Bihar chief minister Samrat Choudhary has written to Union culture and tourism minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, seeking the repatriation of the celebrated Sultanganj Buddha, a 2.3-metre tall copper statue depicting Gautama Buddha, dating from the Gupta-Pala transitional period (500-700 AD), currently housed at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery in the United Kingdom.
Choudhary argued that the return of the culturally significant heritage became an important global instrument for promoting cultural justice, international cooperation and responsible stewardship of the past. Citing the statue’s exceptional archaeological, historical, artistic, metallurgical, religious and cultural significance, Choudhary requested the ministry to initiate administrative procedures and diplomatic engagement with the authorities in the UK for the sculpture’s return. Its repatriation, he wrote, would restore an irreplaceable component of India’s heritage and reunite one of the country’s most significant Buddhist masterpieces with its original archaeological and sacred landscape.
In a letter dated August 11, seen by the Hindustan Times on Tuesday, Choudhary urged the ministry of culture to initiate procedures to bring back the sculpture, calling it one of the most remarkable surviving examples of India’s early medieval Buddhist heritage. EB Harris, resident engineer of the East Indian Railway, unearthed the sculpture during excavations near Sultanganj station in Bhagalpur district in 1861-62. Because of Bihar’s own standing in Buddhism, he said the state’s request for repatriation of the celebrated Sultanganj Buddha carried weight beyond the statue’s artistic merit.
Harris subsequently transported the statue to England, where it became the foundation object of the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery and has since held a position of prominence in its collections, according to the letter. Bringing back the Buddha, he said, would reaffirm its enduring association with Bihar’s Buddhist heritage and strengthen cultural ties between India and the UK. Rajesh Shukla, professor and head of the department of history at Patna’s College of Commerce, said that apart from the Mauryan Kings in the 3rd to 4th century and the Pala rulers during the 8th to 12th century AD, many artistic statues belonging to the Buddhist religion were found in various parts of Bihar. “The underlying point of study is that in spite of outside onslaught on this region these valuable cultural artefacts survived to the present times,” he added. “The religion’s founder, Siddhartha Gautama, attained enlightenment at Bodh Gaya in Bihar, making the state home to one of the faith’s most sacred sites and a major pilgrimage destination for Buddhists worldwide,” Shukla said.
