• Measures underway to repatriate more artefacts from the Netherlands
• Govt. requests British authorities to also repatriate colonial period artefacts

A visitor to the Colombo National Museum after December 2023 will be immediately met with the front gallery’s new exhibit of six Kandyan objects that returned to Sri Lanka from the Netherlands after more than 250 years of being with the Dutch. 

The objects include a decorated cannon and carriage known as Lewke’s cannon, two wall guns (‘maha thuwakku’), and three ceremonial weapons of the king of Kandy – two gold and silver swords (‘kastāne’) and a golden knife. 

The return of the objects followed a process that began around 2019. While several requests had been made by local authorities, the return of the Dutch objects last year was also influenced by a recent global outcry that former colonial nations return artefacts of former colonised nations as a way of addressing historical injustice. 

This was followed by demands made especially during the Black Lives Matter movement and a report called for by French President Emmanuel Macron where it stated that objects taken from African countries “without consent” under French colonial rule should be permanently returned. 

While the Dutch returned six objects that were housed at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, there are a number of other artefacts in the Netherlands that are expected to be repatriated. 

Further repatriation underway 

Speaking to The Sunday Morning, Minister of Buddhasasana, Religious, and Cultural Affairs Vidura Wickramanayaka said that measures were underway to repatriate more artefacts. “We are getting ready for the next batch of artefacts from the Netherlands. They are yet to definitively inform us as to what these objects are,” the Minister said. 

The Government is confident that the next batch of artefacts from the Netherlands will arrive soon. “As the Dutch Government is immensely cooperative in this, we will be able to finalise it before long,” stated Wickramanayaka.

Apart from the Netherlands, the authorities are working towards repatriating Sri Lankan artefacts in other countries. Minister Wickramanayaka said that the Government had already made requests from British authorities to repatriate artefacts that had been acquired during its colonial rule in Ceylon. 

“We have informed the British High Commissioner of our ambitions and we presented documents to the previous High Commissioner in 2022,” Wickramanayaka said, explaining that they had embarked on a fresh exercise of cataloguing objects. “We are in the process of formulating a new list of items. I was informed by the Department of Archaeology that there is a large number of objects to be requested from Great Britain.”

The Minister said that authorities were hoping to complete the cataloguing by 30 June. 

Historical attempts at restitution 

Speaking at the ceremony to officially open the Colombo National Museum’s exhibition of the six objects repatriated from the Netherlands, Rijksmuseum Chief Curator Jan de Hond said that the first restitution request for this decorated cannon, which was the star object of the exhibit, had come from the Foreign Minister of Sri Lanka in 1964.

What is recorded as the first large-scale formal restitution request made by Sri Lanka was in 1980. In May of that year, Sri Lanka submitted a formal request to the UNESCO Intergovernmental Committee for Promoting the Return of Cultural Property to its Countries of Origin or its Restitution in case of Illicit Appropriation (ICPRCP) calling for the repatriation of artefacts from more than 20 institutions from eight countries. However, this request failed to yield any results. 

“UNESCO eventually declared the request inadmissible because of procedural errors,” said de Hond. The request included hundreds of objects in several Western countries, including the Netherlands. The list, based on extensive research done by then Director of the Colombo National Museum P.H.D.H. de Silva, included the cannon and several other weapons.

The research done by de Silva in 1970 included 4,859 objects and covered a number of countries including Australia, Austria, Belgium, Germany, France, Great Britain, and the US. 

The six Kandyan objects were returned to Sri Lanka as they were confirmed to have been looted by the Dutch during the 1765 siege of Kandy. This conclusion was arrived at after conducting research on the origins of the object. This provenance research was undertaken by a team of Sri Lankan and Dutch scholars and specialists. Prior to being returned to Sri Lanka, the objects were housed at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. 

“The then Dutch Ambassador wholeheartedly supported the request, but to no avail. The Dutch Government rejected the request because the cannon was said to be of national importance and therefore could not be missed in the Rijksmuseum’s collection,” de Hond elaborated. Further, he stated that at the time, there was an existing theory that the cannon had been gifted to the Dutch by Lewke Disave and therefore not a spoil of war. 

Speaking to The Sunday Morning, art historian Dr. Ganga Rajinee Dissanayake, the researcher who conducted provenance research into the Lewke cannon, said that objects were only returned if they were proven to be looted or taken under duress by the colonialists. “We cannot claim objects that have clearly been given as gifts. If we were to do that, there would be so many more objects.”

During the provenance research conducted, it was established that the cannon and the other objects had indeed been looted from Kandy and had not been given as gifts. Looting and acquiring under duress are grounds for objects to be considered as having been wrongfully brought to the Netherlands in the colonial period. 

Other colonial artefacts 

Out of the objects in Britain, the statue of the goddess Tārā is a priority object that Sri Lanka expects to have repatriated. “The British have our goddess Tārā, which is an iconic masterpiece. We would like to have that – that is number one,” Wickramanayaka stressed. 

The statue of Tārā is believed to have been stolen from the Kandyan Kingdom when the British colonised the island in 1815. This 8th century bronze and gold figure had been taken to Britain by the third Governor of Ceylon Robert Brownrigg and subsequently donated to the British Museum by his wife in 1830. 

When asked about the Portuguese, Wickramanayaka said that there weren’t many objects that had been taken by them. “More than looting, it is the destruction of artefacts that has mostly taken place during that period,” he said. The Portuguese were in the island from the early 16th century to the mid-17th century. 

Wickramanayaka said that there were also reports of artefacts to be repatriated from the US. 

When asked about challenges to repatriation efforts, Wickramanayaka stated that private custody and lack of clarity in evidence and records made the repatriation process complex. “Foreign governments which are responsible for returning the artefacts find it difficult when objects are in the custody of individual persons and not at museums.” 

According to him, some artefacts, on occasion, lack clear evidence or records. “We are basing the claims on the records we have in Sri Lanka and their accuracy cannot be assured.”

Scholars also claim that there is a legal challenge in repatriating objects from the British Museum where the statue of Tārā is housed. The British Museum Act of 1963 holds the Board of Trustees to abide by a number of principles, including preserving the collection and prohibiting disposal of objects, except in a few circumstances. 

When asked whether this posed a legal challenge to Tārā returning to Sri Lanka, Wickramanayaka denied the possibility. 

Context of repatriation 

Dr. Dissanayake told The Sunday Morning that several artefacts of art historical importance in the Musée national des arts asiatiques-Guimet (Guimet National Museum of Asian Arts) in Paris would allow us to read our society economically and culturally. She stated that the museum housed small sleeping Buddha statues and painted wooden boxes that were extremely rare in present-day Sri Lanka. 

“It is difficult to think that such an object was gifted to anyone because they are religious objects. It would be extremely valuable for scholarship if they can be repatriated.”

Sri Lanka has previously seen the return of several local objects that were returned by the British prior to and upon independence – the Kandyan king’s regalia including the throne and the crown and Keppetipola’s cranium. 

However, Dr. Dissanayake said that these instances could not be identified as a repatriation of objects in the present sense as the objects had been returned while Ceylon was still under the British and because the returns were not followed by research into the provenance of the objects. 

It is also important to note the context in which these returns are taking place, which is a global trend of repairing historical injustice. The recent repatriations are results of bilateral collaboration and negotiation between two governments with the involvement of independent researchers from both countries.