Oxford museum to return remains of 39 people to Naga community in India

The Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford is preparing to return the remains of 39 people to the Naga community in northeastern India, decades after some of the ancestral remains were displayed to the public.

The remains were collected in the early 20th century by British colonial administrators and kept in the museum's collections. The museum, which has the world's largest collection of Naga objects, said it approved the repatriation request submitted by the Forum for Naga Reconciliation, an organization representing the Indigenous Naga population.

The original request covered 40 human remains. Oxford University approved the return of 39 on July 13, saying the final specimen could not be identified with sufficient certainty as belonging to a Naga person. Some of the remains remained publicly exhibited until 2020.

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healing and unification

Museum director Laura Van Broekhoven praised a process that, she said, had turned the repatriation into a movement of “healing and unification” for the Naga community. The Forum for Naga Reconciliation and other organizations involved in the agreement said the return was not only about bringing ancestral remains back to their homeland, but also about restoring memory to its rightful place.

The museum has worked for several years with the forum, tribal chiefs, religious leaders and community representatives to determine how the remains should be returned. A date for the handover ceremony has not been set. A Naga delegation is expected to accompany the remains to their place of origin. The project forms part of a wider international movement to return objects and human remains acquired by Western institutions during the colonial period.

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For the Naga people, this repatriation is not simply about the return of bones and ancestral remains to their land, but above all about seeing memory restored to its rightful place.