FIRST B ON A COLLEGE PAPER WHAT??

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Statue of Liberty on the Open Market: The Ownership of Cultural Property

We were discussing the ability of an oversized monkey to abduct a toddler when the Englishman approached us alongside the Tivanka image house in ancient Polonnaruva. Tugging the hem of his collared bowling shirt over the taut waistband of his cargo safari shorts, he pointed to the tops of the trees with a crooked arm.
“What do you reckon, bear monkeys?”
Born and raised in the eastern Midwest, I knew nothing more about monkeys than your average zoo-going American, but that their opposable thumbs and toes had the tendency to make me irrationally nervous. I smiled and shrugged politely, as did my two compatriots.
“They look gray to me,” the Englishman continued, unabated by our silence. “Say, what was the name of those Indians, the invaders?”
We glanced at one another across the awkward gap in the conversation created by the Englishman and his questions. Those Indian invaders? “The Cholas?” I ventured, after a several second pause.
“Thaat’s right,” he said, drawing out his vowels in illustration of his recollection. He gazed fleetingly at the image house behind him, saying, “it’s really too bad they had to destroy all these buildings.”
The second skeptical glance that passed between us went unnoticed, the Englishman being preoccupied by the arrival of his wife and daughter, each clothed in apparel better suited for the beach than a series of monastic ruins. He crooked his arm once more and pointed to the monkeys in the tops of the trees.
“What do you think, black or gray?”
The trio trailed away discussing primate species categorization, and I turned to my soft spoken companions. “I thought the buildings were just old,” I said.

When I returned to Bowela on the evening of the twenty third, my host family was brimming with questions about the trip. I dragged my dusty laptop from its hiding place in the closet - wedged between my knee length skirts and several dozen moth balls - and presented it to my host family with all of the two hundred and fifty photographs downloaded from my camera. My nangi and taattaa then spent an hour systematically dissecting every last photograph, bickering over the names of the umpteen Buddha statues and arguing over the locations of the collapsed brick stupas. As we arrived at the images of Ibbankuduva, however, the talkative two both became silent.
“What is?” My taattaa inquired after several seconds.
Uncertain of the Sinhala word for Early Iron Age megalithic burial site, I settled instead for, “Burial. Death? Burial? You know?”
My taattaa replied that Ibbankuduva was the location were old pots were stored, meaning either he understood the concept of Early Iron Age burial ritual, or my ill-informed Sinhala was so far off base that it made sense in a sense completely foreign to me. In either case, the slide show rolled on, my nangi and taattaa quarrelling over the ruins at Sigiriya.

* * *

“It is in recognition of the exceptional universal value of the Sri Lankan cultural heritage that the Ministers of Education and Economic Development recommended to UNESCO in 1978 that it had a major task to undertake in Sri Lanka. It was stressed that the cultural achievements of Sri Lanka belonged to humanity as a whole and had therefore to be safeguarded as a global obligation to generations yet unborn.” - D. B. Wijetunga

“The needs and wishes of some communities or indigenous people to restrict or manage physical, spiritual or intellectual access to certain cultural practices, knowledge, beliefs, activities, artifacts or sites should be respected.” - International Council for Conservation of Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS)

To whom does the Statue of Liberty belong?
The question at first seems reasonably strange, to whom does the Statue of Liberty belong? And yet upon consideration, the answer is undeniably complex. Situated on Liberty Island in New York Harbor off the coast of Manhattan, it could be argued that the statue is the legal property of the great state of New York. The state is certainly the primary fiscal beneficiary in terms of both tourism and taxes. Yet the statue was declared a national monument by the United States of America in 1924, thenceforth granting ownership the statue not to the state, but to the nation as a whole. The matter is further complicated by the inscription at the base of the pedestal of the statue authored by poet Emma Lazarus: Give me your tired, your hungry, your huddled masses yearning to break free. Coupled with the proximity of the statue to Ellis Island, a second national monument, the inscription suggests that the statue belongs not to the nation itself, as suggested by the title national monument, but rather to the foreigners hoping to immigrate into the United States, expecting to be citizens within the next decade. And so we return to the initial question, to whom does the Statue of Liberty belong?
The question of the ownership of cultural property - defined by the Hague Convention of 1954 as “movable or immovable property of great importance to the cultural heritage of every people” - is a complicated matter universal in its scope. The question of the ownership of the cultural property of Sri Lanka, a nation historically controlled by a host of regional monarchies and not one but three distinct colonial empires, is a more complicated matter still. Unlike the Statue of Liberty in first world America, the debate over the ownership of the cultural property of Sri Lanka has a distinct third world, developmental bent. On the one hand, there is the necessity for social development on the island; that is, the development of a distinct national identity predating the arrival of the Portuguese in the sixteenth century. On the other hand, there is the necessity for economic development on the island; and apart from commercial exports, the one natural commodity Sri Lanka has in spades is over two thousand years of documented history. Two parallel processes have emerged in Sri Lanka to satisfy the social and economic developmental needs of the island: the academic study of cultural resource management and the fiscal industry of national and international tourism.
Cultural resource management is concerned with the social development of the island of Sri Lanka. The primary propagators of cultural resource management are nonprofit organizations focused on the conservation of both tangible and intangible cultural property, tangible cultural property consisting of historic objects and monuments, intangible cultural property consisting of rituals and aesthetics. Tourism, in contrast, is concerned with the economic development of the island of Sri Lanka. The primary propagators of tourism are for-profit organizations focused on primarily on the consumption of tangible property.
Although the processes of cultural resource management and tourism have dissimilar objectives - social development as opposed to economic development - the two endeavors have the potential to be complementary processes. Implemented constructively, tourism provides funding for cultural resource management in addition to expanding local economic activity, fostering an appreciation for local culture, and preserving a local community identity. The practice of cultural resource management, in turn, conserves and maintains the local culture that invites tourism to the area. It can be said that with constructive implementation, cultural resource management and tourism are mutually beneficial processes; however, with unconstructive implementation, tourism has the potential to inhibit cultural resource management through the physical and symbolic displacement of cultural heritage and property.
According to Poornima Weerasinghe, author of the article Impacts of Tourism on the Development of Cultural Property: Remedial Issues, there are tangible and intangible facets to the displacement of cultural heritage and property. The tangible effects of inappropriately implemented tourism include the deterioration of monuments due to perpetual overcrowding, structural modifications for the accommodation of tourism, theft of objects of cultural property, vandalism of objects of cultural property, and so on. The intangible effects of inappropriately implemented tourism include the introduction of novel traditions into the community, the cessation of established traditions within the community, and the propagation of inaccurate historical information concerning the cultural property.
So to whom does the cultural property of Sri Lanka belong?
The International Council for Conservation of Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) is of the opinion that the cultural property of a country is simply that, the cultural property of a country. As previously quoted, the ICOMOS Charter on Cultural Tourism states (in so many words) that cultural property belongs to the local community and that said community has the right to restrict external access to the property at hand. The Hague Convention of 1954 further supports the national ownership of the cultural property of Sri Lanka. Convened for the purpose of protecting cultural property during periods of armed conflict, the Hague Convention compels the High Contracting Parties of the nations in attendance to “undertake to prepare in time of peace for the safeguarding of cultural property situated within their own territory against the foreseeable effects of an armed conflict.” In assuming that each nation is responsible for its own cultural heritage, the implication of the Hague Convention is that each nation is in possession of its own cultural heritage. Coupled with the tangible and intangible effects of inappropriately implemented tourism as identified by Weerasinghe, whose immediate impact falls upon the local community as opposed to the international community, the argument is strong for the Sri Lankan ownership of the cultural property of Sri Lanka.
The history of the conservation and restoration of the cultural property in the north central province of Sri Lanka, however, provides an argument against the national ownership of cultural property. By the advent of British colonial rule in Sri Lanka in the nineteenth century, the ruins of the kingdoms of the north central province had long since succumbed to the tide of the jungle. “All the ruins at Anuradhapoora, even the lofty monuments which contain the relics of the Buddha, are either entirely covered with jungle, or partly obscured by forests.” In the process of constructing a system of transportation for wage laborers from South India to the coffee plantations of the central hills, the British unintentionally unearthed the ruins of the forgotten capital in the early nineteenth century. It was the British who began the excavation at Anuradhapura as opposed to the citizens of Sri Lanka and, as childish as it might sound, there is certainly some room for an argument to the effect of finders keepers.
A further argument against the national ownership of cultural property comes directly from Weerasinghe herself. In describing the nature of the displacement of cultural property, Weerasinghe notes that “a number of dagoba are damaged and Buddha statues are displaced or destroyed due to unnecessary publicity and awareness to the general public.” Weerasinghe argues that the dagoba and Buddha statues are damaged due to unnecessary awareness to the general public. How can the cultural property of a nation belong to that nation if an awareness of the cultural property itself is unnecessary?
Weerasinghe further notes that one of the factors contributing to the displacement of cultural property is vandalism, and illustrates her point with the case study of the megalithic burial sites at Ibbankuduva. According to Weerasinghe, the locals have been practicing a form of vandalism along the lines of material reuse at Ibbankuduva, whereby the granite slabs of the megalithic burials have been relocated and utilized for purposes other than they were originally intended. Of course if the ICOMOS Charter on Cultural Tourism - as quoted by Weerasinghe herself - is to be believed, the local community has every right to “manage physical… access to… artifacts or sites.” Nonetheless, this form of local vandalism is presented alongside the need for cultural resource management reform, indicating the inappropriateness of the actions of the local community, according to Weerasinghe.
In contrast to the ICOMOS Charter on Cultural Tourism, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), as quoted previously, has emphasized that the “cultural achievements of Sri Lanka to humanity as a whole,” a sentiment echoed by Weerasinghe herself in the introduction to her article Impacts of Tourism. Of course the argument for the international ownership of national cultural property is by nature tenuous. Nonetheless the practical implementation of cultural resource management at the sites of the north central province seems to support such a counterintuitive suggestion.
We were idling aimlessly in the late afternoon sun before the Hindu shrine in Polonnaruva when I first became aware of the peculiarity of the signage. I had already registered the trilingual nature of the notices informing Sinhala, Tamil, and English speaking visitors to remove their hats and shoes prior to entering the inner sanctums of the sacred spaces. I had not, however, as of yet registered the nature of the accompanying illustrations, as I had become so accustomed to removing the offensive articles of clothing that the signs had begun to disappear into the greater visual landscape. It was only at the Hindu shrine on the sixth day of the northern tour that the full implication of the illustration on the notice succeeded in infiltrating my working memory. The illustration featured a silhouette in profile - a silhouette in profile in a cowboy hat.
Granted, my time in Sri Lanka has been brief - a month to the day as I sit formulating these words - but I have yet to see a Sri Lankan, any Sri Lankan, wearing anything so much as resembling a cowboy hat.
While the signage at the sites in the north central province is discreetly directed at international tourists, the accompanying touts make no such effort to conceal their preferred first world clientele. The scene was almost comic at the Royal Palace of Parakramabahu as umpteen blonde haired, blue eyed tourist groups were trailed by at least as many Sri Lankan touts. To their credit, the touts know the exact variety of kitschy, shiny objects that cause my willpower fall slack; though I am fairly certain only a foreigner would be so gullible as to buy inexpertly carved ebony elephants for ten United States dollars apiece.
I would suggest that the debate over the control of the cultural property of Sri Lanka exists due to a larger debate within the society as a whole, one introduced to the island in the eighteenth century by the British colonial empire. I speak specifically of the philosophical debate over the nature of culture itself. While the Orientalist writing of the nineteenth century idealized modern India alongside its ancient Hindu civilizations, British Utilitarian philosophers such as James Mill have been paraphrased as describing the culture of the Indian subcontinent as “backward, inimical to progress and antirational.” Although the Orientalists (who glorified South Asian society) and the Utilitarians (who criticized South Asian society) developed oppositional ideologies, the two factions maintained at least one common misconception as demonstrated in their prevailing ideologies: that the nature of the culture of South Asia is static.
Modern conservational practices in Sri Lanka reinforce the European misconception that the nature of South Asian culture is static. Consider the museums in the north central province. With the exception of the national museum at Polonnaruva, every museum in the cultural triangle has been criticized for the lack of historical context presented alongside the objects of cultural property; yet it fails to be recognized that all of the museums, Polonnaruva included, lack a modern context for the objects on display.
In contrast to the static conception of culture as imposed by Orientalist and Utilitarian philosophers, archaeological evidence supports an historic, dynamic Sri Lankan culture, whereby objects of cultural property were traded as items of economic commodity. Of the approximately seven million beads excavated at the Jetavana Stupa in Anuradhapura, seventy percent were crafted with imported materials. The majority of the pottery and luxury items excavated at the site were also imported from distant locations. Written records indicate that the Abhayagiri Monastic Complex served as a center of scholarship for not only Sri Lankan Buddhists, but for Buddhists spanning the continent of Asia. Excavated items at the complex include coinage and luxury items from locations as distant as Southeastern Asia and the Mediterranean. At the Sacred Quadrangle at Polonnaruva, a majority of the architecture is said to bear the earmarks of international influence, including a multistory pagoda exhibiting the artisan traits of Burma. Historically these objects of cultural property were dynamic elements of cultural exchange. Why are these items now constrained by historic context? Why has the culture of Sri Lanka become static?

* * *

It was a lazy Saturday afternoon at my homestay and I was sprawled across a chair before the dining room table, alternately sipping king coconut water with my right hand and flipping through the pages of Exodus with the left. I was enjoying the interruption in the barrage of relations invited by my amma to meet the American, when my nangi and cousins approached across the table.
“Will you show us the pictures of our country on your computer?”
As reading The Exodus was a somewhat depressing endeavor for my first afternoon without scholastic obligation, I dug into the tangle of knee length skirts in my closet and once again dragged my laptop from the moth balls.
As the photographs of the Tivanka image house developed on the laptop screen, I could not help but remember the Englishman who was convinced that the ruins at Polonnaruva were relics of an ancient political conflict, and could not help but question the wisdom of the United Nations in gifting the “cultural achievements of Sri Lanka… to humanity as a whole.” Yet as the photographs of Iron Age Ibbankuduva developed, I could not help but recall the puzzlement apparent on the faces of my nangi and taattaa, and could not help but reconsider the decision of the International Council for Conservation of Monuments and Sites to grant control of the cultural property to the “indigenous people” of Sri Lanka, citizens who may or may not be aware of the historic significance of the objects of cultural property. And as the photographs of the Jetavana Stupa developed on the screen, I could not help but consider the millions upon millions of excavated beads - categorized, labeled, and boxed in some university basement - and the crippled man we encountered at the Avukana Buddha statue, soliciting passing tourists for monetary donations, and I could not help but hear the voice of my amma echoing through my ears, decrying the high cost of Sri Lankan living and the economic decisions of the political higher-ups. And I could not help but question the decision to hoard the historical wealth of the nation in museums to maintain the illusion of a static cultural heritage. I could not help but wonder, at what point did economic wealth of the country cease to be a commodity and start to be an element of the cultural property of the nation?
The images of Sri Lanka disappeared from the laptop, replaced by photographs of the eastern Midwest. To the backdrop of the images of my family and friends, I silently considered how much the Statue of Liberty would cost on the open market.

Works Cited

Convention of the Hague. (1954). http://www.icomos.org/hague.
Jeganathan, P. (1995). Authorizing history, ordering land: The conquest of Anuradhapura. Unmaking the Nation, 106-136.
Swanton, E. (2006). Emma Lazarus. (1883). A line from the poem The New Colossus as recalled by Elizabeth Swanton.
Thapar, R. (1977). Communalism and the writing of Indian history. New Delhi: PPH.
UNESCO. (2005). The cultural triangle of Sri Lanka. Paris: UNESCO Publishing.
Weerasinghe, P. (2006). Heritage Management Lecture on 18 August 2006
Weerasinghe, P. (2006). Impacts of tourism on the development of cultural property: Remedial issues. Cultural Heritage & Protection of Cultural Property, 32-42.

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Photos

Ibbankuduva
Neolithic Burial Mounds

Polonnaruva
Signage