A civilisation constitutes of different communities banding under a shared identity and heritage. Each community brings their own deck to the table, specialising in crafts, art, medicine, education, and business, among other things; as a result, the bond between these specialised communities further enables the civilisation’s growth, holistically improving the quality of life beyond basic survival needs. In India, this concerted community effort came together in its temples, becoming an important cultural and civic centre, representing the Hindu civilisation.

It is widely recorded that during centuries of the tyranny of Muslim invasions, Muslim rulers following their religion pillaged temples and desecrated their venerated murtis as a tactic of instilling dread.

As power shifted to the colonial authorities, instead of plundering and robbing India’s wealth all at once, the British did what they do best with their colonies: declared it the property of the colonial government and crippled it beyond redemption. Many murtis were stolen and declared the property of ‘Her Majesty,’ including the renowned Jagannath Puri diamond, popularly known as Kohinoor.

Outspoken Indians accurately describe the British Museum as a “chor bazaar,” a marketplace of antiquities stolen in the name of the “white man’s burden”; never returned even after independence as a symbol of reparations and now lie dormant. Worshipped murtis belonging to millions of indigenous people from Africa to India are now displayed to be seen exclusively by passers-by with a ticket.

But, how has India fared in its 75 years of independence in terms of protecting and rebuilding its civilisation, as one would hope after achieving freedom? Based on their track record throughout the given period, it is reasonable to conclude that the Indian State has a lethargic attitude when it comes to clawing back stolen murtis , let alone curbing the continuous criminal smuggling of temple murtis. According to a UNESCO estimate, more than 50000 murtis were stolen until 1989, yet Indian officials claim to be indifferent about the number of murtis to be retrieved. As a gesture, just 28 have been returned to India, and none have been reinstalled in their respective temples.

The illegal trade in Indian antiques is valued at over $10 billion USD. A recent raid in New York on a single vendor in a single warehouse found artefacts worth $100 million USD. While the Indian State may not value its heritage, adversaries of the State have found a convenient source of funding by smuggling these murtis. The irony is that state passivity, to put it mildly, is funding terrorists against it.

In the documentary ‘Blood Buddhas,’ filmed by Nikhil Singh Rajput, an ASI official claims, “It is challenging to say how long it will take to get back a smuggled antiquity…”, which is a typical bureaucratic reply for ‘never.’ This contradicts the statements of former US Homeland Security agent Domenic DiGiovanni, who alleges that despite enormous attempts to facilitate the return, bureaucratic hot-potatoeing at all federal levels is preventing murtis from returning to their homeland. He emphasises that governmental disinterest does not harm the US but causes a cultural loss to India.

Examining ASI’s conservation work on temples and retrieved murtis is a disgrace. Temples and their murtis contain intricate features that illustrate the artistry of the dynasty it patronised or that was prevalent at the time. After succumbing to weathering, preserving these as a keepsake becomes necessary. Nonetheless, a highly-skilled institution with expertise in these areas has subjugated these delicate features with sandblasting, reducing finer nuances to polygonal blocks and eliminating a chapter from history.

When it comes to reconstructing these temples, the case of Somnath Temple encapsulates this mindset; at the time, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru denied governmental assistance in temple reconstruction since it would violate the temple’s secular ethos of the Republic.

One could contend that because the relics in question are religiously significant, the State’s involvement would violate its secular framework, justifying its indifference to the subject. This argument is specious and betrays a profound apathy toward indigenous culture, as the state’s actions paint a different picture, one that is decimating its own Indic-Hindu heritage.

Aeons ancient artefacts and temples have been desecrated and venerated sacred trees have been felled, in the recent bid to modernise the Kashi Vishwanath Corridor and transform it into an upbeat modern tourist attraction. With tourists defiling the sacredness of the monuments, residents complain that their government has embarked on an iconoclastic journey akin to that of the ancient invaders. The ‘new site’ is bereft of traditional craftsmanship; it is replaced by brutalist architecture reminiscent of the Soviet era, while the hallmarks of craftsmanship, such as those seen on the walls of old Hindu sites, are decked with banal symmetry, much like the Mughalai Minars that populate Northern India.

The secular State, which should not be affiliated or involved with religious institutions based on the preceding premise, is overtly autocratic in the administration of temples and seems concerned only with funds. By alleging corruption in temple management, the Tamil Nadu government took control of 39,000 temples and replaced their administration with its own in order to ensure temple operations. 85 percent of these have a monthly income of less than 1000 rupees, making allegations of widespread money misappropriation absurd.

A while back, the Tamil Nadu Government issued a notice to 47 Temples to cough up 10 Crores for Chief Minister’s Relief Fund as per its Hindu Rights Charitable and Endowments Act (HRCE), 1959. The Madras High Court has rightly condemned the resource-hungry State for leaving temples in worse condition than before the state took possession, with its administration enabling the illicit trade of murtis.

Post-1947 India borrowed its legal framework from not only its colonial predecessors but also from lawbooks of most western nations, who base their civilisational identity with roots from the ‘Treaty of Westphalia’ culminating in a Euro-centric colonial identity with principles derived from the Era of Enlightenment based on Christian political theology. Thus, it would make sense to analyse their response to similar issues wherein such systems originated.

For example, when Notre Dame burned down in 2019, French nationals and those from other Western countries were devastated and expressed their grief. Plans to rebuild the site were announced immediately, with the project receiving global public and private support, raising over 1 billion Euros; demonstrating that even the birthplace of ‘militant secularism’ was not immune from embracing its civilisational heritage, a sentiment shared by other Euro-centrists, quite ironic in comparison to the Indian State’s laughable ‘efforts’.

India, on the other hand, is trapped in a Nietzschean ‘Secular state’ conundrum in which the existence of a self-sustaining and autonomous community is regarded as a failure of any liberal democracy. According to Nietzsche, the State can only exist through coercing individuals into a state of perpetual haplessness. To keep its people dependent on it, the State encourages individuality and promises an ideal quality of life that can only be realised with buzzwords like high growth, GDP, jobs, and so on. These take away an individual’s sense of belonging within his society while conditioning him to nuclearize in order to attain material goals, effectively placing his group and its destiny in the hands of the State.

The society is united by a shared identity derived from his civilisational identity, which for India revolves around temples.

As a result, in order to make the individual dependent on the State, the core identity, i.e. the roots, must be undermined. As a result, campaigns for the liberation of Hindu temples will be met by the replication of the Kashi Model across India, effectively funded by tax-paying Hindus.

The Indian state has so far been more antipathic than apathetic. Being the latter would have been optimal since it would have allowed these indigenous communities to reclaim their identities, empowering them to revive their heritage. Using the Hasidic Jewish community as a model approach to such difficulties, many who immigrated to New York after the Holocaust sought autonomous community development right away. It permitted them to look after their members in all parts of life, without intervention from the state; health, education, employment, third-party services, and so on. The community is thriving today, and they are optimistic about the future.

Since a civilisation is established by its people, if the community can no longer identify itself under any banner, the civilisation and, ultimately, the State perish. Under such conditions, the future of Indic culture is bleak.