REVIEW OF PASCAL BOYER’S BOOK ‘ RELIGION EXPLAINED’

                                                                             

REVIEW OF PASCAL BOYER’S BOOK ‘ RELIGION EXPLAINED’ : THE MIND BEHIND RELIGIOUS BELIEF

Pascal Boyer’s Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought, published in 2001, is an influential contribution to the cognitive study of religion. Drawing upon anthropology, cognitive science, evolutionary psychology and linguistics, Boyer attempts to answer a fundamental question: why do human beings across different societies and historical periods develop beliefs in gods, spirits, ancestors, invisible powers and life after death?

Boyer’s approach is important because he does not begin by asking whether religious beliefs are true or false. Instead, he asks how such beliefs originate in the human mind, why they appear in remarkably different cultures, and why they are transmitted from one generation to another. He seeks to understand religion as a natural phenomenon that can be investigated through the ordinary mechanisms of human thought.

The book’s principal argument is that religion does not necessarily require a special mental faculty, a unique spiritual instinct or an inexplicable departure from human reasoning. Religious ideas emerge, Boyer proposes, from the interaction of cognitive processes that already help human beings understand the physical world, interpret other people’s intentions, remember unusual events and make sense of their social relationships.

This is both the strength of his argument and the source of its limitations. Boyer offers a persuasive account of some of the mental processes that make religious ideas possible and memorable. Whether those processes can explain religion in its entirety is a much more difficult question.

 Religion As a Product of Ordinary Mental Processes

One of Boyer’s most important propositions is that the human mind is naturally equipped to generate and entertain ideas that may eventually acquire religious significance. People do not need to abandon ordinary thinking to imagine supernatural beings. They employ familiar mental capacities in unfamiliar combinations.

Human beings instinctively look for causes behind events. They recognise agents, infer intentions, distinguish living things from inanimate objects and seek explanations for what they observe. These capacities are essential to survival. They help us recognise danger, anticipate behaviour and understand the world around us.

Yet the same capacities can also encourage us to attribute agency to things that cannot be observed directly. A person may imagine that a departed ancestor continues to watch over the family, that a deity knows the intentions of human beings, or that an invisible power has influenced an unexpected event. The underlying mental operations are not wholly different from those employed in ordinary social reasoning.

Boyer therefore challenges the simplistic proposition that religion exists merely because people cannot explain natural phenomena. Ignorance may sometimes encourage supernatural explanations, but it cannot by itself explain the extraordinary diversity, persistence and emotional force of religious beliefs.

Nor does he accept that religion is simply a psychological refuge created to overcome fear, or an institution deliberately invented to preserve social order. These explanations may illuminate particular aspects of religion, but Boyer argues that they fail to account adequately for the specific forms religious ideas assume.

His alternative is to investigate the mental mechanisms through which certain representations become plausible, memorable and transmissible.

 Why Supernatural Ideas Are Memorable

A central feature of Boyer’s theory is that religious concepts frequently combine familiar properties with a limited number of violations of ordinary expectations. Such ideas are sufficiently unusual to attract attention, yet sufficiently familiar to remain understandable.

Consider the idea of a spirit that can pass through a wall but can also remember a promise, recognise a person and respond to human conduct. The spirit violates an ordinary expectation about physical objects, but retains familiar mental characteristics associated with human beings.

Boyer argues that concepts of this kind can be particularly memorable because they challenge one assumption without destroying the others through which we understand the world. An entirely incomprehensible object would be difficult to imagine and discuss. A familiar person, by contrast, would attract little attention. A supernatural agent occupies an intriguing middle ground.

This helps explain why religious traditions across cultures contain invisible beings, ancestors who remain involved in human affairs, deities who possess extraordinary knowledge and supernatural agents who intervene in everyday life.

The significance of this argument lies in its attempt to explain not merely why religious ideas arise, but why some ideas prove more successful than others in collective memory. Religious concepts are not transmitted simply because somebody invents them. They survive because they can be understood, recalled, communicated and incorporated into existing patterns of thought.

Boyer’s argument does not mean that every religion follows an identical psychological formula. Cultural traditions differ considerably. His claim is that certain recurring features of human cognition influence which religious representations are likely to emerge and persist.

 Religion, Evolution And the Human Condition

Boyer places these cognitive processes within an evolutionary framework. Human beings developed mental capacities that enabled them to navigate a complicated physical and social environment. Those capacities did not necessarily evolve for the purpose of producing religion.

Religious thought, in his account, can arise as a consequence of the way these capacities interact. The ability to infer intentions, for instance, is indispensable in human relationships. The tendency to identify agents and seek causes is similarly useful. Yet such tendencies may also lead people to infer the presence of invisible agents or intentional forces.

Religion, therefore, need not be understood as a separate adaptation designed specifically to make people religious. It may emerge from cognitive capacities that serve other purposes.

This is an important distinction. To explain the mental processes that make religious belief possible is not the same as demonstrating that religion itself evolved for a particular biological purpose. Boyer’s argument is strongest when it identifies recurring cognitive mechanisms and more debatable when an evolutionary explanation is treated as sufficient to account for the entire historical phenomenon.

His approach nevertheless encourages an interdisciplinary study of religion. It brings anthropology into conversation with psychology, linguistics and evolutionary biology, moving the discussion beyond explanations based exclusively on theology, social utility or philosophical speculation.

 The Merits of Boyer’s Book

The first major merit of Religion Explained is its refusal to reduce religion to a single motive. Religion may provide consolation, establish social relationships, explain suffering or legitimise authority. Yet none of these functions, taken separately, explains why human beings develop particular conceptions of gods, spirits, ancestors and the afterlife.

Boyer replaces these broad generalisations with a more detailed investigation of how religious ideas are formed and transmitted. This makes his argument intellectually stimulating even for readers who disagree with his conclusions.

The second merit is his comparative approach. By drawing upon diverse cultural traditions, he demonstrates that religious thought cannot be understood exclusively through the experience of Christianity or any other single organised religion. Familiar beliefs may appear perfectly natural to their adherents, whereas unfamiliar beliefs elsewhere may seem extraordinary. Comparative anthropology challenges this double standard and encourages a more consistent examination of human religious behaviour.

Thirdly, Boyer helps distinguish the psychological origins of belief from the truth of its object. Understanding why somebody believes in an invisible being does not, by itself, establish whether that being exists. Similarly, explaining the mental conditions that make an idea plausible does not automatically disprove it.

This distinction is essential to intellectual honesty. A cognitive explanation of religious belief may challenge the assumption that belief requires supernatural intervention in the mind, but it cannot settle every metaphysical question concerning the existence of God or the nature of consciousness.

Fourthly, the book invites readers to examine their own assumptions. Religious beliefs may feel self evident to those who inherit them, just as the beliefs of another community may appear irrational. Boyer asks us to consider how much of what seems self evident is shaped by ordinary mental processes and cultural transmission.

Finally, his work is valuable because it makes religion a legitimate subject of scientific investigation without requiring the investigator either to defend faith or to ridicule it. The book’s ambition is considerable, and its explanatory framework remains an important contribution to the cognitive study of religion.

 The Shortcomings of Boyer’s Explanation

The principal weakness of the book lies in the gap between its ambitious title and the scope of its explanation. Boyer offers an account of the cognitive mechanisms involved in religious thought. Religion, however, is much more than a collection of mental representations.

It includes ritual, music, architecture, sacred landscapes, pilgrimage, moral obligations, institutions, communal memory, philosophical speculation and experiences that believers interpret as transformative or sacred. These dimensions cannot all be explained simply by showing why certain supernatural concepts are memorable.

A second limitation concerns lived religious experience. A person who participates in a ritual may experience grief, gratitude, surrender, wonder or a profound sense of connection with something greater than the individual self. A cognitive account may illuminate the mental processes involved, but it does not necessarily capture the subjective significance of that experience.

To explain the processes associated with an experience is not necessarily to explain the experience in its entirety. The distinction is particularly important when considering meditation, contemplative practice and mystical traditions that place less emphasis on belief in supernatural agents than on disciplined attention, self inquiry or the transformation of consciousness.

A third shortcoming is the relative difficulty of explaining religious institutions and historical change through cognition alone. Religious traditions are shaped by political authority, economic circumstances, social conflict, literary transmission, conquest, patronage and the interpretation of inherited texts. These forces determine which ideas are promoted, which practices are preserved and which beliefs become orthodox.

Cognitive mechanisms may help explain why some representations spread more readily than others, but they do not independently explain why a particular religious institution acquires authority or why one interpretation triumphs over its rivals.

There is also a methodological caution. Demonstrating that a mental mechanism could produce a particular religious belief does not prove that the mechanism was the actual historical cause of that belief. A plausible explanation must be distinguished from an established historical account. The evolutionary framework is useful, but individual explanations still require evidence.

Finally, Boyer’s naturalistic approach does not fully resolve the philosophical question of whether the existence of a cognitive explanation has any bearing on the truth of religious claims. Explaining individual beliefs does not necessarily amount to explaining religion as a collective and historical phenomenon.

These shortcomings do not invalidate Boyer’s contribution. They indicate that his theory should be regarded as one explanatory approach rather than a comprehensive account of religion.

6. Does Explaining Religion Diminish Its Significance?

The most important question raised by Boyer’s book is whether explaining the origins of religious belief diminishes its significance.

The answer depends on what is meant by significance. If religion is understood exclusively as a collection of supernatural propositions, then a cognitive explanation may substantially alter how those propositions are understood. If religion is also understood as a historical inheritance, a moral vocabulary, an artistic tradition, a communal bond or a discipline of inner transformation, the explanation remains incomplete.

A poem can be examined through the psychology of its author, the structure of its language and the processes through which it affects the reader. Yet these explanations do not exhaust its literary meaning. Similarly, explaining the cognitive foundations of religious thought does not automatically exhaust the meanings people discover in religious texts, symbols and practices.

The same caution applies to atheism. Identifying the psychological mechanisms through which people become religious does not establish that religious belief is irrational in every instance. Equally, the emotional depth or cultural antiquity of a belief does not establish its truth. Both questions require independent examination.

Boyer’s work is most useful when it encourages us to separate these questions rather than collapse them into a single verdict.

CONCLUSION

Pascal Boyer’s Religion Explained is an ambitious and stimulating attempt to understand religious thought through the workings of the human mind. Its greatest contribution is the argument that supernatural beliefs need not originate in a mysterious faculty reserved for religion. They can emerge through ordinary cognitive processes that shape human understanding, memory and social interaction.

Its weakness is that an explanation of the mental mechanisms behind religious representations cannot, by itself, account for the full complexity of religious history, ritual, philosophy, institutional power and lived experience.

The book is therefore more convincing as an explanation of why certain religious ideas arise and endure than as a complete explanation of religion itself.

Boyer invites us to examine religion without assuming its supernatural truth, but intellectual rigour also requires us not to assume that a naturalistic explanation has disproved that truth. The origin of a belief, the reasons for its persistence and the validity of what it asserts are distinct questions.

Ultimately, the value of Religion Explained lies not in closing the debate about religion but in making it more precise. It reminds us that understanding why human beings believe something is an essential part of understanding religion, even if it is not the final word on what religion means.

(Avtar Mota)

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WHEN A MAHARAJA DONATES HIS SUMMER PALACE TO STORE KASHMIR’S SCATTERED CIVILISATIONAL HERITAGE

                                          

                 ( Photo: Maharaja Pratap Singh )

WHEN A MAHARAJA DONATES HIS SUMMER PALACE TO STORE KASHMIR’S SCATTERED CIVILISATIONAL HERITAGE 

The progressive Dogra rulers of Jammu and Kashmir deserve recognition for their contribution to the preservation of Kashmir’s civilisational heritage and the development of modern institutions. Maharaja Ranbir Singh, Maharaja Pratap Singh and Maharaja Hari Singh promoted education, strengthened judicial administration, expanded healthcare, improved roads and communications, and encouraged scholarship, printing and public works. Their vision extended beyond governance and infrastructure to the protection of the region’s historical inheritance. At a time when the remains of  temple ruins  and Buddhist viharas, together with sculptures, bronzes, terracotta objects and other antiquities, lay scattered across Kashmir, their collection and preservation acquired particular significance. Maharaja Pratap Singh’s decision to build a museum and provide his own summer palace at Lal Mandi, Srinagar, for the establishment of the Sri Pratap Singh Museum gave these precious remnants a common home. 

The SPS Museum ranks amongst the earliest museums established in India. The proposal for its establishment was made in 1889, when a memorandum was submitted to Maharaja Pratap Singh by his younger brother, Raja Amar Singh, and a European scholar, Captain S. H. Godmerry, suggesting the creation of a museum at Srinagar to house antiquities from Jammu, Kashmir, Baltistan and Gilgit.

 In the summer of 1892, Aurel Stein and Pandit Govind Kaul conducted an antiquarian tour across Kashmir and collected sculptures and rock carvings for the museum.  The major addition came in 1913, after the reorganisation of the Archaeological Department under Rai Bahadur Daya Ram Sahni, when antiquities excavated at Panderenthan, Parihaspora and Avantipura were added to the museum.

This initiative reflected an appreciation of history and art, helping safeguard Kashmir’s material heritage for scholarly study, public understanding and future generations.

( Avtar Mota )

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WHY THE SPS MUSEUM NEEDS DR PRATAPADITYA PAL OR AN EQUALLY QUALIFIED SCHOLAR ?

KASHMIR’S NEGLECTED ARTISTIC HERITAGE: WHY THE SPS MUSEUM NEEDS DR PRATAPADITYA PAL OR AN EQUALLY QUALIFIED SCHOLAR 

                                                                  

                         ( Dr Pratipaditya Pal )

The progressive Dogra rulers of Jammu and Kashmir, particularly Maharaja Ranbir Singh, Maharaja Pratap Singh and Maharaja Hari Singh, introduced a series of administrative, educational, medical and infrastructural measures that helped transform the princely State from a largely traditional society into a more organised modern polity. They established and expanded courts of law, hospitals, schools, technical institutions and colleges, while promoting roads, bridges, public buildings, communications and industrial enterprises. They encouraged the development of libraries, archives, printing presses and cultural institutions, thereby contributing to the preservation and dissemination of knowledge. The donation of a palace at Lal Mandi in Srinagar for the establishment of the Sri Pratap Singh Museum (SPS Museum) was another significant expression of this public patronage. It reflected an understanding that the State's artistic and archaeological heritage deserved an institution where its treasures could be preserved, studied and displayed for posterity. Their contribution extended beyond buildings and public works. Under Maharaja Ranbir Singh, the State strengthened its judicial administration, supported traditional scholarship, encouraged the study of Sanskrit, Persian and Arabic, and established institutions for the preservation and transmission of classical learning. The Ranbir Printing Press, established in the nineteenth century, helped advance printing and official publication, while the development of the State Gazette strengthened administrative communication.

During Maharaja Pratap Singh’s reign, the expansion of road networks, including the Jhelum Valley Road and the Banihal Cart Road, improved communications with the outside world. Railway connectivity through Jammu and Sialkot, the growth of the silk industry, improvements in urban sanitation and the expansion of medical facilities marked important developments. The establishment of Shri Pratap College in Srinagar in 1905 and Prince of Wales College in Jammu in 1906 gave higher education a firmer institutional foundation. Maharaja Hari Singh continued the process of institutional reform. His measures included compulsory primary education, the opening of State temples to historically excluded communities in 1932, the establishment of the Praja Sabha in 1934 and the introduction of the Constitution Act in 1939. The State Subject notifications of 1927 also sought to regulate access to government employment and immovable property. These measures were significant, although the extent of their implementation and the limits of political representation must be considered in their historical context.

The Dogra legacy also included initiatives in irrigation, agriculture, horticulture, electricity generation, public health and the development of administrative records. The growth of telegraph and postal communications, the expansion of government departments and the development of public institutions brought distant parts of the State into closer administrative contact. Progress was uneven, and many people continued to face poverty, educational deprivation and restrictions on political participation. Nevertheless, the institutional changes of this period helped shape the foundations of modern administration in Jammu and Kashmir.

The SPS Museum ranks amongst the earliest museums established in India. The proposal for its establishment was made in 1889, when a memorandum was submitted to Maharaja Pratap Singh by his younger brother, Raja Amar Singh, and a European scholar, Captain S. H. Godmerry, suggesting the creation of a museum at Srinagar to house antiquities from Jammu, Kashmir, Baltistan and Gilgit. The Maharaja accepted the proposal and allotted his summer guest house at Lal Mandi, on the left bank of the Jhelum, for the purpose. The establishment was supervised by Sir John Marshall, Director General of the Archaeological Survey of India. The first President was the State Accountant General, Mr Blerjee, who prepared the first catalogue of coins. The museum opened to the public in 1898, with its initial collection drawn from the palace Toshkhana:  shawls, arms and armour, and decorative household items.

The first nucleus of stone sculptures came later. In the summer of 1892, Aurel Stein and Pandit Govind Kaul conducted an antiquarian tour across Kashmir and collected sculptures and rock carvings. The major addition came in 1913, after the reorganisation of the Archaeological Department under Rai Bahadur Daya Ram Sahni, when antiquities excavated at Panderenthan, Parihaspora and Avantipura were added.

Today, the museum holds over 80,000 objects, including stone sculptures of Hindu deities such as Vishnu, Shiva, Ardhanarishvara and the eighth-century Durga from Tengpora repatriated from Germany in 2015, along with Buddhist images of Buddha and Tara and Jain Tirthankaras, a notable collection of Kashmiri bronzes from the eighth to twelfth centuries, terracottas and stucco from Burzahom, Harwan and Semthan, more than 70,000 coins ranging from punch-marked and Kushana to Sultanate and Dogra issues, Persian and Sanskrit manuscripts such as the seventeenth-century Qur'an bearing Aurangzeb's seal, Basohli and Kangra miniatures, Jamawar, Kani Tosa and Pashmina shawls, and arms and armour from the Toshkhana.

The museum's history has also had a darker dimension: loss by theft. The first reported theft took place in 1917, when sixty-eight objects, including jamawars and Pashmina robes, were stolen. In 1973, six antiquities- five bronzes and one wooden image, including Standing Buddha, Tara, a Jain figure and Ardhanarishvara disappeared.  In 2003, the seventeenth-century Qur'an manuscript bearing  Aurangzeb's seal went missing.  In all, about twenty-eight rare objects and eighty-four coins have been reported missing, and most remain untraceable.

Poor And Perfunctory Labelling and Cataloguing 

The poor aspect of the presentation of Kashmir’s extraordinary artistic heritage in the newly created premises of the Shri Pratap Singh (SPS) Museum, Srinagar, is the inadequate cataloguing, identification and labelling of its priceless treasures. The museum houses an exceptional collection of stone sculptures, bronzes, architectural fragments and other antiquities that bear witness to centuries of artistic excellence, religious imagination and intellectual achievement. Yet the information accompanying many objects does not adequately communicate their historical context, iconographic significance, artistic merit or place in the wider history of Indian and Himalayan art.

A visitor may stand before a magnificent sculpture of Shiva, Vishnu, Buddha or a goddess and leave knowing little more than the deity's name and an approximate date. What distinguishes the sculpture? Which attributes establish its identification? What does its workmanship reveal about the artistic traditions of ancient Kashmir? How does it compare with similar works preserved elsewhere? These are questions that a serious museum must help visitors answer.

Poor labelling is not a minor curatorial deficiency. It diminishes the educational value of the collection, deprives students and researchers of useful information, and prevents ordinary visitors from appreciating the sophistication of Kashmir's artistic inheritance. Inadequate cataloguing can also perpetuate mistaken identifications, obscure an object's provenance and complicate future conservation or research. A museum may possess extraordinary antiquities yet fail to communicate their importance to the public. The irony is painful: the treasures survive, but much of their story remains untold.

The devastating floods of September 2014 added to the difficulties faced by the SPS Museum, damaging cultural property and disrupting conservation work. Contemporary reporting documented the damage and the challenges surrounding the restoration and reopening of the institution. In the aftermath, the presentation of the collection appears, in the author's assessment, to have proceeded without the comprehensive scholarly documentation and interpretation that such a remarkable institution requires. Earlier scholars and specialists, including J. L. Bhan and others who worked on Kashmir's antiquities, had made valuable contributions to their identification and documentation. Their efforts deserve recognition. It is difficult not to wonder whether some of that painstaking work was lost, dispersed or rendered inaccessible during the disruption caused by the floods and the subsequent shifting and reorganisation of the collections.

The impression conveyed by parts of the present display is that the museum's physical reopening and its scholarly preparation have not advanced together. Labels that offer only perfunctory descriptions cannot do justice to objects of such historical importance. If a museum opens its doors without adequately explaining its collection, the public gains access to the objects but not necessarily to the knowledge that gives them meaning. The SPS Museum must therefore undertake a systematic review of its collection records, identifications, dates, provenance and display labels. Earlier documentation should be recovered wherever possible, questionable identifications reassessed, and the findings of established scholarship incorporated into a reliable catalogue.

A museum is not simply a building in which antiquities are displayed behind glass. It is an institution that establishes what an object is, explains how its identity has been determined, records what is known about its history and communicates why it matters. Kashmir deserves an SPS Museum that fulfils all these responsibilities.

Dr Pratapaditya Pal, John Siudmak, Benoy K. Behl and Other Scholars: The Expertise Kashmir Needs

The question of scholarly intervention brings us to Dr Pratapaditya Pal, one of the internationally recognised scholars of Indian and Himalayan art. Born in Bengal in 1935, Pal studied ancient Indian history and culture at the University of Calcutta before pursuing doctoral research at Calcutta and Cambridge. His professional career included curatorial responsibilities at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, as well as work with the Art Institute of Chicago. He served as general editor of Marg, the influential journal of Indian art and culture, from 1993 to 2012, and received the Padma Shri in 2009.

Pal's book ‘Bronzes of Kashmir’, published in 1975, is directly relevant to the study of Kashmiri metal sculpture. His later volume ‘The Arts of Kashmir’, published in 2007, presents a wider view of the region's artistic heritage, including sculpture, architecture, painting, calligraphy and decorative arts. These works demonstrate the importance of examining Kashmir's antiquities as products of a sophisticated artistic civilisation rather than as isolated religious images. His scholarship is particularly relevant to the identification of bronzes, the interpretation of iconography, comparative stylistic analysis and the relationship between Kashmiri art and wider Indian and Himalayan traditions. His international museum experience also makes his perspective valuable in considering how collections should be documented, researched and presented to the public.  Dr Pal has written over 70 books on Asian art, whose titles include Art of the Himalayas: Treasures from Nepal and Tibet (1992) and The Peaceful Liberators: Jain Art from India (1994).

Another scholar deserving serious consideration is John Siudmak, whose substantial study ‘The Hindu-Buddhist Sculpture of Ancient Kashmir and Its Influences (2013)’ examines ancient Kashmiri sculpture, drawing extensively on material preserved in the SPS Museum and at sites throughout Kashmir. His research is particularly pertinent to the museum's stone sculptures and their stylistic and iconographic relationships with other artistic traditions.

Benoy K. Behl, the Indian art historian, photographer and documentary filmmaker, has undertaken extensive work on Buddhist art, ancient murals, sculpture and the wider artistic heritage of India and Asia. His photographic documentation and interpretation of historic art offer a valuable perspective on the recording and public presentation of cultural heritage. His expertise could complement the work of scholars specialising more narrowly in Kashmiri sculpture and bronzes. Other specialists whose relevant expertise could be considered include Robert Linrothe, known for research on Buddhist art and Himalayan visual culture; Christian Luczanits, whose scholarship focuses on Himalayan Buddhist art and sculpture; and Mallica Kumbera Landrus, whose museum-curatorial experience encompasses Indian, Himalayan and Southeast Asian art.

These scholars do not have identical specialisations, nor should they be treated as interchangeable for every task. Their respective qualifications, nevertheless, together represent areas of scholarship that could contribute to a serious programme of research, cataloguing, conservation and interpretation.

The idea is not to confer an honorary title or invite a distinguished scholar for a ceremonial visit. It is to seek practical assistance in establishing a dependable scholarly record of the museum's collections. Such work should include detailed catalogue entries, accurate identifications, appropriate dating, photographic documentation, provenance research, references to published scholarship and informative display labels. Where evidence is incomplete, uncertainty should be acknowledged rather than concealed behind an apparently definitive description. A collaborative initiative would allow the museum to benefit from different areas of expertise while ensuring that its work remains grounded in the specific character of Kashmir's artistic heritage.

From Repository to Institution of Learning: A Call for Action

                                                                         

 

 

        ( Precious and exquisite three-faced Shiva from Kashmir )

                                                                      

          ( A rare  Goddess Kali stone image from Kashmir )

   ( Above: Very casual labelling and cataloguing at SPS Museum, Srinagar. Photos by the author, 2024)

The importance of specialist knowledge is illustrated by the recovery of a tenth-century sculpture of Goddess Durga as Mahishasuramardini, stolen in 1990 from a temple at Tengpora in Pulwama district and subsequently identified in Germany's Linden Museum in Stuttgart. The sculpture was formally handed back to India by German Chancellor Angela Merkel to Prime Minister Narendra Modi in October 2015. Pal's recognition of the sculpture and New Jersey-based Rakesh Kaul's efforts helped advance the recovery effort, alongside the efforts of the Indian and German authorities. This episode demonstrates that art-historical expertise can have consequences beyond academic research. Correct identification and sound documentation may help establish an object's cultural origin, support provenance investigations and contribute to the recovery of cultural property. The episode was a collective achievement, but it illustrates why specialist knowledge matters.

The SPS Museum should accordingly begin with an audit of its existing catalogues, labels and archival records. Earlier documentation, including the work of Prof.J.L. Bhan and other specialists, should be traced and reconciled with present records. Objects requiring reassessment should be identified, and qualified experts should be invited to review the relevant collections. The resulting catalogue should be preserved in a durable digital format and made accessible to researchers, students and the public.

                                                                    

                                                                                      

     (Detailed label of Goddess Sharda at the MET Museum, New York. Photo by the author: 2019)

The museum must also improve the way it communicates with visitors. A label should explain more than an object's name. It should briefly describe the features supporting its identification, indicate what is known about its date and origin, highlight distinctive artistic characteristics and explain its historical significance. If there is a bronze sculpture of a Nartaki, it needs to be clarified when and how this tradition arrived in Kashmir.  Was there a Devdasi culture or temple dancers in Kashmir? The museum can't label it simply as A Dancing female, which is otherwise understood even with a casual look at the sculpture. Comparative photographs, well-designed displays and digital resources could further enhance the experience.

Such work requires institutional planning, adequate resources and sustained cooperation between museum authorities, conservators, archivists and scholars. It should not depend on a single exhibition or a one-time intervention. Cataloguing and interpretation are continuing responsibilities, and new research should be incorporated as knowledge develops. Kashmir's artistic heritage is not a peripheral chapter in the history of the Indian subcontinent. Its sculptures, bronzes, architectural remains, paintings and decorative arts testify to centuries of artistic achievement and intellectual exchange. They deserve the same seriousness of scholarly attention that leading museums elsewhere devote to their most important collections.

The purpose must be to transform the museum from a repository of priceless antiquities into a living institution of learning, research and public understanding. Its treasures already exist. What is urgently needed is the scholarly care to let them speak with clarity and authority to future generations.

 

(Avtar Mota)

 

CHINAR SHADE by Autarmota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 India License.

Based on a work at http:\\autarmota.blogspot.com\.

AN EXCERPT FROM MY SHORT STORY UNDER COMPLETION

                                          

THE SOCIAL WORKER 

Excerpts from my Short story ' The Social Worker "  Under completion.

" When Sham Rani died, her family was overwhelmed with grief. Relatives arrived, and rituals had to be arranged. Everyone was grieving, but grief does not organise itself. Roshan Lal took charge. A priest, rice, flour, a tin of  P Mark mustard oil, a gas cylinder, 10kg potatoes, pulses, 100 bottles of packaged water (250 ml) , 10 litres of Amul Tetra Pak milk and other necessities arrived. The cremation arrangements were completed. Every ritual was performed carefully.  Usha Ji, Sham Rani's daughter in law felt grateful and obliged for  Roshan Lal's timely support. Many elderly relatives were deeply moved.

"This man has a noble soul," someone said.

"May he be present when my time comes," another replied.

Roshan Lal heard such words often. He never corrected them. Perhaps because he believed them. Perhaps because he needed them. Among those who developed the greatest faith in him was Chanda Jigir.  Before exile, she had known Bal Ji, her family priest in Kashmir. Bal Ji had never demanded anything. He performed rituals quietly and accepted whatever people offered. For Chanda Jigir, he represented trust without possession. After Bal Ji was shot dead by terrorists in the 1990s, she lost not only a priest but a connection to a world that had vanished. When she saw Roshan Lal performing Sham Rani's final rites, she believed she had found something similar. She was not looking for a man. She was looking for certainty. That is the weakness of human beings. We often do not fall in love with people themselves. We fall in love with what they appear to protect us from. Chanda Jigir feared a lonely death. She feared that her children would perform her last rites  mechanically.She feared that after leaving this world, even her farewell would reveal how alone she had become.

 

Chanda Jigir had saved Rs 25,000 from her J&K Bank family pension, though Gasha Ji, her son, kept the ATM card in his purse, withdrawing Rs 15,000 each month, handing her Rs 3,000 and keeping the rest for his expenses. He was not a villain, just adding this 12000 every month to his income.   And from this3,000 rupees, she built a tense, and trembling world: birthday gifts for her daughter's grandchildren wrapped in newspaper with shaking hands, a strip of BP tablets cut day by day to last longer, an antacid  bottle every month,  a strip of Supradyn multivitamin  tablets that Dr Sarvanand had prescribed her in Kashmir.From this 3000 rupees, she had to also to spend on the  Shraddha  expenses of   her dead parents, her late husband, and  his parents.  While her son held the ATM card, Chanda Jigir  held the meaning, counting each rupee like a breath, stitching her old clothes , walking instead of an auto, saving not money but dignity, till that handkerchief-wrapped Rs 25,000 became her silent rebellion against dependence itself.

So she prepared a bag for Roshan Lal. Inside were two Kashmiri shawls, 25000 rupees in five hundred rupee notes, coins, Gangajal, incense sticks, sandalwood pieces and a white shroud. She  decided to keep the bag with Roshan Lal who lived close to late Sham Rani's house in Keertan Colony . Everything was arranged carefully. She believed she was preparing for death. In reality, she was preparing for the collapse of an illusion.The first crack appeared when she visited Usha Ji. Shw walked to Keerthana colony with the bag and entered late  Sham Rani's house . Sham Rani was her husband 's younger sister 

"Is Roshan Lal Ji well? I wanted to see him. ", she asked.

Usha Ji's expression changed."Do not mention his name here." 

Chanda Jigir was shocked." 

........... This story is under completion .

 

( Avtar Mota )

CHINAR SHADE by Autarmota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 India License.
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ALBERT CAMUS WROTE THIS IN HIS PRIVATE DIARY ,NOW PUBLISHED BY HIS DAUGHTER

                                       

                                    

Camus wrote it in his diary, in 1959, one year before his death ( Book : Carnets III, page.304)

"Rereading the Upanishads. A strange peace."

Only seven words. He had written books to explain the world. At the end he needs seven words. He says rereading. Not reading. He had met them before, when he was twenty, hungry for absolutes. He was fifty now, hungry for something else - not truth, but rest. And a book waits for you to be old enough to read it properly.

What had he lived through? He had believed in justice and seen justice become terror. He had believed in reason and seen reason become an excuse for murder. He had believed in fraternity and watched his own city, Algiers, his own friends, divide into those who kill and those who justify killing. He had asked the world for meaning, and the world, as always, remained silent.

For twenty years he had called that silence the absurd, and he had made of it an ethic. Hold fast. Do not lie. Do not kill. Love the light, even if the light does not love you. It is a noble ethic. It is also exhausting. And then, in a quiet room, he opens the Upanishads again. Not as a scholar. As a man who is tired.

The Upanishads do not argue with him. They do not say, Camus, you were wrong. They say something softer, and more devastating: you were looking in the right direction, but you thought silence was emptiness.

The sages in the forest say: that which makes you aware of the wound is not wounded. That which sees change does not change. You are not the man who is betrayed and denounced and alone. You are the seeing. He does not become a Hindu. He does not become a believer. He remains what he was: a man without appeal. Only now he knows that to live without appeal does not mean to live without grace.

Rereading the Upanishads. A strange peace.

He had to reread to remember what his heart had always known, that the soul, when it finally stops arguing with existence, does not fall. It rests.

And he wrote it down, as one writes down the date of a return.

( Avtar Mota )

CHINAR SHADE by Autarmota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 India License.

Based on a work at http:\\autarmota.blogspot.com\.

MY NEW BOOK : "KASHMIR : LORE, LIES AND LAMENT" AVAILABLE ON AMAZON WORLDWIDE

                                                                               

KASHMIR: LORE, LIES AND LAMENT

by Avtar Mota

( 22 EVOCATIVE, RESEARCH-BASED AND ENGROSSING ESSAYS ON KASHMIR WITH PHOTOGRAPHS )

Published in October 2026

Available on Amazon worldwide...

IN INDIA ( Paperback And Hardcover)

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OVERSEAS ( Paperback And Hardcover )

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(4) Australia.

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This is how Amazon introduces the book: 'KASHMIR: LORE, LIES AND LAMENT'

"What does it mean to inherit a civilisation, and what happens when its wisdom is forgotten and its cultural treasures neglected, and its people torn away from their ancestral homeland? In Kashmir: Lore, Lies and Lament, Avtar Mota explores these compelling questions through a remarkable collection of essays that penetrate the many layers of Kashmir’s historical memory, philosophical achievement, literary genius, social diversity and human suffering. Moving beyond the familiar confines of political narratives, the author presents Kashmir as a civilisation of extraordinary intellectual depth, spiritual inquiry and cultural richness, while confronting the distortions, omissions and losses that have shaped its modern experience. The book’s title captures its essential spirit: lore represents the accumulated wisdom and inherited memories of generations; lies challenge the distortions and convenient interpretations through which history is sometimes presented; and lament expresses the grief of displacement, cultural neglect and the disappearance of a cherished world. Together, these themes transform the volume into an engaging exploration of what Kashmir has inherited, what it risks forgetting and what must be preserved for posterity.

At the heart of this collection are essays on two towering figures of Kashmir’s intellectual heritage, Lal Ded and Abhinavagupta. Lal Ded emerges not merely as a celebrated mystic poet but as a profound spiritual thinker whose utterances must be understood in the philosophical context of Trika Shaivism and in relation to the wider questioning of religious formalism associated with the Bhakti tradition. Abhinavagupta’s non-dual vision invites readers to contemplate the relationship between the perceiver, perception and the universe, opening a window into the remarkable metaphysical sophistication of Kashmir’s philosophical traditions. The book also explores Buddhism in Kashmir, Tilakacharya, the Mahabharata’s ties to the region, and the historical connections along the Kashmir-Taxila axis. Its engagement with Samad Mir and his Akanandun celebrates the vitality of Kashmiri poetry and its intimate relationship with collective memory. Equally fascinating is the account of Kashmir's Parsis, including families associated with Srinagar’s Bund area, whose lives illuminate a distinctive strand of the valley’s social history. The anecdotes scattered through these explorations are among the book’s special attractions. Often humorous, ironic and brutally truthful, they capture the contradictions, pretensions and everyday absurdities of human behaviour, preserving a social world that formal histories rarely record with comparable immediacy.

The book’s emotional force becomes particularly evident in its examination of the 1990 displacement of Kashmiri Pandits and the continuing consequences of their separation from ancestral homes, family histories and familiar cultural landscapes. The loss of family photographs, the weakening of inherited connections and the pain of dispossession reveal how exile destroys not only material security but also the intimate foundations of memory and belonging. Mota also turns a critical eye towards the Shri Pratap Singh Museum in Srinagar, questioning the inadequacy of interpretative labelling and the failure to communicate the full historical and artistic significance of Kashmir’s priceless heritage. Combining philosophical reflection, literary appreciation, historical inquiry, cultural criticism, sharp humour and poignant recollection, Kashmir: Lore, Lies and Lament offers a multifaceted portrait of a region whose story cannot be reduced to conflict or political slogans. It is a valuable read for lovers of Kashmir, students of Indian philosophy, readers of Kashmiri literature, researchers of cultural history and members of the diaspora seeking a deeper connection with their inheritance."

( Avtar Mota )

CHINAR SHADE by Autarmota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 India License.
Based on a work at http://autarmota.blogspot.com\.