In
1997, a Taliban commander by the name Abdul Wahed proclaimed that the enormous
Buddha statues of Bamyan valley in the Hazarajat region of central Afghanistan
would be demolished. This was even before he could call his mission of entering
the valley a reality. However, the terrorist organization finally enacted their
ominous promise. In 2001, dynamites and anti-aircraft missiles fired their
might towards the silent statues, the witnesses of many centuries of human
activity and culture, and demolished them. Today, after fourteen years, even
this act of extreme intolerance has become history. It seems very much
politically correct to call it a history, right?
Fourteen
years later, the free world has something to ponder over about those acts that
I just addressed extreme intolerance. Were those acts of demolition actually
the results of intolerance?
Back
in 2001, the Taliban leader, Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar released his edict
against all un-Islamic idols and images. Because of being un-Islamic, it was a
necessity to cleanse the region of any such 'malice'. The argument had a strong
fundamentalist ideological base.
Fast-forward
fourteen years. Similar to the rise of the Taliban, another terrorist
organization evolves-the ISIS. News have come out that illegal smuggling of
antiques have been in vogue recently in the conflict stricken areas of Syria.
According to a recent newspaper report, ancient manuscripts and other items have
already reached many European countries. Although it may sound a Eurocentric
view, these antiques are better kept safe, smuggled or otherwise, rather than
being dynamited by some religious fundamentalist group.
Historical
artifacts are often of immense academic value. However, to remove antiques and
artifacts of any historical significance from their context may be deemed a sin
in the academia this act may at least help preserve the relics of time and
space. In order to link the past with the present the physicality of time is
important. To establish human relationship with time it is important to study
the results of that interaction, which is available to us now in the form of
ancient documents, crafts and relics of human culture from a past time.
Perhaps,
piracy and smuggling must be understood with a wider meaning in the twenty-first
century. The same way online book piracy helps to make available banned books
in various parts of the world, including in India, where a recently banned book
on Hindus is available online in pdf-book format, smuggling ancient artifacts
and antiques serves a historical purpose. Perhaps, the renaissance men too were
condemned of smuggling their books and manuscripts into Europe. At the cost of
this "movement of objects of history" out of a demolition zone, human
history underwent remarkable changes.
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| Image Courtesy: www.lib.utexas.edu |
At
the onset of the current upheaval in Syria and in the Middle East, it is safe
to assume that the artifacts and historical art traded across the boarders
would certainly turn immensely beneficial for those who study them and connect
the dots in the growth and evolution of culture.
Sadly,
though, the ISIS and other terrorist organizations operating in the region also
get their cut of the income drawn from the illegal selling of historical
treasures. It's a slippery slope when we keep ourselves entirely blind towards
what happened to the Buddhas of Bamiyan. I was a teenager back in 2001. When I
watched the event in TV, I had the feeling that something was terribly wrong.
When art is aimed for extremist agendas, the horror of destruction is
transformed into the destruction of sensibilities. Fourteen years later, when I
read the news of illicit smuggling from out of Syria, I consider it an
advantage over the past.
Here is a report on smuggling artifacts
from Syria: “Syria
conflict: The illicit art trade that is a major source of income for today's
terror groups is nothing new”
