Sikhs Buy Back Their History One Bid at a Time, But Say Museum Space is a Hard Sell

THE GLOBE & MAIL
By DAKSHANA BASCARAMURTY

The sword is believed to have been owned by Maharajah Ranjit Singh, the founder of the Sikh Empire in India.

CANADA---“In the last 10 to 20 years, there’s been a huge surge of what are classified as Sikh objects entering the market,” said Deepali Dewan, senior curator of South Asian Arts & Culture at the Royal Ontario Museum. “Because of the demand mostly coming from the Sikh community, the prices have skyrocketed … it has priced museums out of the market.” Although Canada’s Sikh population is large – 1.4 per cent of the population follows Sikhism (compared to 1.9 per cent in India) – none of the major galleries or museums has a sizable permanent collection devoted to Sikh history in India. Even internationally, representation of Sikh history in major museums is limited, Ms. Dewan says. [link]