The Ashmolean Museum has returned a 16th-century bronze murti of Thirumangai Alvar to the Government of India after conducting provenance research and coordinating with Indian authorities. The handover ceremony took place at the High Commission of India in London on March 3, 2026. Xa Sturgis and Mallica Kumbera Landrus attended the event.
In a statement released by the Ashmolean Museum, its director Xa Sturgis said the museum was pleased to return the important artefact to India and thanked Indian authorities and scholars for helping establish its provenance. He added that the museum and the University of Oxford remain committed to ethical collection practices and ongoing research into the origins and history of objects in their care.
A spokesperson for the High Commission of India to the United Kingdom expressed gratitude to the Ashmolean Museum for its cooperation and decision to return the 16th-century bronze icon of Saint Thirumangai Alvar. The spokesperson said the move would allow the statue to resume its original role as an object of worship at the Soundararaja Perumal Mandir, calling the decision a demonstration of strong leadership and moral clarity. The statement added that the return represents more than the restoration of an artwork; it reunites a sacred icon with its shrine, helping revive memory and cultural continuity.
The Ashmolean had acquired the statue in good faith in 1967. According to records from Sotheby’s, the bronze was sold by private collector J. R. Belmont (1886–1981), though there is no documentation explaining how it originally entered his collection.
In November 2019, an independent French scholar informed the museum of research linking the bronze to a photograph taken in 1957 at the Soundararaja Perumal temple in Tamil Nadu. The photograph had been found in the archives of the Institut Français de Pondichéry and the École française d’Extrême-Orient, where it was recorded among several artefacts now held in museums and collections across Europe and the United States.
Although no formal claim had been filed at the time, the Ashmolean Museum wrote to the High Commission of India in the United Kingdom on December 16, 2019, seeking further details, including any police records, and expressed its willingness to discuss the possible return of the object to India. The Indian High Commissioner thanked the museum and the University of Oxford for their proactive approach and confirmed that the information had been forwarded to Indian authorities.
On February 11, 2020, an executive officer of the Mandir filed a police complaint stating that the original bronze had been replaced with a modern replica. No earlier police records or media reports had documented the theft of the artefact in India. Following this, the Indian High Commissioner formally requested the return of the bronze on March 3, 2020.
S. Vijayakumar, cultural enthusiast and co-founder of the India Pride Project, described the return of the Thirumangai Alvar bronze as a significant step toward restoring murtis removed from the Soundararaja Perumal Mandir. He said the artefact was identified by matching the Ashmolean-held bronze with photographs of the temple taken in 1957 and preserved at the Institut Français de Pondichéry. The findings were shared with the Tamil Nadu Idol Wing CID, including then ADGP Abhay Kumar, and with officials at the Indian High Commission in London, including First Secretary Rahul Nagare. Vijayakumar noted that the process from identification to approval for repatriation took nearly eight years.
