Lost and Found: Stolen Annapurna’s Idol Makes Way Back Home to Varanasi from Canada after 100 Years

An idol of Goddess Annapurna, stolen from Uttar Pradesh centuries back, was handed over by Union Culture Minister G Kishan Reddy to the Uttar Pradesh government on November 11. The idol, retrieved from Canada by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), will be ceremonially installed at the Kashi Vishwanath temple in Varanasi on Monday.

Reddy said that the Annapurna idol, stolen more than 100 years ago, is coming back to the land of India with the efforts of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He highlighted that more than 40 antiquities have been retrieved from foreign countries to India since 2014, while only 13 such items were retrieved prior to 2014. He also applauded the continuous efforts of the ASI and the Ministry of External Affairs in bringing such antiquities back to the country.

The ASI had received the idol of Goddess Annapurna on October 15. The stone idol measuring 17 x 9 x 4 cm had been stolen from Kashi in Uttar Pradesh and smuggled to Canada over a century ago.

PM Modi, in his radio programme ‘Mann Ki Baat’, had on November 29, 2020 announced the return of the idol from Canada. The 18th-century idol was in the University of Regina’s collection at its Mackenzie Art Gallery when it was handed over by the university to India’s High Commissioner to Canada last year.

Here’s the story of how the idol was found:

In 2019, Winnipeg-based artist Divya Mehra was invited to stage an exhibition at the Mackenzie Art Gallery, an Indian Express report said. While Mehra was researching the collection, one sculpture, holding a bowl of rice, thought to represent Lord Vishnu, struck her as female. She eventually found that the same sculpture had been stolen from an active temple in 1913 and acquired by MacKenzie.

As per the Indian Express report, Siddhartha V Shah, Curator of Indian and South Asian Art at Peabody Essex Museum, who was called for identifying the statue, confirmed that it was indeed of the goddess Annapurna, holding a bowl of kheer in one hand and a spoon in the other.

Mehra’s research of how the idol was stolen showed that MacKenzie had noticed the statue during a trip to India in 1913. A stranger had overheard McKenzie’s desire to have the statue, and stole it for him from a temple on the stone steps on the riverbank in Varanasi.

Mehra spoke to John Hampton, interim CEO at the MacKenzie Art Gallery, and requested that the statue be repatriated. Once the gallery agreed, the Indian High Commission in Ottawa and the Department of Canadian Heritage reached out and offered to assist with the repatriation. The idol’s return was delayed by almost a year because of Covid. The decision on its custody was taken after a thorough verification.

Since 1976, 55 ancient idols have been returned to India. Out of the 55 antiquities, 42 were returned after 2014. During Modi’s recent visit to the US, 157 artefacts, antiquities and figurines related to Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism were handed over by the American government to India.