Imperial nostalgia or shared culture

AS Britain prepares to roll out the red carpet for Prime Minister Narendra Modi and finalise a long-awaited trade agreement with India, it is quietly spending over Rs 730 crore a year to subsidise a museum filled with artefacts taken from India during colonial rule.The British Museum —home to thousands of idols, manuscripts, coins and even human remains — is presenting its exhibition Ancient India: Living Traditions as a celebration of shared culture. But behind the incense and soft lighting lies a more troubling reality: this is not cultural diplomacy. It is state-funded imperial nostalgia.In 2023-24, the British government granted £70.1 million (Rs 730 crore) to the museum through the Department for Culture, Media and Sport — nearly half its annual operating budget. Among the beneficiaries of this taxpayer largesse is the museum's latest offering: Ancient India: Living Traditions, an exhibition inviting visitors to perform darshan — seeing and being seen by the divine. But what's on display is not spirituality. It's the afterlife of empire, financed by British citizens and carefully sanitised to obscure its violent origins.The British Museum houses over 38,000 South Asian artefacts, many taken during colonial rule. Most remain in storage. The current exhibition features 178 of them and cost £839,000 (Rs 8.7 crore) to mount, according to documents released under the UK Freedom of Information Act (FOI).Meanwhile, the museum's own records show that 307 security and visitor services staff were employed in 2024-25 at a cost of £12.7 million (Rs 132 crore) — nearly 15 times the exhibition budget. Protection of imperial booty, it seems, takes priority over transparency or restitution.Few visitors realise the institution's deeper foundations. When the British Museum opened in 1753, it was built on the private collection of Sir Hans Sloane, whose wealth derived partly from enslaved African labour on Jamaican sugar plantations.After Britain abolished slavery in 1834, many of these same estates continued operating with indentured Indian labourers, recruited from Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh and shipped across the Caribbean under contracts that bound them to years of punishing work for paltry wages.The museum's collections are full of such colonial residues. A celebrated Mughal miniature shows Prince Khurram — later Emperor Shah Jahan — being weighed in gold. Ancient Indian gold coins from the Kushan, Gupta and Mughal periods bear images of Lakshmi, the Ashvamedha sacrifice and royal rituals. Once offerings or treasure, they now sit behind glass in Bloomsbury — relics of reverence turned into trophies.Yet the institution continues to thrive — not through admissions but through state support. Its Director, Dr Nicholas Cullinan, appointed in 2024, was hired on an advertised salary of £215,841 (Rs 2.26 crore). The museum's annual report lists his actual remuneration within the lower band of £160,000-£165,000 (Rs 1.68-1.73 crore) — still more than a British Cabinet Minister.A separate FOI release reveals the British Museum employs 110 curators and project curators, earning an average of £39,508 (Rs 41 lakh) per year. These are the professionals tasked with interpreting — and often concealing — the colonial histories behind the objects they present as global heritage.As part of the exhibition's development, a community advisory panel was assembled — composed of practising Hindus, Jains and Buddhists — and paid undisclosed honoraria for their cultural input. But they were not asked to address restitution or contested ownership.Most troubling of all is the silence surrounding the museum's collection of over 6,000 human remains, including some from South Asia — skulls, bones and ritual objects. These are listed in its own policy documents, yet were entirely excluded from an exhibition claiming to explore "living traditions."Earlier this year, tribal representatives from Nagaland came to the UK, seeking repatriation of ancestral remains taken during British rule. Their plea was part of a growing global demand for both moral reckoning and material return. European countries are beginning to act: Germany to Nigeria, France to Benin and Senegal, the Netherlands to Sri Lanka and Indonesia. Britain remains behind — legally shielded by the British Museum Act of 1963, but morally exposed.While regional Indian initiatives like Tamil Nadu's Idol Wing and the India Pride Project have recovered a handful of items, the Indian government has yet to mount a full-scale restitution campaign. High-profile artefacts like the Kohinoor diamond (in the British Crown Jewels) or Maharaja Ranjit Singh's golden throne (at the V&A) remain unreclaimed.The timing is notable. Ancient India: Living Traditions opened just before Britain prepares to finalise its free trade agreement with India, with Prime Minister Modi expected to visit London in late July.Yet, amid all the rhetoric of mutual respect and shared prosperity, the question of cultural restitution remains untouched. Britain continues to showcase artefacts taken from India during colonial rule, even as it courts Indian investment and political goodwill.Every element of Ancient India: Living Traditions is choreographed — incense, lighting, Sanskrit chants, documentary clips — to create an illusion of reverence. But the darshan offered here is hollow. These idols were never meant for museum display. Their removal transformed sacred objects into spoils of conquest.This is not a celebration of living culture. It is a state-funded spectacle of possession — a museum of silence guarded by salaried professionals, protected by imperial law and underwritten by public money.The incense cannot conceal it.The institution cannot explain it.And the gods, still staring out, know exactly what was done.Shyam Bhatia is London Correspondent, The Tribune.

Imperial nostalgia or shared culture

Shyam Bhatia

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