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)
(Detailed label of Meditating Buddha inside the Chicago Museum. Photo by the author: Sep. 2026)
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)
