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| December 10, 2003 | Wednesday | Shawwal 15, 1424 |
Smuggling of Gandhara artefacts goes unchecked
ISLAMABAD, Dec 9: Every now and then news reports appear in national newspapers about the Gandhara treasures which are considered the pride of this country.
The news are usually about the looting by illegal diggers that goes on without any check in the Peshawar-Mardan region of the NWFP and the Taxila area of the Punjab. The catches made by Customs at the airports to prevent valuable sculptures from being unlawfully exported also make headline.
What is never reported, since it cannot be computed, is the persistent smuggling that takes place by land and air despite the vigilance by the Customs department.
The stories appearing in the press point to the two types of buyers of these precious articles— the dealers and fanciers of Gandhara pieces outside the country and the opulent, influential local citizens who show them off in their drawing rooms.
No drawing room in the capital is complete without a few pieces from Gandhara and no foreign visitor wants to go back without a least a dozen or more statues and friezes which he can only get in this country.
Experts estimate that Gandhara art pieces worth more than Rs20 million go out of the country every year. This is apart from the antiques from Swat and Chitral and the rural areas of the four provinces and Azad Kashmir that are slowly but regularly shipped out to Europe, America and Japan.
While there is no bar on taking out Swat woodwork or silver jeweller or handmade fabrics, the stone carvings found in Pakistan come under the purview of the Antiquities Act and it is a crime to take them out of the country without valid permission.
Gandhara is a vast area in the central and northern parts of the now frontier province and the north-east portion of Punjab, and of course the better part of Afghanistan.
It was home to the Buddhist civilization and under the hills and dales lie buried the greatest treasury of sculptures known to the modern world.
Sadly, this treasury is being constantly depleted and apart from Islamabad, there is no well-to-do home in Lahore and Karachi and other big cities which does not boast of a few beautiful or a majestic head of the Buddha from this area. But these pieces are at least on display within the country. What is galling is the robbery by foreign dealers who sell them through the famous shops in London at fancy prices.
Sometimes back, a Peshawar daily reported that a dealer in that city was looking for a buyer for a Buddha’s head stored by him in a motor garage. The statue was so big that it took up as much space as a truck.
Cultural kleptomania, as it is known in the West, is rampant in all countries of the Third World beside Pakistan. In the past, theft of cultural treasures has been part of history. It is only in modern times that countries have started claiming stolen art valuables.
This is as true of the East as of the West, because such theft was considered part of war and conquest and colonial domination.
Experts in Unesco have conducted detailed studies of the state of smuggling in modern times, especially in the South-East Asia where even now it is rampant. One of its reports says that antiques are moved to border points in North-East Burma where sophisticated Thai and European dealers wait anxiously to run with heir booty to Bangkok where the stakes are even higher.
Pakistan has not reached that stage yet, but if the present rate of smuggling is not curbed it might become a favourite spot for the world’s antique dealers and connoisseurs.
Along with strict measures at the airports, there is also need to educate and motivate the public so that it realises the importance of the national heritage and does not play into the hands of unscrupulous buyers.—APP
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