaller stone Buddha.“When I heard the news, I thought that our God was coming home,” 70-year-old Tamrakar told us this week, “but this one is not ours. Our Buddha was sitting down in bhusparsa position, this is standing.”The Uma Maheswar was donated to The Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1983 by a collector, and the Standing Buddha was donated in 2015. During the acquisition process of the Standing Buddha, The Met found out from Lain Singh Bangdel’s book Stolen Images of Nepal, published in 1989, that the two figures had been smuggled out of Nepal, and so the process for its return began.In 2017, the Museum contacted the Nepal government and offered to return the sculptures, after which the Consulate of Nepal in New York contacted the Museum to coordinate and facilitate the process. The nose of the Standing Buddha currently looks different from the picture in Stolen Images of Nepal, (where it looks slightly damaged). John Guy, curator of the Arts of South &amp; South East Asia at The Met believes the nose was repaired when sold to the collector about 30 years ago.“When the statues were carved and consecrated, no one would have thought that centuries later someone would try to steal them. That is why they were not anchored securely and were easy to lift off, and that is also why the government did not have an inventory,” says heritage activist Kanak Mani Dixit.Fortunately, the works of Lain Singh Bangdel, Jürgen Schick and later Ramesh Dhungel have sought to fill the gap. Bangdel and Schick separately photographed and documented hundreds of statues in their original place and publishedStolen Images of Nepal and The Gods are Leaving the Country respectively. Dhungel studied the Nepali artefacts in The Met and documented them in The Lost Heritage.“Ramesh Dhungel studied Nepali art in the same museum from where the two idols have been returned, and his book along with the others' shows how many more Nepali idols are still out there,” said Bhesh Narayan Dahal, Director General of Department of Archaeology.Since April 1996, when 19 stolen artefacts were returned from Britain, only a few out of the thousands have been returned to Nepal. And even from those few, many have ended up in museums, rather than the communities where they belong. The two images of the Standing Buddha and Uma Maheswar have also been handed over to the National Museum of Nepal at Chhauni.“The idols have spiritual, psychological and emotional connotation for the people so they need to be returned to the community. The government should help safeguard it,” says Ramesh Dhungel. “When they end up in museums they merely become items of art, which is unfair to the people who believe that the idols have life.”<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/2022110710110/6368c9af9c7e80680e02f2c6jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="800" height="1200"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>The communities also want the Gods to be returned to them and not housed in museums. Clutching an old photograph of an idol of Balabhadra stolen from their community 40 years ago, Tirtha Raj Bajracharya, Bishwa Bhakta Malla and Shree Ram Tamrakar of Tangal Hiti want their God back too.“They stole it in the past but now we as a community will look after it now,” says Bajracharya.In Yatkha Tole, Tuladhar told Nepali Times, “It is our God. We should be able to pray to it daily and it should be returned to us.”The Department of Archaeology is positive, “As per the Ancient Monument Preservation Act 1956, the communities can send in an application through the district administration and if we are convinced about the monument’s safety, it will be returned,” Dahal said.As for Tej Ratna Tamrakar he still hopes that his God will also be returned one day. He says: “I am hopeful but not too confident it will happen in my lifetime.”<h2>Homecoming</h2>3 April, 199619 artefacts returned from Britain. Currently in the National Museum, Chhauni.10 September, 19994 artefacts returned from US. Currently in the National Museum, Chhauni.24 October 2003The Kanakmuni Dipanker Buddha stolen from Nagbahal, Lalitpur was brought to the Department of Archaeology. The idol was handed over to the Guthi in Nagbahal.25 June, 2007China returned 28 artefacts stolen from Dolpa. On 15 August, 2007 the idols were returned to Dolpa.16 June, 2017Four idols from the private collection of Leroy Allen Ehrenreich  returned to Nepal. Currently in the National Museum, Chhauni.

Sahina Shrestha

Bringing our Gods home

In 2003, the death by police firing of a student protesting a rise in fuel prices pushed Nepal’s student activists to join the प्रतिगमन विरोधी आन्दोलन (Movement Against Regression), which political parties had begun after king Gyanendra’s sacking an elected government a year before. The students’ participation elevated the movement and prompted more Nepalis to join in, leading to the People’s Movement that first sidelined the monarchy and then abolished it in 2008.&nbsp; That took five years to happen. But 12 years later, this month, a youth-led protest forced the prime minister to resign within 30 hours.&nbsp; Police massacred GenZ activists, many of them students, outside Parliament on 8 September. This intensified public anger, leading to targeted attacks, looting, and burning of the homes of political leaders, private businesses, and public buildings.&nbsp; Amid the smouldering ruins of state institutions, young Nepalis chose a new prime minister to lead an interim government and deliver a fresh mandate. All of this happened in five days.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250910140912_019d62de4b62a366299a27d1276e931a7dadefcc674441e7fb3acd503970efaf.jpg" data-media-id="editor_0" data-image-id="20250910140912_019d62de4b62a366299a27d1276e931a7dadefcc674441e7fb3acd503970efaf" data-rendition-name="original" width="8000" height="5760" loading="lazy" alt="Nepal in ashes"> <figcaption>Parliament building up in flames during the GenZ protest on 9 September. Photo: KAMAL PRASAI</figcaption> </figure>  Students have been central to Nepal’s democratic and political process since the mid 20th century. In her 2018 book Making New Nepal, researcher Amanda Thérèse Snellinger traces the history of student activism and politics against a background of &nbsp;Nepal’s socio-political history and party politics.&nbsp; Snellinger examines the interplay of ideology and identity, explores how student activists fit into a political landscape continually occupied by the traditional elite, and details how student leaders have established themselves through relationships with influential actors on local, national, regional, and transnational levels. The Rana regime’s repression caused students to be politically aware. In 1947, students held the first organised protest against the Rana autocracy demanding educational reforms. The breadth of student activism expanded during the Panchayat era after king Mahendra banned political parties, which drove mainstream politicians and parties underground. &nbsp;Student activists then became proxies for multiparty democracy because they were still able to organise.&nbsp; Student politics was institutionalised, and unions emerged as vanguard sister organisations of political parties. Student activism, more so than mainstream political parties, played key roles during &nbsp;both major movements in 1990 and the 2000s, as they mobilised the citizenry to join the democratic process.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250924130940_f94cf97fb7ed98b90b48736e1aa8a76466f50337dffc36ec78e9cd5e6927deea.jpg" data-media-id="editor_1" data-image-id="20250924130940_f94cf97fb7ed98b90b48736e1aa8a76466f50337dffc36ec78e9cd5e6927deea" data-rendition-name="original" width="1952" height="2928" loading="lazy" alt="1990 people's movement Nepal"> <figcaption>The iconic image of the 1990 People's Movement agaist the autocratic Panchyat regime of the king. Photo: MIN RATNA BAJRACHARYA</figcaption> </figure>  Through extensive ethnographic research between 2003 and 2015, Snellinger investigates the political coming of age of student activists during the final years of the armed insurgency and their role in and beyond the movement that ultimately abolished the monarchy. Her research revolves around the political journeys of five student activists: Akash and Rishi from the Nepali Congress (NC) student wing Nepal Student Union (NSU), Salini from the UML’s All Nepal National Free Students’ Union (ANNFSU-Akhil), Gyanu from ANNISU-Revolutionary of the Maoists, and Lagan, who began his political journey from Nepal Majdoor Kisan Party’s student wing Nepal Krantikari Bidyarthi Sangathan. The ‘movement against regression’ in 2003 served as the entry point &nbsp;for activists into national party politics. Indeed, it was their &nbsp;participation in the movement that elevated the profile of the main subjects of Snellinger’s research. In the years that followed, the paths of the five activists diverged. Some made it into mainstream politics, even becoming lawmakers. In doing so, they have had to trade idealism for pragmatism, and their attempts realise their previous vision for Nepal’s democracy have been overshadowed by their political opportunism and position. And even decades after they began their journey as student activists, the generation that the book focuses on are still considered &nbsp;‘youth’ leaders. Snellinger quotes a former student leader who joined mainstream politics as saying: “I am still a youth because &nbsp;my aspirations remain unfulfilled.”  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250924130944_7cca095d79fb5ce45cf92c61b77d72c31c5e0931aa744c73e264b6f91efdd29b.jpg" data-media-id="editor_2" data-image-id="20250924130944_7cca095d79fb5ce45cf92c61b77d72c31c5e0931aa744c73e264b6f91efdd29b" data-rendition-name="original" width="1500" height="1004" loading="lazy" alt="2006 People's Movement of Nepal"> <figcaption>A student protester wearing a paper crown and ridiculing Gyanendra with an impersonation, a day after king stepped down and left his palace. Photo: AJAY JOSHI / A PEOPLE WAR</figcaption> </figure>  Meanwhile, the refusal of Nepal’s octogenarian leaders to retire (even after The upheaval this month) has created a surplus of younger adults waiting in the wings, making the word ‘youth’ relative in Nepal’s political trajectory. Other subjects of Snellinger's research have retreated from student and mainstream activism, either in disappointment over their mother party’s retreat from some of their more radical positions, or to &nbsp;continue their work at the community level through education and journalism. One of them has leveraged her political connections to further women-led initiatives after unsuccessful election bids. Nearing the end of her research in 2015, Snellinger observes the disappointment of Madhesi communities whose movement to demand more inclusive provisions of the draft Constitution had gone in vain, even after 45 lives were lost.&nbsp; As the Constitution was promulgated in 2015, TVs were switched off in the Tarai, and there were sighs of resignation. In Kathmandu, Snelllinger noted that the student leaders that entered mainstream politics protesting for inclusive democracy had little empathy for the struggles and similar demands of groups in the Madhes. Despite the students’ role in ending the monarchy, Nepal’s political status quo has remained. The institutions and people that replaced the &nbsp;monarchy have allowed one set of Kathmandu elites to be replaced with another.&nbsp; The socio-political benefits promised during the movement two &nbsp;decades ago have remained tightly controlled by leaders who refuse to give up their hold on power. The political system was overhauled, but without concrete reform. It was only a matter of time before public frustration would boil over. Indeed, Snellinger concludes her book by predicting the inevitability of future movements in Nepal.&nbsp; She writes: ‘Leaders emerge through the andolan … a new generation will emerge shaped by Nepal’s accumulated socio-political heritage, which they will mediate to shape a liveable present and future for themselves in their country, perhaps by continuing the movement.’&nbsp; And that is exactly what happened on 8-9 September. Students marched in the streets demanding an end to corruption and impunity, but this time not as proxies of political parties.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250908120948_8a9acceede487651487c2f15b65e40f900ee6cd390bbf98394eade6b95d05b28.jpg" data-media-id="editor_3" data-image-id="20250908120948_8a9acceede487651487c2f15b65e40f900ee6cd390bbf98394eade6b95d05b28" data-rendition-name="original" width="1600" height="1200" loading="lazy" alt="Gen Z protest"> <figcaption>A student during the GenZ protest against acorruption on 8 September. Photo: SUDIKSHA TULADHAR</figcaption> </figure>  Their desire for socio-political reform was apolitical at a time in Nepal’s history when the nation’s student organisations have weakened and lost credibility, mirroring the erosion of trust in their parent parties. Along with party-based student unions, the Free Student Union (FSU)— the umbrella body all student unions—has lost its reputation due to corruption and embezzlement. That is not to say there are no similarities in movements past and present. Whether political or apolitical, protests have been overshadowed by a lack of unity within the groups that spearhead movements. They have led to destruction of public and private institutions.&nbsp; Leaders of youth and student movements have also had to bear the brunt of the frustration of the people they represent when there is no delivery on their demands. The academics of students have suffered because of frequent lockouts of university and college administration. Youth andolan, whether political or apolitical, has been a rite of passage into Nepali democratic politics — dissensus is an integral part of political regeneration. It remains to be see how the fall &nbsp;from grace of political parties after the GenZ movement will affect their affiliated student unions. As elections approach, student unions and youth collectives will find their own footing in Nepal’s &nbsp;newly emerging socio-political landscape. The youth who took to the streets are asking for a complete overhaul for political parties. Establishmentarian leaders still have not seen the writing on the wall.&nbsp; NextGen leaders in their parties have been waiting for years for their turn &nbsp;to break through the glass ceiling. These established political actors will not go down without a fight in the run-up to March elections.&nbsp; Amanda Thérèse Snellinger perhaps needs a post-script or even a sequel to her book to see how a new generation of leaders, forged by their student activism, will compete in Nepal's new political arena.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250923190928_98d53dd49d56c92950bc34642eaee51dea458fd64312d945a358ad70e5e994bb.jpg" data-media-id="editor_4" data-image-id="20250923190928_98d53dd49d56c92950bc34642eaee51dea458fd64312d945a358ad70e5e994bb" data-rendition-name="original" width="1136" height="702" loading="lazy" alt="Making new Nepal book details NT"> </figure>

Nepal’s historic youth dissensus

What does a journalist do when young protesters are shot in front of her? Does she do her job and stay neutral? Can you stay neutral?&nbsp; As protests engulfed Kathmandu, Nepal's journalists found themselves reporting a story that was personal. While doing their job, some of them were even targeted by mobs.&nbsp; Dart Asia Pacific Fellow <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/arunkarki/" target="_blank">Arun Karki</a> visited their newsrooms and spoke with his colleagues on their experience of reporting the GenZ protests that erupted on 8 September. These are the first-hand accounts of journalists who witnessed the turmoil in the city they call home. Sunita Karki was at a workshop in a hotel on 8 September. She saw the first waves of protests through hotel windows. Curfew alerts flooded her phone, a vehicle belonging to a human rights group sat burning across the road, young boys were taking their wounded friends on motorbikes to the Everest Hospital, and police were beating a teenager with hands raised up.&nbsp; “I cried a lot,” she said, but the tears were not out of fear -- they were because she felt guilt. “I couldn’t write the news. We were witnessing these scenes from a five-star hotel.” By evening, the death toll had reached 19. On 9 September at about 3:35 p.m. &nbsp;her outlet, the Annapurna Post's office in Tinkune, Kathmandu, was set on fire. Staff had to leave the building as parts of the newsroom burnt down.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250924040948_e1cc49c9e4fcc4bd4cd3c0163c782fc4e9956bf633cff7b53a63cf8e2dd74cff.jpg" data-media-id="editor_1" data-image-id="20250924040948_e1cc49c9e4fcc4bd4cd3c0163c782fc4e9956bf633cff7b53a63cf8e2dd74cff" data-rendition-name="original" width="1333" height="1000" loading="lazy" alt="Dart Centre Asia Pacific"> </figure>  When she knew her office was burning, she anxiously told her husband that she would resign from the job: "If we have to hide our identification cards in every protest, what kind of journalist am I?" she asked herself. She filed a story the next day, but her emotions kept bouncing between that of a journalist’s duty and shock. She said that in moments like this, it’s hard to feel truly neutral. After watching the police beat people, she felt a strong urge to step in, not just stand back and report. The first real calm came later, when people came to the street and lit small candles together. “This was a sort of victory procession. I felt some relief after brutal days,” she said. <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/angaddhakal/" target="_blank">Angad Dhakal</a> a photojournalist who works at Kantipur National Daily, was standing outside his office building when protesters stormed in and set parts of it on fire. He had already been informed that protesters were planning to torch his office building and &nbsp;rushed to his office hoping to save his hard drives containing ten years of photography work. He failed. He raised his camera and "forcefully" pressed the shutter - more to document the scene than out of "professional enthusiasm or duty".&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250924040948_ebafaacb85c4ea045c41f2c63f1eff06fee9a4ddb5fbf419724e1a5d533781fa.jpg" data-media-id="editor_3" data-image-id="20250924040948_ebafaacb85c4ea045c41f2c63f1eff06fee9a4ddb5fbf419724e1a5d533781fa" data-rendition-name="original" width="1333" height="1000" loading="lazy" alt="It is hard to feel neutral NT"> <figcaption>Photo: GAURAV POKHAREL</figcaption> </figure>  “My office was burning. What should I photograph?” he recalled. A few moments later, a protester noticed the “PHOTO” label on his yellow Press jacket. Dhakal deflected it by saying he was an early career freelancer and YouTuber. So that protesters wouldn't find out, he went to one corner and took his jacket off. When it comes to covering street protests, &nbsp;Angad usually stands near the police because it feels safer. But on 8 September, fire and gunshots made even that area unsafe. A rubber bullet hit his friend Dipendra Dhungana that badly injured him.&nbsp; He thought, “Where do we go now? If we stay here, we’ll be hit.” After witnessing two days of protests, violence, and killings, and seeing his own office burning, he couldn't sleep for days. The same afternoon that government buildings burned and Kantipur was attacked, a message in a protest Discord forum talked openly of 'attacking Kantipur'.&nbsp; Rumours spread to other outlets. Outside OnlineKhabar's office, where <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/article/edit/7376157229248528384/?author=urn%3Ali%3Afsd_company%3A79132377#" target="_blank">Gaurav Pokharel</a> works, the newsroom manager saw “very suspicious people were walking around”. They lowered blinds, avoided windows, locked the front gate and dispersed staff to other places across the city. The outlet was threatened and effectively locked down, but not torched. Pokharel hid his press ID. “ I never showed the ID card. Sometimes I had to enter the crowd shouting slogans, just to blend in among the protesters,” he said. He watched people fall under gunfire, he helped pull one surrounded journalist out of a hostile crowd.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250924040948_3b335eee57280373cb51f460534ca4476df23f89c787ba9e4a66d116a537b1a3.jpg" data-media-id="editor_5" data-image-id="20250924040948_3b335eee57280373cb51f460534ca4476df23f89c787ba9e4a66d116a537b1a3" data-rendition-name="original" width="1333" height="1000" loading="lazy" alt="It is hard to feel neutral NT"> <figcaption>Photo: GAURAV POKHAREL</figcaption> </figure>  As a freelancer, Gaurav also contributed articles for international outlets. Later, while transcribing an interview of a young protest organiser, he wrote to his editor at an international outlet : “This was very hard to write. I cried many times while doing it.” He had been working at a stretch for days battling bouts of exhaustion and low blood pressure.&nbsp; Protesters vandalised and set fire within the Singha Darbar complex housing Nepal Television and Radio Nepal. They tried to disrupt public broadcasting.&nbsp; Surendra Paudyal began the day with his press ID hanging on his neck, thinking it would let him move freely. But when he reached Singha Darbar around 3:30PM, the situation felt dangerous.&nbsp; He put the ID in his pocket. When asked what mattered most, he answered without pause: life comes first. In that moment, he felt real fear and a strong duty to protect his team.&nbsp; His focus narrowed to basic things: stay calm, find exits, get everyone out safely. Later, they were able to keep the 8 pm news on air through a regional link. He felt mixed emotions and a sense of relief that the broadcast continued, but also sadness and anger that their own studio had come under attack. Reprinted with permission from the Dart Centre Asia Pacific, a regional hub that provides trauma-informed support and advice to journalists.

"It is hard to feel neutral"

Among the songs GenZ protesters were chanting at the Mandala on 8 September was Amrit Gurung’s folk-rock rendition of the Panchayat-era patriotic song, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iXnL31W93c">रातो र चन्द्र-सुर्जे जङ्गी निशान हाम्रो</a>. But amidst waving double pennants that day in Kathmandu were strands of Gopal Yonjan singing <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7D8P-g3Uw4" target="_blank">बनेको छ पहराले</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57SlGf4m7R4" target="_blank">देशले रगत मागे</a>. The irony is that the message of Nepali nationalism the musician was trying to convey 50 years ago with his lyrics carries a new resolute relevance in today's context: I am a son of Nepal who will never kowtow to anyone.&nbsp; You can behead me, but I will never bend the knee. &nbsp; I can withstand fire, but will not stand injustice.&nbsp; If the nation demands blood, I will sacrifice myself. My mother will not weep, for she is the daughter of a Nepali. This was pure patriotic poetry that only someone like Gopal Yonjan could write. They are inter-generational and immortal — speaking as much for the GenZ today, as it was for the early days of nation-building when they were recorded in vinyl and broadcast over Radio Nepal.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2025092210094_4d5f65bf3ba2d2823e3da8aff6a77f2b9aa4eff4b1e1b6a8eeed8c0bcb58e47b.jpg" data-media-id="editor_3" data-image-id="2025092210094_4d5f65bf3ba2d2823e3da8aff6a77f2b9aa4eff4b1e1b6a8eeed8c0bcb58e47b" data-rendition-name="original" width="2000" height="1600" loading="lazy" alt="Gopal Yonjan NT 1"> <figcaption>Gopal Yonjan was an adept flautist from a young age in Darjeeling.</figcaption> </figure>  Those two songs together have over 20 million views on the Music Nepal YouTube channel, and many of the comments have been posted after the 9 September massacre and the raging conflagration at the epicentre of the Nepali state&nbsp; They attest to the emotional depth of Nepali nationhood and love of motherland in every citizen of every generation no matter how dreadful the circumstances — and especially when the future looks fragile and uncertain.&nbsp; The release of Gopal Yonjan: The Man &amp; His Music by his wife Renchin could not have come at a more momentous time in Nepal’s history to celebrate this iconic legend of modern Nepali music. Yonjan would have been 82 today, and as a poet, lyricist, singer innovated and improvised using Nepal’s folk traditions to infuse modern arrangements, meld melody with harmony, and lend them words that made the songs eternal.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2025092308098_76c4e4df756de0c1bea9858e1da0bcb6acb8145f27963e1679f5509a6ac2f078.jpg" data-media-id="editor_4" data-image-id="2025092308098_76c4e4df756de0c1bea9858e1da0bcb6acb8145f27963e1679f5509a6ac2f078" data-rendition-name="original" width="2712" height="3900" loading="lazy" alt="Gopal Yonjan Narayan Gopal"> <figcaption>Narayan Gopal with Gopal Yonjan, the ‘Gopal Duet’ at Swayambhu circa 1963.</figcaption> </figure>  HOMECOMING Renchin Yonjan brings us an intimate family album of historic photographs of Gopal growing up in school in Darjeeling, his arrival in Kathmandu and the decision to make Nepal his home. She quotes Gopal: ‘I was deeply moved by the very glimpse of Nepal. I was enchanted by the greenery of Kathmandu, the gentle nature of the people, their pure thoughts, and their hospitality … how wonderful it would be to spend my live in such a beautiful and serene place.’ It was a kind of homecoming for Gopal Yonjan, the land his ancestors left to migrate to British India. In Kathmandu he found kindred spirits and musicians as passionate about their craft as himself: Narayan Gopal, Nagendra Thapa, Ratna Shumsher Thapa, Shiva Shanker, Pushpa Nepali  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250922100920_99a97f6cd76c130d5df91a38ac236906bcb21ba6fc2d2d693ba51e0a97c045d4.jpg" data-media-id="editor_5" data-image-id="20250922100920_99a97f6cd76c130d5df91a38ac236906bcb21ba6fc2d2d693ba51e0a97c045d4" data-rendition-name="original" width="1500" height="1071" loading="lazy" alt="Gopal Yonjan"> <figcaption>Gopal Yonjan arriving at Kathmandu airport in 1963 and greeted by Nepali singers Pushpa Nepali, Dilmaya Khati, Shiv Shanker Shrestha, among others. </figcaption> </figure>  Gopal Yonjan and Narayan Gopal hit it off right away, complementing and inspiring each other with their shared love for meaningful music. They came to be known as the ‘Gopal Duet’, and Yonjan wrote in Nepali in his diary on 21 April 1963 about their first meeting: ‘I was immediately struck by his talent and presence. There was something in both his artistry and demeanour that drew me in. It didn’t take long for us to draw close.’ Towards the end of his life, Gopal Yonjan drifted away from themes of patriotism and unity to celebrate music in its purest form in his Gopalaya Studio in Kathmandu. It became art for art’s sake.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250922100912_f9aeec8d96049c580a4b63789664e1ae80971d3be3c7809acfe51b84e3e31cd1.jpg" data-media-id="editor_6" data-image-id="20250922100912_f9aeec8d96049c580a4b63789664e1ae80971d3be3c7809acfe51b84e3e31cd1" data-rendition-name="original" width="2000" height="1304" loading="lazy" alt="Gopal Yonjan"> <figcaption>Gopal Yonjan at his Gopalaya Studio in Kathmandu in 1992.</figcaption> </figure>  The words of his song <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8ZHg3wkvzw" target="_blank">मेरो गीत मेरै प्रतिविम्ब होइन</a> immortalised by Narayan Gopal has lines that give goosebumps to anyone who listens to them: मेरो गित भन्ने अधिकार छैन, गित को पो म हूँ मेरो गित होइन (I have no right to call this my song. This song does not belong to me. I belong to this song.) &nbsp; In Nepal, Gopal Yonjan also found a more complicated story. There were grand historical narratives of nationalism, bravery and glory, but there was an undercurrent of fear and control. Renchin writes in the chapter, Tell Me Where My Country Lies: ‘[Gopal saw] national pride slowly erode in the face of social exclusion, political silence, and economic disenfranchisement.’  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250922100912_57578ebebc7e405cf6ad3080611366893bee30cfc071567e6509038da866b2f2.jpg" data-media-id="editor_8" data-image-id="20250922100912_57578ebebc7e405cf6ad3080611366893bee30cfc071567e6509038da866b2f2" data-rendition-name="original" width="1500" height="1043" loading="lazy" alt="Gopal Yonjan"> <figcaption>Renchin and Gopal Yonjan in their garden in Kathmandu in the late 1980s.</figcaption> </figure>  Gopal Yonjan’s song <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zru8yWSuRCI" target="_blank">भनिदे नेपाली दाइ मेरो देश कहाँ पर्यो</a> is ‘as much an elegy as a manifesto’ with searing lines like ‘Where is the river that ran red with Nepali blood? Where is the battlefield where our defenders wiped their khukri?’ Gopal Yonjan sings this song himself, reminding Nepalis of the sacrifices made to forge this nation, and for us not to squander them.&nbsp; In his song <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pVKpsK6Wy8" target="_blank">लाहुरे</a>, Yonjan celebrates Nepal’s illustrious history written in blood both to keep the nation free and then spilling it to defend other countries. Today, the same song takes on added meaning of Nepali lahure shedding not blood but sweat and tears as they toil abroad to send money to families back home. It evokes the pain of separation, and an anger at an uncaring state that drives them to leave. Gopal Yonjan died aged 53 in 1997 in a New Delhi hospital, leaving a legacy that still defines the Nepali nation in ageless musical compositions. The US-based <a href="https://www.gopalaya.org/" target="_blank">Gopayala</a> and the Gopal Yonjan Foundation have worked to remaster some of the tapes and recordings that are in safekeeping at Cornell University’s Carl A Koch Library.&nbsp; Renchin Yonjan has collected some of that valuable documentation in her book, Gopal Yonjan: The Man &amp; His Music. Her concluding paragraph sounds prescient because of what Nepal has just been through: ‘Gopal’s patriotic compositions remain timeless not because they repeat old slogans, but because they ask new questions, and demand that we answer not with our voices, but with our lives.’  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2025092210090_3d0b5ecad2313b09e83e0de91bf510004f1ff836d7e66f0543ccd49432bb6386.jpg" data-media-id="editor_12" data-image-id="2025092210090_3d0b5ecad2313b09e83e0de91bf510004f1ff836d7e66f0543ccd49432bb6386" data-rendition-name="original" width="1136" height="518" loading="lazy" alt="Gopal Yonjan"> </figure>

Gopal Yonjan’s immortal songs

Harry Jackson was on an epic adventure ‘from Thailand to the UK on 2 wheels’ when he ran into the ultimate sidequest. Having just visited Zangla in Ladakh, Jackson had only landed in Kathmandu when he found himself in the middle of GenZ protests earlier this month. ‘<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Slq6zWu9o9w">Arriving in Nepal - Chaos, Protest &amp; Curfews</a>’ is the title of his first video (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/@wehatethecold/videos">wehatethecold on YouTube</a>) about the protest. He shoots police as they shoot at protesters outside Parliament. Jackson is riding a Honda CT125, a retro lightweight motorbike with off-road capabilities. Strapped to the bike is his sparse luggage, flute, and a faded Union Jack. People are rioting on the streets and there is a heavy armed police presence as he makes his way to his hostel in Thamel. His vlog the day after on 9 September has 29 million views. In ‘<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyxSqeFrlp0">The side of Nepal the media won’t show you</a>’, Jackson rides his bike straight at the crowd just past the Parliament building into Old Baneswar.&nbsp; He parks it and walks among the protestors, documenting it all: from the police firing capsules of tear gas into the crowd to the burning Parliament building as well as the jubilant, victorious crowd in the premises as they destroy police vehicles and dance. “I’m shocked at the scenes I’ve witnessed here today. I have truly witnessed history on a stupid trip from Thailand to England on a f***ing moped!” exclaims Jackson as he leaves the scene for the day, heading back to his hostel to edit the footage. The hostel is in direct contrast to the raucous scenes of the protest, as tourists and Nepalis sit and lounge at tables. ‘KUIRE VLOGGER’ Nepalis quickly called him the ‘kuire vlogger’, and attribute his skin colour to his popularity. Objectively, the videos are well made. Jackson goes full gonzo journalist, putting himself right in the heart of the action, talking directly to the people, all while narrating the events as they unfold. Despite being cut together in an entertaining way, the footage retains a raw, unpolished quality that outdoes what most professional journalists with a heavy duty camera crew could do. At a time when legacy media has been seen to be pushing biased narratives, Jackson wants to see for himself what happened, and make up his own mind.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250925120956_f7141e06c72655502fc4b2e56120d084b0f5ae111078d66df4fd0415adf8d376.jpg" data-media-id="editor_3" data-image-id="20250925120956_f7141e06c72655502fc4b2e56120d084b0f5ae111078d66df4fd0415adf8d376" data-rendition-name="original" width="2880" height="1604" loading="lazy" alt="WehateTheCold"> </figure>  This kind of video journalism takes a lot of skill and a certain personality. Many people, almost everybody, had their phones out at the protests, but only a handful were like Jackson. He interviewed people firsthand, edited the clips and uploaded them the same day. Jackson continued his vlogging over the next few days as the curfew was first put in place and then lifted. He explores the city as the Valley rebounds. By this time, Nepalis recognise him everywhere he goes. Jackson had achieved moderate fame as a 23-year old DJ in Birmingham, but what he has done in Nepal is something else. Almost everyone he talks to has already seen his vlog, and they are all eager to interact. He has been on multiple podcasts in Nepal too, and most videos online on the protests reference his vlogs. Before his Nepal blogs, Jackson had a modest 16k subcribers on YouTube, but after Nepal figure is now almost 700k, gaining over 100k each through 11-13 September. Most of them are Nepali viewers. “I’m just a regular dude who just did what he wanted to do,” says Jackson on a podcast. “I wanted to go on an adventure, learn about history, and learn languages. And I wanted to film it, document it, and have a wicked film for my life to show future generations.” &nbsp;

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