July 19, 2003

Some people are gifted by nature to be creative and make beautiful things through their talent. There are others who do not have it in them to make new creations but are masters at imitating and producing what you may call “photo-copies.” These latter breed a whole lot of unscrupulous persons who try to pass off copies and imitations as real and make money out of this business.

You must have seen markets flooded with imitations of well-known brands of electronic goods and even delicately made Rolex watches, which novices cannot tell from the genuine stuff. In Pakistan these are known as ‘number two’. There is no shortage of people who buy them and boast that they have imported them from Europe whereas you can get sacks full of them in Hong Kong or Taiwan.

These are machine-made articles. In Europe you even have people who are master copiers of classical paintings. In Pakistan “new” paintings by Ustad Allah Bakhsh, Chughtai and Sadequain are constantly being “discovered” and sold as real. Some copyists in Europe and their sponsors became millionaires through the business of fake art. Sometimes one of them is caught and punished but most escape the clutches of the law and carry on with impunity. I had thought that Pakistan was still free of imitation experts where artefacts of Gandhara art are concerned, but it seems they have invaded the Frontier province, which is a fertile ground for their ability to make “photo copies.”

My contacts with culture buffs in Peshawar tell me that antique dealers in that area are fleecing foreigners by selling counterfeit artefacts and relics of bygone civilisations ostensibly recovered through excavations from various parts of the province. My friends’ narration is corroborated by newspaper writers. They all maintain that dealers are making a lot of money by selling these articles and also exporting them.

Under the Antiquities Act of 1973 (amended in 1977) sending out of such pieces by any means is prohibited and may lead to punishment, including imprisonment. If something looks like an antiquity, but is not, the exporter has to obtain a certificate from the federal Department of Archaeology to this effect and then despatch the article abroad after going through the usual formalities of Customs.

With moral standards at an all-time low in government departments, and most officials eager to make a quick buck, this certificate is not difficult to obtain. Priceless artefacts are thus sent out to Europe disguised as copies and sold at Christie’s and Sotheby’s, the world’s most prestigious antique dealers of London. There are similar houses across Europe and the United States.

Another stratagem employed by the dishonest is to mix genuine ancient relics with locally manufactured things and send out the consignments as cottage industry products produced in the Frontier. Either the Customs people are fooled, or maybe they are also in the know and close their eyes to the crooked proceeding if they have been properly looked after. I may state that an antique is anything that is more than 70 years old.

Recently officials of Customs Intelligence in Peshawar seized 18 statuettes and other antiques worth Rs500 millio in their estimate. My friends debunked this report and said the value had been highly exaggerated. Moreover, how could anyone even try to smuggle such stuff without the connivance of official agencies? A research officer in Peshawar Museum had said that two of the statuettes were fake, while a third, of Sidhartha, was without its head.

According to him, Mardan, Swabi and Charsadda are the main centres of preparing imitations. He disclosed that dealers take villagers into confidence and get the fake sculptures buried in fields for some time. After a while a villager digs up the articles and announces that he has come across the things while ploughing his field. The dealers then start looking for customers among eager foreigners without cleaning the “finds.”

The fact is that it is not only Gandhara antiques that are excavated illegally or faked. The Frontier region remained under the domain of several dynasties in the ancient past, including the Kushans and the Sassanids, and each had a varying style of sculpting statues and carving images in relief. So much so that a Kushan statue unearthed in Afghanistan was different from the one dug up in Peshawar area.

What happens is that those imitating these sculptures usually make small mistakes in facial features and the jewellery worn by their fake stone figures. A layman, which a potential customer always is, can’t perceive these mistakes but an expert can always tell the genuine work from a fake one, and that is how the counterfeiters are exposed. But such experts are rare.

A friend in Peshawar tells an interesting story about such magic workers. He says that in July last year, the Customs Intelligence officials in Karachi seized a consignment containing more than 300 fake antiques. As the enquiry proceeded the man responsible for this effort to smuggle them abroad confessed his handiwork and told the Customs people that it had taken him only six months to “manufacture” them for a newly established fancy hotel in England.

Everyone is agreed that the smuggling of both real and fake pieces may be quite extensive nowadays but it is nothing compared to what the British officers in pre-partition days did by way of taking home whatever they could lay their hands on. At that time there were no restrictions, and looting Indian wealth was normal activity for the rulers.

This is a different subject but during the last two years I have frequently written about theft of cultural artefacts from Asian and African countries by the colonial powers: It was downright robbery in daylight, but some of these countries were so backward they didn’t know the value of the priceless articles they were allowing their white rulers to take away.

Connect this with the report that Britain has formally refused to hand over to Greece the Elgin Marbles, pieces of the ancient Parthenon in Athens, which British ambassador Lord Elgin spirited away more than 150 years ago. And mind you, Greece was no backward Asian or African country. Some years ago, Melina Mercouri, famous star of the movie “Never on a Sunday,” later Culture Minister of Greece, had a special annexe built in the Athens Museum for them, so obsessed was she with their recovery.

Nowadays there is a worldwide movement afoot to restore such stolen pieces, but obviously Britain is not ready to contribute to the movement. Otherwise it would have considered returning the Koh-i-Noor to the subcontinent, and Iran would have pondered what to do about Mughal Emperor Shah Jehan’s Peacock Throne now lying in a museum in Tehran.