Returning Deities Home
Conversation with Roshan Mishra
On living culture, heritage re-matriation,
and letting deities live and die with dignity
March 12, 2026
Roshan Mishra and Mayıs Rukel in the courtyard of Taragaon Next, March 12, 2026, Kathmandu, Nepal
Mayıs:
I’m curious about your work with repatriation; the processes and the procedures of it. When I imagine the repatriation of artefacts, I think of an object that belongs to a certain culture that is now somewhere else due to looting. Research is done on how the object went there, and then the object is requested back. I’d love to learn about the details in between and beyond. What kind of resistance do you face when you do this work? What kind of legal procedures does it require, what kind of agreements take place?
Roshan:
I'll tell you the story of my involvement in repatriation from the beginning.
It was 2019, I’ve been thinking of how all our heritage is documented by foreign scholars in architectural drawings and other similar documents. I tried to find out if there is any database listing, for example, all the gods and goddesses we have in Nepal. There wasn't any formal documentation about that; even the Department of Archeology didn’t have it. And there's lots of monuments in Nepal, including the heritage sites, UNESCO sites, durbar squares… And I wondered how I could start documenting the heritage of Nepal. This line of curiosity led me to wondering if there was any documentation of Nepali objects that are taken away from Nepal. That did not exist either. All the European museums, American museums, they have lots of Nepali objects, but we had no documentation about them.
in 2019, I started the website called Global Nepali Museum with the idea of documenting what we no longer have in Nepal. I categorized them; paintings and manuscripts, photographs, collections, cultural objects. Even contemporary art as well. In the collections segment of the website, you'll see lots of institution names. When you click on any of those, you will see what Nepali object is within their collection.
Since this type of information didn’t even exist at the Department of Archeology, this website became some sort of formal/informal repository, collecting data of these objects.
And that's how I started looking at the cultural material very closely. It was because of this project, in 2020, I was approached by a well-known Nepali journalist, Kanak Mani Dixit, who said to me: We should start a repatriation campaign.
When I started the website, I knew that people would use it for repatriation, but I was not really keen to jump into that area right away. But Kanak Mani mentioned it, I felt that it was important to do that work. That’s how we started the Nepal Heritage Recovery Campaign.
The campaign is basically formed by five of the members, including myself. And then we had a director and a coordinator to work with us.
The work of the campaign started to claim this object:
12th-century Laxmi-Narayan stolen in 1984 was repatriated by
the Government of Nepal on the 15th of April 2021.
R:
This object was in the Dallas Museum, the US. That was the time, we came together and formed the organisation, we identified this object. Claiming it from Dallas was actually a very easy repatriation; and social media helped. The museum said they will return it back without any further investigation because there was already proof of where it was stolen from.
M:
That is necessary, right? To provide proof while requesting repatriation.
R:
Yes, that is very much necessary. We claimed it in December; it came back to Kathmandu April 2021, I think. And then in December we were able to place it back at the temple it was stolen from. So it happened really quickly. That was how the whole campaign started; for that particular object.
M:
But how did you find proof of where it came from, and how it went to Dallas?
R:
There is a Facebook page called Lost Arts of Nepal. This is run by an anonymous person; nobody knows who they are. So all the research is done by this person. They are even on our advisory board. We work closely with this anonymous activist. All the information was collected by them.
Once we identify an object, the first thing we try to find is where it was before, and if there was any photograph taken, or a police report produced for its theft. Those are the kinds of evidence you need.
For example, we are working with the Metropolitan Museum of Art. We’re trying to get back this particular object:
Nrityadevi, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, taken from Baha bahi, Patan
R:
This is supposed to come back to Nepal, and the MET Museum is not willing to give it. Some institutions are open to cooperate and collaborate, and they want to do the repatriation. But there are some others who resist and become rigid. They don't want to give it back. Then what do you do?
If going to the Department of Archeology and requesting them to send the museum all the details and documents won’t work, then we would get involved with the international media. And sometimes, though we do not desire, lots of naming and shaming would happen.
There was a huge article written by ProPublica; about the Chicago Institute of Art. They’ve got lots of Nepali objects. And many of those are identified, like this one:
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Amoghapasa Lokeshwora
M:
What does identified mean? That you know where it came from, like the temple it was taken from?
R:
Yes, identified means we know where it was taken from. Many objects there in Chicago are already identified. And this is the most important one:
Taleju Bhavani Necklace
R:
This is a very important necklace that was worn by a goddess. For safety reasons it was taken out from the temple and kept somewhere, and from there it got lost. Later on, we found out that it was in the Chicago Institute of Art.
M:
How does the claiming process go, step by step?
R:
What we normally do is this: Lost Arts of Nepal does the identification, our organisation does all the paperwork and collects all the materials. We send that to the Department of Archeology. They send it to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Nepal. From there it will go to that country’s Nepali embassy, and the embassy will contact the museum/institution.
So that’s the government’s official format. But we realized that the process took very long. In Nepal, most things happen manually and the process takes time.
But in some cases, there is also the reverse process. Once you identify an object, you expose either through newspaper or social media, and thus the museum is notified. Then they do their own research. And if they find that it is indeed looted, then before we even start the claiming process, they will say that they will return it. So they return it back to the Nepali Embassy. The embassy will send it to the Department of Archeology. And they will send it to the local museum, the temple, or the community.
We established the heritage campaign in 2021. Until now we have returned almost 150 objects, and we have identified almost 300. So, a lot happened in the last 4-5 years.
With institutions such as museums and archives, it’s easier. Because they won’t sell their objects. So the objects are safe there. But the challenging part is when you start working with the auction houses and private collectors. There are lots of private collectors who own Nepali objects.
What we normally do when the auction happens is, we contact our advisory committee, most of whom live abroad. Such as our researchers, or a criminologist professor based in the US. They will help us connect with the Interpol and the FBI to stop the auction.
M:
How do you maintain the capacity to sustain this research?
R:
We are a nonprofit organization. We don't have a single penny to run the organization. We are taking our time whenever it's possible. We just connect with the community activists, researchers, scholars and so on. But we are not in a position to do provenance research, because that is very difficult to do. Once these objects are sent away from Nepal, then they start creating a provenance. There’s no record in Nepal, but when it leaves, gets into Europe or America, then it generates some sort of provenance record.
Metropolitan Museum and Art Institute of Chicago, at the moment, are hard to work with. But there might be good news: the Taleju Bhavani Necklace was taken out of the display a few months ago. They might be thinking of sending it back; we don’t know yet. But some institutions like Chicago, they simply don’t reply to our messages.
M:
So when they don’t collaborate in communication, that’s when you get the help of the media.
R:
Exactly.
M:
How do you observe the impact of this process so far?
R:
Now whenever there is a talk of repatriation, people talk about Nepal; and that is because of our campaign. What happened here in the past 4-5 years is something new. We work through social media, on a community level, and we are making things happen. We have been covered by the New York Times, the Guardian, and so many other important newspapers, and even some documentaries.
It’s a very interesting journey. I never thought I’d be called an activist; but this is a different kind of activism.
What I believe is: Nepal still has this living culture. When there is a society of a living culture, and when their culture is disconnected by the removal of these deities, gods and goddesses, then the culture will collapse. All the intangible parts of that culture will disappear.
M:
Yes. The intangible will disappear with the tangible.
R:
Exactly. For India, the repatriation is more about getting the objects back to India and putting them in the museums. In Nepal’s case, we are not looking for museum to museum transfer. We are looking for museum to community transfer. So we want to eventually hand them back to the community. Communities are the custodians. They are the ones who can actually revive and preserve the culture.
M:
Wow!
R:
Being a museum professional myself, I try to contact the other museum professionals, and try to have a one to one conversation. So what I realised in the past few years: even though naming and shaming is sometimes useful, it doesn’t help all the time. They become very rigid.
M:
It also breaks relationships, right?
R:
Yes. And if you can talk with the museum curator or the director, it becomes so much easier.
In this text I have written for the Art Gallery of New South Wales, I talk about what happened in 2019 when I was in Sydney.
I went there for a completely different programme, and within that programme they were supposed to give us a tour, but I decided not to go on that tour because I saw a Nepal display on the other side of the museum. So I was wandering in the museum.
When a museum displays looted objects, they don’t detail where it came from -even though they know it- so they would only say Nepal, Kathmandu Valley to keep it vague. But interestingly, the temple this object was taken from was actually named. I knew that temple, so I identified the objects.
Strut Sulima Ratneswar temple
R:
When I came back to Nepal, I started a conversation with the museum, and was connected with the curator from the Asian department. We talked about this object for almost two years; exchanging emails, what to do, what not to do, whether to send it or not to send it back. So they decided to send it back to Nepal after two years. When they returned it, the curator came, the director came, and even a minister came to Nepal for the hand-over ceremony. So it was a very beautiful coordination between a museum professional and another museum professional. And then once that happened, they invited me back to Australia. I went to Australia in 2024, I stayed in the museum as part of a research grant, and there was already another object we identified. So I went there, looked at the object with the former Australian Ambassadors. Now there is already a discussion happening to be sent back to Nepal.
What I realised is, if you are connected with an institution at that level, it will become much, much easier, rather than just throwing it on the internet with a big headline.
M:
It sounds like building relationships is much better when it’s possible. Keeping a kind voice, a clear intention; instead of breaking possibilities of connections and burning bridges.
R:
Yes. And there is no rush. When we make a claim, we are not looking to get the object the next day. Once the claim is made, we have all the documentation, the old images, the new images; all the details are there. So there is no rush; even if the object stays there for five or ten more years down the line, that generation can still claim it based on the documents we prepared. It’s all a process.
M:
Definitely. And even though the goal is to bring the object back, that’s not the only thing. This whole process also creates very important anti-colonial dialogues and conversations between the institutions, the cultures, the countries. And the fact that you transfer the objects not from one museum to another contained institution, but to the community where it can keep on living, is at the core of all this effort.
R:
Absolutely. That’s the beauty of living culture. We have to let our gods and goddesses live and die with dignity. When you think about that dignified process of dying, what I mean by that is: We bring back this god and put it back into the temple, and even if it lost some colour, or it's broken, or all the contours are wiped away; that is fine. As a museum professional, my duty is to make sure that this is documented. And if we make sure that the skill to make this object is documented. And if in 200 years it becomes just a piece of stone, that's okay. That's a dignified process of dying. So the next generation can recreate that object based on the documentation. Everything has its life, they decay and will die thus they will be renewed again. That’s the beauty of living culture.
M:
That’s beautiful. I don't know what to do with this research yet, but I'm very interested in this intention of letting sacred objects live and die with dignity, creating these conversations, building those relationships.
R:
It is a tough task, but I think it’s very satisfying.
M:
It sounds so rewarding.
R:
It is. Especially, you know, when the first object was returned back to Nepal, we had a huge procession, in Patan Durbar Square. We were literally in tears, and the community was in the same mood. I think that was such a beautiful moment.
Museums talk about being more ethical, but they need to put that into action. Nowadays they started working with contemporary artists too. Because then they can work with a living artist and start replacing the colonial narratives.
Repatriation is actually an opportunity for them to change narratives. They can work with a local artist, place that work where the looted item was before, and they have a brand new story to talk about; washing all those colonial stories that are attached to their institution. So we really need to explore different ways of how we can collaborate.
These changes won’t happen overnight. You know, the British Museum is not going to give back the Elgin Marbles to Greece right away, or the Benin Bronzes to Nigeria, or the Rosetta Stone to Egypt. It will be a process. But there will come a time when Egypt won’t even need to ask for it. The British Museum will be in a situation where they will not be able to keep it anymore, and will return it back.
All these museums have storages three-four floors down. They have the world cultures hidden underneath. Is that the place to preserve culture? No. Culture is not preserved inside glass boxes or in the storage. It lives within its own context and community; the tangible and intangible together.
With all the violence and war happening at the moment; we seem to have forgotten to accept each other to understand and appreciate each other’s culture. We have forgotten how to coexist. If we go on like this, the world is going to expire soon. A world where culture and people remain connected to each other would be a much happier place.
M:
Thank you very much Roshan. It was an honour to have this conversation with you. Fascinating, and so beautiful. I’m touched, feeling energized and very inspired.
R:
It’s my pleasure Mayıs. Thank you very much.
