Events Archives
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Illustrated Talk – The Role of Photo Archives in Restitution of Cultural Property by S. Vijay Kumar
Date: 28th March 2025
Venue: INTACH Multipurpose Hall, 71, Lodhi Estate, New Delhi
Time: 4.30 pm IST
Live streaming
YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/live/j7QAu71dVuQDear Friends,
We are delighted to invite you to the Illustrated Talk on 28th March in the Multipurpose Hall,
INTACH, New Delhi.The global art market’s increasing shift toward private sales and the removal of past auction records present significant challenges for tracking and reclaiming looted cultural heritage. However, historical photo archives, combined with modern digital tools like Google 360 Street View, have emerged as crucial instruments in restitution efforts.
This presentation will explore how photographic documentation—from colonial-era surveys to institutional archives—has been instrumental in identifying and recovering stolen artifacts. The India Pride Project (IPP), co-founded by Vijay Kumar, has been at the forefront of this movement, leveraging extensive image archives and open-source intelligence to trace
looted Indian antiquities. IPP has played a pivotal role in several high-profile restitutions, including the 12th-Century Nalanda Buddha (London): Stolen from the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) site museum in Nalanda in 1961; The 8th-Century Nalanda Buddha (LACMA); A bronze Buddha Shakyamuni, stolen from the Nalanda Museum in 1961 and several others which will be covered in the talk.S. Vijay Kumar is a heritage activist, researcher, and co-founder of the India Pride Project (IPP), a globally recognized initiative dedicated to tracking and facilitating the restitution of looted Indian antiquities. After spending 15 years in Singapore, where he played a crucial role in uncovering international smuggling networks, he is now based in India, continuing his efforts to combat cultural heritage crimes and advocate for stronger provenance research.
Vijay has been instrumental in the identification and recovery of several high-profile stolen artifacts, including the Vriddachalam Ardhanari, Sripuranthan Nataraja, Toledo Ganesha, the Nalanda Buddhas (London & LACMA), and the Punnainallur Nataraja (Asia Society, USA).
A regular speaker and columnist, Vijay has worked closely with global law enforcement agencies such as Interpol, Europol, the CBI, and Indian Customs (DRI). His contributions have been acknowledged in United Nations reports and at the Unite for Heritage Conference (Yale, UNESCO). He is also the author of The Idol Thief, which chronicles the dark underworld of antiquities trafficking.
Join us for tea after the event.
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The Fifteenth Pupul Jayakar Memorial Lecture – Lords of Earth and Sea: A History of the Chola Empire by Anirudh Kanisetti
Date: 17th April 2025
Venue: Alliance Francaise, 72, Lodhi Estate, New Delhi
Time: 6.30 pm IST
Live streaming
YouTube link: https://youtube.com/live/cY8Ft2o9SMADear Friends,
It gives us great pleasure to invite you to the Fifteenth Pupul Jayakar Memorial Lecture on 17th April, 2025 at Alliance Francaise, New Delhi.
The lecture will be streamed live. The link for it is given below.
https://youtube.com/live/cY8Ft2o9SMAAll are welcome.
The Chola Empire (850–1279 CE) was one of the most remarkable polities in medieval Asia, as creative and imaginative as they were expansive and warlike. They built stupendous temples – the tallest freestanding structures on earth after the pyramids of Egypt. Chola queens popularized new forms of gods and worship, such as the iconic Nataraja and the singing of Tamil poems to deities: both integral to Hinduism today. And they were spectacularly daring, raiding not just the powerful Deccan and North India but also Southeast Asia and Sri Lanka. All of these had lasting impacts on not just on South India but on the world.
In this boldly conceptualised lecture, award-winning historian Anirudh Kanisetti brings to life the world of the Cholas. Not just the world of kings and queens attended by retinues of generals and attendants – but the stories of the ‘little people’, whose lives were buffeted by big events. Based on thousands of inscriptions and hundreds of secondary sources, Lords of Earth and Sea is not just a procession of dazzling kings and queens but transports us from palaces to peasant settlements of over a thousand years ago.
Anirudh Kanisetti is a public historian specialising in ancient and early medieval India. He is the author of Lords of Earth and Sea: A History of the Chola Empire, and Lords of the Deccan: Southern India from the Chalukyas to the Cholas. He hosts two podcasts: Echoes of India and YUDDHA: The Indian Military History podcast. Anirudh has won the Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar, the Ramnath Goenka Sahitya Samman, and Tata Literature Live’s Non-Fiction Book of the Year Award. He was an Open Mind of 2022, and on the New Indian Express’ 40 Under 40. Anirudh was formerly Editor at the MAP Academy, where he worked on the Encyclopaedia of Indian Art. Prior to this, he was Associate Fellow at the Takshashila Institution. His work has received grants from Princeton University, the India Foundation for the Arts, and MAP Academy.
Join us for Tea at 6:00 pm before the event.
