A 200-year old skull of a 19th-century Naga ancestor listed for auction in Britain has sparked outrage among politicians, activists, and academics. The activists said the remains symbolize the colonial violence in India and demanded it to be returned alongside at least 25 other remains.
“The human remains of any deceased person belongs to those people and their land,” wrote Neiphiu Rio, the chief minister of Nagaland, in a public letter demanding that it must be returned.
The remains, listed by private British auction house, Swan Fine Art, were later withdrawn from the auction following the outrage. The skull, attached to animal horns, had a starting bid of 2,100 pounds ($2,746) before its withdrawal.
The auction also included skulls from various other regions, such as Papua New Guinea, Borneo, and Solomon Islands. The skulls originating from Africa were from Benin, Congo-Brazzaville, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Nigeria.
Among the African skulls, two from Congo were positioned one on top of the other, with the auctioneers claiming them to be “purported to be mother and son”.
The auction house was hoping to sell it and other remains from Africa, Asia, and South America for around $180,000.
Dolly Kikon, a Naga anthropologist and member of Recover Restore and Decolonise (RRaD), an organization working to repatriate the Naga community’s ancestral remains from museums abroad, condemned the sale as unacceptable.
“Auctioning Indigenous human remains in the 21st century shows how descendants of colonisers enjoy impunity to perpetuate racism and colonial violence on communities,” Kikon told news agency AFP.
She questioned the lack of laws preventing the auction of stolen Indigenous human remains, given the existence of regulations against the trafficking of animals and birds.
Laura Van Broekhoven, director of Oxford’s Pitt Rivers Museum, which houses the largest Naga collection in the world, condemned the sale of such items as “completely unethical.”
Wati Aier, a Baptist priest who leads the Forum for Naga Reconciliation peace group, has called upon London to repatriate all the skulls to their native lands.
“Throughout the period of British rule, the Naga people were defined as ‘savages’ and ‘headhunters’, which are insulting tropes that continue to be perpetuated today,” he said. “These human remains symbolise the violence that the British colonial power unleashed on the Nagas.”
Additionally, the items sourced from private European collections in Belgium, Britain, Germany, and France, were listed alongside antiquarian books and taxidermy animals.
Among them was an early 18th-century “shrunken head” of the Jivaro people from Ecuador and Peru, once owned by Hugh Hefner and displayed in his Playboy Mansion. The Jivaro heads were expected to sell for up to 50,000 pounds ($65,400).