‘Our god was locked in a US museum’: the heritage hunters bringing home Nepal’s lost treasures
Thousands of ancient artefacts have been taken out of the country. These Nepalese citizens are determined to get them back.
Flicking through a newspaper in 2020, Sanjay Adhikari read a story that changed the direction of his life – a Nepalese statue of gods Laxmi and Narayan, was on display at the Dallas Museum of Art. “I could not sleep. Our god was locked inside a museum in the US,” he says.
Adhikari, from Kathmandu, spoke to conservationists, activists, journalists and museum curators, and launched a campaign to see the 10th-century statue returned to Nepal.
Sanjay Adhikari in front of the Laxmi Narayan Temple in Lalitpur. Adhikari helped recover the temple’s main statue of the god and goddess from the US