Author:
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: March 1, 2001
India said Thursday it was outraged
by the decision of Afghanistan's ruling Taliban militia to push ahead with
the destruction of ancient Buddhist statues and artifacts, despite a global
outcry.
The statement came as New Delhi
dispatched a former foreign secretary to a UNESCO-sponsored meeting in
Paris to discuss the Taliban campaign. "It is absolutely outrageous that
the Taliban is persisting with their obscurantist and medieval programme
in destroying valuable, cultural, historic and archeological artifacts,"
Foreign Ministry spokesman Raminder Jassal said in New Delhi.
The Indian government does not recognise
the Taliban regime. Earlier Thursday, Taliban's Information and Culture
Minister Qudratullah Jamal said the destruction of all statues in the country,
including the world's tallest standing Buddha statue in the central province
of Bamiyan, had begun.
"The work started about five hours
ago but I do not know how much of it (the Bamiyan Buddhas) has been destroyed
... it will be destroyed by every means. All the statues are being destroyed,"
Jamal told AFP.
The towering Buddhas, carved into
a sandstone cliff near the provincial capital of Bamiyan, in central Afghanistan,
stand 50 meters (165 feet) and 34.5 meters (114 feet) tall and date back
to the second century.
A Delhi-based UNESCO official, meanwhile,
said Friday's meeting in Paris, to be attended by former Indian foreign
secretary J.N. Dixit, was aimed at making "an international appeal to the
Taliban to stop the destruction of these ancient statues."
"The statues belonged to Buddhists
all over the world and not to Afghanistan alone," said the official, R.P.
Perera. Several Asian countries including Sri Lanka and Thailand have condemned
the Taliban's decree.
R. Sengupta, a former conservation
official with the Archeological Survey of India (ASI) who played a major
role in the restoration of the statues in the 1970s, described the situation
as "particularly sad for India." "They were some of the finest specimens
of Buddhist civilisation and culture." "I am very, very upset as the best
part of my life was spent on restoration of beautiful impressive structures,"
he said. At the request of then Afghan culture minister, Sengupta and his
team spent nine years in Afghanistan -- 1969 to 1977 -- restoring the structures.
According to Sengupta, the Buddha shrine in Bamiyan also had beautiful
paintings, typical to India's Jain school of art. Other places in Afghanistan
historically linked to India are Jalalabad, which was again a Buddhist
pilgrimage site and Hadda, famous for Buddhist architecture.
AFP
