When Sammantham, one of the trustees of the 2,000-year-old Vedapureeswarar temple in Thanjavur, passed away in 1987, he was a heartbroken man. Sixty-two years ago, a Natarajar idol was stolen from the temple and Sammantham had hoped he would see the deity returned to its rightful place within his lifetime. He believed that evil would befall their village if the idol did not find its way back to the temple. Unfortunately, he died before the idol was brought back.
Sammantham’s son, 60-year-old Venkatachalam, took it upon himself to ensure that his father’s wish was fulfilled. Having read and heard about the feats of the Tamil Nadu Idol Wing in retrieving stolen idols, Venkatachalam filed a complaint regarding the missing Natarajar statue. The Idol Wing promptly took up the case and began their investigation.
Speaking to TNM, Jayanth Murali, the Directorate General of Police (DGP), says that idol smugglers adopt several creative ways to steal them from temples. “Notorious smugglers like Subhash Kapoor would scout for idols using local thieves. The thieves here would find the most vulnerable and dilapidated temples and bribe village residents to help them steal the idol. They would remove the original statue, usually at night, replace it with a replica and smuggle the original abroad,” he says.
The Idol Wing in Tamil Nadu comprises 130 officers working across the state. So far, the team has recovered 1,500 smuggled idols that were stolen by thieves operating within the state and the country.
Upon investigation, it was revealed that the Natarajar idol in the Vedapureeswarar temple was a replica and the original had been smuggled abroad. The DGP said that smugglers usually move the idols through the Nepal border as it is quite porous and bypassing the customs officers is a cakewalk. From Nepal, the idol would be taken to Singapore and then to London or the US to be sold to art dealers and private auction houses.
Once the First Information Report (FIR) was filed for the missing Natarajar statue, the Idol Wing needed a visual of what the statue looked like. If the Idol Wing officers came across a picture of a Natarajar idol in the websites and brochures of museums and auction houses, a picture of the stolen idol was necessary to ensure that there is a complete match between both the pictures. If there is no visual reference for the stolen idol, the Idol Wing turns to the French Institute of Pondicherry (IFP) for help. “Several students do their research there on culture and history, which is why they have a repository of images of idols from 40-50% of the temples in Tamil Nadu. These are all black and white pictures taken from 1951 onwards and have been very useful when we are trying to trace an idol,” the DGP says. Unsurprisingly, the IFP had an image of the stolen Natarajar idol.
While internet access might have seemingly made the tracing process easier by providing access to brochures and catalogues of museums across the globe, it has not always been the case. “Recently, we traced an idol of goddess Sridevi to the Hill Auction Gallery in Florida. When the auction house found out that we had traced the idol and claimed ownership, they took down all the images of the idol from their website and catalogue. There was no trace of that image anywhere online! They had cleaned up every part of the internet, including Pinterest,” says Jayanth, adding that they were able to retrieve that idol only because they had strong evidence that it had been stolen from Tamil Nadu.
Once the Idol Wing has visual inputs, a scientific analysis is done by forensic officers to determine if the image of the idol from the museum brochure/catalogue is the same as the one that has been stolen. Archeologists are also brought in at this stage to confirm if both the idols match. Once it has been established that there is a match, the Idol Wing officers claim ownership and begin doing the necessary groundwork to retrieve the idol. This includes a cumbersome process of preparing the paperwork which has to pass through multiple bureaucratic offices in the state and country before it can be sent to the concerned country where the idol is housed.
Then begins the process of bringing the idol back. The DGP says that there is an extremely lengthy legal process before the idol can be brought back to its place of origin. “Sometimes, it can take up to four or five years before the idol comes back to us. If a museum or an auction house has established that an idol it has was from the Chola empire, for instance, and was from India, they should not insist that we (the Idol Wing) go through all these procedures to prove that the idol belongs to us,” he says, adding that he had raised this issue at multiple seminars and forums.
The Vedapureeswarar temple’s Natarajar idol was traced to the Asia Society Museum in New York after the team looked at numerous catalogues and brochures of museums and auction houses across the world. After it was confirmed that the idol in the New York museum was the one stolen from the Thanjavur temple, the Idol Wing officers began readying the necessary paperwork to bring it back, and are one step closer to fulfilling Sammantham’s wish.
Despite the arduous hours of paperwork and bureaucratic challenges, the Idol Wing is striving hard to recover idols that were stolen from Tamil Nadu’s temples. But all the challenges seem to be worth it when they return the idols to the village residents. “I think you have to be there when we hand over the idol to the people. You will see people weeping and the whole village going berserk with excitement and happiness. It will really touch you. They feel like their God has come back and only good things will happen to the village. It is a very emotional moment,” the DGP says.
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