Indian archaeology found itself in the eye of a storm largely as a consequence of the global geopolitical shifts of 1979. The year was a consequential one for India. Its first non-Congress government since independence was tottering, and the country headed for a mid-term general election, which largely coincided with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan at the end of December 1980.
This capped an extraordinary year of change, beginning with the U.S. and China establishing diplomatic relations, then a revolution in Iran which overthrew its Shah and proclaimed the Islamic Republic. In Pakistan, a military dictator ensured the execution of an elected prime minister, and Islamic extremists stormed and occupied the great mosque in Mecca. Britain experienced unprecedented violence as Irish Republican Army (IRA) bombings intensified and claimed Lord Mountbatten of Burma as its most high-profile victim.
To India’s east, the Khmer Rouge had come to power in 1972 in Cambodia, and its systematic re-engineering of a traditional agrarian way of life turned into a genocide. Vietnam invaded Cambodia in 1978, igniting another decade-long civil war. Vietnam faced a retaliatory Chinese invasion in February 1979, leading to an intense but brief border war. Vietnam’s entry into Cambodia halted an ongoing genocide by the Khmer Rouge with the Pol Pot regime at its head, but it was also the beginning of a new chapter in the old Cold War. Although backed by the USSR and the communist bloc, Vietnam faced isolation and condemnation, as did the government it established in Cambodia – the People’s Republic of Kampuchea. This was not recognised by any neighbouring Southeast Asian countries nor by the United Nations. Instead, the Pol Pot regime, although now a band of guerrillas in the hills, was voted as being the only legitimate representative of the Cambodian people. Cambodia had become a small part of a larger geopolitical contest between the United States and the Soviet Union, with China and Vietnam in concert with each of the two adversaries.
Pol Pot’s genocide and the upheaval that shook Cambodia through the 1970s had one very specific consequence, and this was for the magnificent temple complex of Angkor Wat. Periodic purges meant all trained Cambodian personnel who had worked in and maintained the site were killed or had left. The civil war meant that international – principally French – experts had left earlier, and the temple being in a war zone heightened the risk of physical destruction. Looting and smuggling of antiquities was rampant. During the civil war and post-1979, with the absence of international recognition, external assistance also completely dried up.
India steps in
In these circumstances, a request was made to India by the new government of the People’s Republic of Kampuchea for assistance in the conservation of Angkor Wat. For most in India, responding positively was in the natural order of things. An American journalist reporting on Angkor thus came across the view that the Indians were helping “more out of sentimental than political motives.” After all, an Indic inspiration underwrote the architecture and iconography of Angkor Wat, and archaeologists and epigraphists traced the strong connections between India and Cambodia from the early years of the first millennium. Indian scripts, literature, iconography, and religions have permeated Cambodia’s historical record. For an older generation of historians, ancient Cambodia had formed part of what was termed as a “Greater India.”
Thus, while announcing recognition of the new Vietnamese-backed government in Kampuchea in July 1980, Indian foreign minister P.V. Narasimha Rao had said: “The temples of Angkor Wat are a valid testimony of the interaction between the culture of our two countries. Indeed, no other country in the Indo-China Peninsula is linked to India as Kampuchea. It is a cherished relationship.”
Yet the political stakes were equally visible to all. India’s recognition of the Peoples Republic of Kampuchea led to a ten-month-long postponement of a scheduled visit by the Chinese foreign minister to India. Few would have disagreed with what a New York Times correspondent wrote: “the Indian restoration of Angkor Wat was born of cold war geopolitics.”
While announcing recognition of the new Vietnamese-backed government in Kampuchea in July 1980, Indian foreign minister P.V. Narasimha Rao had said: “The temples of Angkor Wat are a valid testimony of the interaction between the culture of our two countries. Indeed, no other country in the Indo-China Peninsula is linked to India as Kampuchea. It is a cherished relationship”
For the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), embarking on the restoration was a landmark event – testimony to India’s international standing, to India-Cambodia relations but also to its professional expertise in excavation, restoration and maintenance of ancient Hindu and Buddhist structures. The prestige of this assignment was expressed on the 1981 cover of the ASI’s annual publication –Indian Archaeology – carrying a photograph of the majestic Angkor Wat. It would appear that some efforts were also made to locate the Indian assistance as part of a larger international initiative. The UNESCO Director General Dr Amadou-Mahtar M’Bow had visited India in 1980 and the possibility that India be part of a UNESCO initiative was discussed, but this was a non-starter given the rift over the status of the People’s Republic of Kampuchea.
French attitudes
Early ASI reports describe the Angkor restoration work as beginning from 1980, a time when the complex was very much part of a war zone. These gave regular updates on the conservation work undertaken by it and also occasionally contained brief critical comments on the conservation undertaken by French archaeologists before the outbreak of the civil war.
The ASI in charge of Angkor Wat created, in the words of one observer, ‘an uproar in the small world of archaeology and stone conservation.’ The French were the most aggrieved. That Indians were passing comments on their earlier work added insult to injury. Angkor had been their preserve for over a century, and even after formal decolonisation, a proprietary attitude to this former colony remained strong, especially within its cultural fraternity. A Frenchman had ‘discovered’ the complex in the mid-19th century and in the period since French scholarship had set the pace and the standards for the history and archaeology of Indo-China and for Cambodia in particular. They had been, after all, the colonial power in the entire region and had overseen conservation and research in Angkor for over a century till conflict forced them out in the early 1970s. The Ecole Francaise d’Extreme Orient, or the EFFO, had been at the centre of scholarship and conservation in Indo-China from the early 20th century and had maintained this premier position even through the Japanese occupation in the 1940s and even after decolonisation in the mid-1950s. It remains one of Asia’s most highly regarded European academic research institutions.
For many in France, the Angkor conservation project was critically important for French prestige and its global standing. The French were, moreover, at the heart of international culture in an institutional sense, with UNESCO itself headquartered in Paris. France, as an important member of the Western alliance, was also on the other side of the great divide in Indo-China in the 1970s, ranged against Soviet and Vietnamese support of the Peoples Republic of Kampuchea. But for the time being, they were out of Cambodia and Angkor Wat, and this was the cause of significant angst. Through the 1980s, this angst fuelled criticism of the Indian geopolitical role and the ASI’s sole presence in the Angkor complex.
After the Cold War
By the end of the decade, a new geopolitical churn was underway with the tearing down of the Berlin Wall, revolutions in Eastern Europe, the end of the Cold War, the Soviet Union exhibiting all the signs that would lead to its break-up, and finally, a China that was self-absorbed post the Tiananmen Square disturbances. The Paris Agreements of 1991 ended the conflict in Cambodia with the UN setting up a transitional authority and, in effect, taking over the administration and governance of Cambodia. Elections followed and a formal multi-party democracy in the framework of a constitutional monarchy was established. After decades of war, Cambodia had started walking on the road to peace and greater stability. Angkor was soon also inscribed as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO and both international experts and financial assistance would follow in large numbers and volume.
The lead in Angkor preservation and conservation was now and henceforth to be taken by France and Japan. The profile and importance of both had grown over the 1980s, particularly after the U.S. and the U.K. withdrew from UNSECO in 1984-85. French and Japanese financial support was now much more significant; both also had a strong commitment to Angkor. This commitment derived from substantive historical and political reasons. France was the former colonial power; the history of French decolonisation – or rather French eviction from Indo-China – had plunged the region into a U.S.-led war and Cambodia’s own considerable destruction that ended finally only when the Cold War itself ended. For modern France, its presence in Cambodia’s most iconic symbol was necessary to bring this bitter history to a satisfactory close.
For Japan, on the other hand, Angkor was a platform to signal the importance of Southeast Asia and underline its own effort to play a larger role in the region. Its claims to scholarship and archaeological conservation were also significant. But it also had a past to reckon with—in particular, the Japanese military occupation of Indo-China and Southeast Asia during World War Two. Involvement in so creative and beneficial a project would also help close that earlier chapter amicably.
Controversies over conservation
As the 1990s progressed, even if both were in competition with each other, there was very evidently also a compact or understanding that leadership in Angkor must not get dispersed too much. Thus, the New York Times reported in June 1992, “The French don’t want the Japanese… and the Japanese certainly don’t want the French. And the Japanese and the French don’t want the Indians.”
As normalcy returned, the outcry against the ASI intensified. What began as a whispering campaign by the French on the incompetence of the Indian archaeologists soon turned into a flood of criticism. “The most feverishly circulated rumour was that the Indians had washed down the temple with Agent Orange, the herbicide that has been linked to cancer in American veterans of the Vietnam War.” If this was extreme, other allegations gained some greater traction. These included that strong chemicals were being used to superficially clean surfaces quickly, but in the process, structures were being damaged; that untrained or poorly trained Cambodian labourers were working with inadequate subversion from a thinly spread ASI supervisory team, etc. The Straits Times of Singapore had thus quoted a foreign expert in October 1990 about the Indian effort: “It’s like putting make-up on a very old lady.”
There were also methodological issues of how much to conserve and to restore that inevitably arise in the process of any monument’s preservation. The ASI viewed, with some justification, fast-spreading thick vegetation as the principal threat the monuments faced. An ASI mission of 1982 had concluded: “The implacable jungle threatened the very existence of the monument” and “The heavy monsoons in the region played havoc in mercilessly evading all parts of the monument.” Clearing the existing vegetation damaging structures and arresting its further ingress into structures was vital.
For the French, on the other hand, the advancing jungle was an integral part of the magic and splendour of Angkor, a metaphor for both the mystique as also the decadence of the Orient. One observer had noted: “At Ta Prohm, one of the largest of the Angkor monuments, the French abandoned conservation altogether and left the temple to the elements as a sort of object lesson in the battle between stone and jungle.”
The Indian archaeologists believed that unless the moss and other vegetation were removed, the structure would suffer. Its use of chemicals to clean the stone, however, soon became a major issue, and the ASI found itself reeling from a barrage of criticism, with some of the strongest voices internationally in the field of archaeology and conservation ranged against it and expressing disquiet about its techniques. The issue soon was ricocheting around the world – to a tiny circle, of course – but one that was powerful and articulate. The headline became that Indians were destroying a heritage site out of ignorance and antiquated techniques and that they were operating in a vacuum without supervision due to an unusual geopolitical situation that had forced everyone else out. A rear-guard action to counter this barrage of negative criticism had then to be fought through the 1990s by Indian diplomats and ASI experts in UNESCO, at international archaeological conferences, and in the foreign offices of different capitals. However, it was not easy to explain post facto that Indian archaeologists had worked in difficult, frequently dangerous circumstances in the middle of a war zone when no other country had been willing to take on the risks.
The Indian archaeologists believed that unless the moss and other vegetation were removed, the structure would suffer. Its use of chemicals to clean the stone, however, soon became a major issue, and the ASI found itself reeling from a barrage of criticism, with some of the strongest voices internationally in the field of archaeology and conservation ranged against it and expressing disquiet about its techniques
The whole controversy ran its course and is now part of the conservation history of Angkor Wat. In time, Cambodian institutions came up and asserted themselves to coordinate what became a multinational effort to conserve Angkor. The older protagonists and issues faded away. The ASI today remains in the Angkor Wat complex, and the work it has done since is both commended and highly regarded, although a whiff of the earlier controversy still remains.
