Oxford University’s Pitt Rivers Museum will return the remains of 39 people to the Naga community in northeast India after approving a restitution request. The remains were collected during the British colonial era, with some displayed at the museum until 2020…reports Asian Lite News Desk
Oxford University’s Pitt Rivers Museum is preparing to return the remains of 39 people to the Naga community in northeast India, following the approval of a restitution request by the Forum for Naga Reconciliation (FNR).
The museum, which holds the world’s largest collection of Naga artefacts, said the University of Oxford had approved the repatriation of the remains. The decision follows a request covering 40 sets of human remains.
Oxford University approved the return of 39 sets on July 13. It concluded that one specimen did not have a clear provenance as Naga and therefore would not be included in the repatriation.
The human remains were collected in the early 20th century by British colonial administrators. Some of the remains were kept on public display at the Pitt Rivers Museum until 2020.
Museum director Laura Van Broekhoven said the remains “have been away from their homeland for far too long”, according to a statement sent to AFP.
The museum said it was working closely with the Naga community to agree on a date for the handover ceremony. No date has yet been set.
The Naga organisations involved in the request welcomed the decision, describing the return as an important part of reconnecting ancestral remains with their homeland.
“Repatriation, for the Nagas, is not simply about bones and ancestral remains finding their way back to the land but importantly about memory returning to where it belongs,” the FNR and other Naga organisations said in a statement sent to AFP.
The agreement comes amid a wider international debate over the return of human remains and cultural objects acquired by museums and other Western institutions during the colonial period.
Museums and universities in several countries have faced growing calls from communities and governments to return artefacts and human remains taken from their territories.
In 2022, London’s Horniman Museum returned 72 artefacts to Nigeria, including 12 Benin bronze artefacts.
Earlier this year, the University of Edinburgh returned the skulls of six people to a Native American group.
The issue has also featured in the long-running dispute between Greece and Britain over the Parthenon Marbles. Greece has for decades called for the sculptures to be returned, arguing that they were removed from the Parthenon in the early 19th century by Lord Elgin, who was Britain’s ambassador to the Ottoman Empire at the time.
The British government has maintained that the matter is for the British Museum, which holds the marbles, to decide. Britain has also argued that the sculptures were legally acquired.
The planned return of the Naga remains is therefore part of a broader discussion about how museums and academic institutions should address collections acquired during periods of colonial rule.
For the Naga community, the repatriation concerns human remains taken from their homeland more than a century ago. The Pitt Rivers Museum said it would continue working with Naga representatives to arrange the return.
The museum’s decision means 39 sets of remains will now be prepared for repatriation, while the status of the remaining specimen will remain separate because of the university’s finding that its Naga provenance could not be clearly established.
