The Vrindavani Vastra, a 350-year-old tapestry woven in the foothills of the Himalayas and depicting the life of the god Krishna, will make a six-month homecoming, as part of a loan struck between the British Museum and the state government of Assam in northeastern India.
The London institution agreed to return the tapestry in 2027 after Assam’s chief minister pledged to construct a new facility at the Assam State Museum in Guwahati, the state capital, to house the fragile textile, which, for preservation’s sake, can be exhibited for only six months every ten years.
The Vastra—Sanskrit for “textile”—is composed of 12 strips of lampas silk, measures nine meters in length, and depicts a devotional drama by Srimanta Sankardev, a writer and religious reformer who lived in Assam at the turn of the 16th century who pioneered a monotheistic religion dedicated to Krishna. His works were collected and adapted into devotional plays by Satras—religious and cultural institutions that continue to operate in Assam, with the Vrindavani Vastra marking the earliest known artwork to feature the Assamese script.
“People here are emotionally connected with Sankardev,” Kuladhar Saikia, Assam’s former chief of police and the president of a cultural nonprofit, told The Art Newspaper. “So the Vastra is widely claimed as a living piece of history in Assam.”
As he told the Financial Times, British Museum director Nicholas Cullinan has advanced a policy that favors “partnership rather than … ownership” when it comes to questions of permanent restitution. He has stressed that the British Museum is legally barred from deaccessioning objects from its collection—hence its reliance on long-term loans.
Under Cullinan’s tenure, the Satala Aphrodite was loaned to Armenia last year, where its cultural importance is such that it appears on the country’s banknotes. In December, the museum also announced a new partnership with India: some 80 artifacts spanning multiple ancient civilizations will travel on long-term loan to Mumbai in what Cullinan called a gesture of “cultural diplomacy.”
