Efforts to Recover India’s Idols & Heritage: Modern Tools for Old Crimes
September 24, 2025
About this Event
Join the Center for Art Law for a conversation with S. Vijay Kumar, co-founder of the India Pride Project and author of The Idol Thief. This webinar explored the work of the India Pride Project in tracking, recovering, and securing the return of looted cultural artifacts to India.
The session discussed the project’s origins, landmark restitution cases, and the challenges of reclaiming sacred idols and cultural heritage. The program also compared India’s restitution model with those of other countries, highlighted ongoing disputes, and reflected on the future of restitution in India.
Moderated by Atreya Mathur, Director of Legal Research at the Center, the program also featured insights from Mr. Kumar’s book The Idol Thief as well as offered a look at how society, scholars, and governments can collaborate in the fight against illicit trafficking of cultural heritage.
About the Speaker
Mr. Vijay Kumar is a Fellow of the Cost and Management Accountants of India and Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Shipbrokers London (UK). He hails from Chennai but moved to Singapore in 2006 as General Manager of a leading Container liner shipping company overseeing their landside operations in South East Asia. After spending 15 years in Singapore, he moved back to India in 2022 and continues in his management role in the shipping company
Sculpture and Indian temple art is his passion. Being largely self taught he started documenting his learning process in Tamil and English on his bilingual blogsite poetryinstone in 2007 and has been writing extensively on sculpture and art appreciation, targeting early audiences to introduce them to understanding the nuances of Indian sculptural art.
In early 2014, Vijay and his core team of volunteers formed India Pride Project – a social media initiative to combat the rampant looting of Indian art treasures and have been instrumental in the tracking of high profile trafficked artefacts for the past few years and work closely with various pan global organisations assisting in their restitution efforts – including the dramatic return of the Vriddachalam Ardhanari , Sripuranthan Nataraja from Australia, The Sripuranthan Uma from ACM Singapore, The Kashmir Tengupura Durga from Germany and the recent US restitutions. The efforts of the India Pride Project’s #BringOurGodsHome initiative targets to return hundreds of stolen Gods back to India. The most recent success for the group was the return on the Nalanda Bronze Buddha from London on August 15 th – a case that had baffled experts since 1961.His book titled “The Idol Thief” is a path breaking novel on the chase to nab Subhash Kapoor and details how he and his team assisted global law enforcement in successfully nabbing the man alleged to have been the most prolific antiquities smuggler in recent history.
