"click for full size" I can't sleep, says the man who helped save the Buddhas KOTA NEELIMA ------------------------ NEW DELHI, MARCH 2: ``I lived for nine years next to the Bamiyan Buddhas. They are so much a part of me that I feel a sense of deep shock and personal loss to know they are being attacked,'' says archaeologist Rakhaldas Sengupta, who was awarded the Padmashree for his ``exemplary work'' in conserving the Buddhas. Sengupta, former director of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), was the head of the Indo-Afghan team set up in 1969 to help conserve the crumbling Buddhas. The cost of the Rs 20-lakh project, which wrapped up in 1979, was split between India and Afghanistan. But as reports come in that the Taliban is targeting what he helped conserve, Sengupta says that all he can hold on to are the memories and the photographs. ``I am depressed,'' he says. ``I cannot sleep with the vision of the magnificent Buddhas haunting me. I am so sorry this had to happen.'' Perhaps, history is of some consolation. ``The last attack on the statues was mounted by the Mongolian warrior Genghis Khan,'' Sengupta says.``He and his men cut off the legs of the majestic monuments which stand on the side of the ancient Silk Route.'' Ironically, the Mongolian army had also used mortar to demolish the statues, just as the Taliban says it's doing now. Sengupta hopes that the reports are exaggerated, that somehow the damage can be restored. Just as it was years ago. ``When we reached the provincial capital Bamiyan in central Afghanistan in 1969, it was a small village with just locals. The only place available for living was a four-room prison which was converted into a hotel for our team. It was renamed the Bamiyan Hotel.'' Born and educated in Bangladesh, then East Pakistan, Sengupta moved to Calcutta after the partition and joined the ASI. He had taken up the project as a ``challenge'' even when a number of countries turned it down saying the task was ``impossible''. The project which went on till 1979 was mostly done during the summer months, the winters being too cold in the region. The monuments are carved out of a mountainside. ``They were in a very poor condition when we saw them first. The Buddha's robe was also degenerating. We also had to strengthen the statue which had become weak as the legs were already missing,'' he says. ``After considerable research, we decided to use the combination of the local earth, lime and finely chopped hemp to stabilise the robe and support the statue from the lower side,'' Sengupta says. On the demolition, Sengupta says,``All that work is a waste now. This is the end of the story. Never again can the statues be seen standing again. It is a great loss to history.'' At present working on a book on the Bamiyan Buddhas, he is nostalgic about the statues besides which he spent many a sleepless nights working out solutions to prevent their collapse. ``We could not keep any proper timings for food or sleep. We would have our food in the jeep which was given to us. We usually had naan and chicken cooked in butter oil. Then it was back to work,'' he says. ``But it was nice to see that when our work was done in 1978, the small village had expanded with about 120 yuths or huts and about two dozen hotels. There was a tremendous foreign tourist inflow into the area, including the Japanese royalty, after the word spread that the Buddhas have been preserved,'' he says. Copyright © 2001 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd. Expressindia.com Latest News Story pages http://www.expressindia.com/news/daily/20010303/00300701.htm Saturday, March 3, 2001 US museum offers to buy Buddhas NEW YORK: Major US museums said on Friday they would join any effort to save Afghanistan's art a day after New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art offered, at its own cost, to rescue ancient statues from destruction by the Taliban. The world sat helpless on Friday as Afghanistan's ruling Taliban were reported to have used mortars and cannon to destroy two giant Buddha statues in Bamiyan in central Afghanistan, defying protests and diplomatic pressure. It was the beginning of a campaign by the Taliban to destroy all statues in the 90 percent of Afghanistan it controls. The Taliban's rulers consider the statues un-Islamic and examples of idol worship disallowed by Islam. The Metropolitan Museum's director, Phillipe De Montebello, said on Thursday the museum would be willing to buy and retrieve statues of a reasonable size and put them in a secular environment "where they are cultural objects, works of art and not cult images." "I think the Met would be the leader of any such effort and the rest of us would get in line backing the Met," said James Cuno, director of the Harvard University Art Museums in Cambridge, Massachusetts. "We certainly deplore the destruction," said Deborah Gribbon, director of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. "I would certainly welcome the opportunity to talk with him (De Montebello) and see what he has in mind and see if there is some way Getty can lend its support," she told Reuters. Gribbon said the museum would be prepared to consider putting its financial resources behind the effort. Expressions of interest only The Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD), which represents the directors of 175 major art museums in the United States, Canada and Mexico, said it would "stand by any effort" to retrieve the art. "We have not had an emergency conference call or anything like that, but we would certainly lend our support in any way we can," said AAMD spokeswoman Millicent Hall Gaudieri. So far, the effort has not gone beyond expressions of interest, though the museum directors know that time is running out for the statues. At the United Nations, Secretary-General Kofi Annan received a phone call from De Montebello and asked the Taliban to accept the Met's offer before the militia destroys all the relics. His spokesman said the message was relayed by Francesc Vendrell, his special envoy for Afghanistan and through Pakistan's leader, Gen. Pervez Musharraf. De Montebello on Friday said any funds paid to the Taliban would be tiny compared to the cost of removing and transporting the art. "We would pay all costs. Money changing hands would be nominal over and above that," he told Reuters Television. Shock and dismay The Taliban's few friends and its foes alike have reacted with shock to the planned destruction. India called it "a regression into medieval barbarism" and offered to look after the artifacts for all mankind. Muslim Iran, which has tense relations with Kabul, said the monuments were part of the "country's cultural and national heritage and belong to the history of the region's civilization in which all humanity has a share." The Taliban has been seeking international recognition as the legal government, replacing an anti-Taliban alliance that it has driven into the northeast corner of Afghanistan but which still holds the Afghan seat at the United Nations. International alarm was first sparked on Monday, when Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar ordered the smashing of all statues, including the two famous Buddhas that soar 125 feet (38 metres) and 174 feet (53 metres) above Bamiyan. Heavily criticized for its restrictions on women and for its public executions, the Taliban is recognized by only three states: Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. In New York, Pakistan's U.N. ambassador, Shamshad Ahmed said there were reasons the Taliban was "so irrational." "When people are ostracized, isolated, politically, economically, socially and culturally, can you expect them not to act in a desperate manner?" he said. Instead the world should engage the Taliban rather than ostracizing it. (Reuters) DharmaNotes March 3, 2001 http://www.dharmanotes.com ------------------------------------------------------------ ARTICLE: On The Destruction of the Statues -- Brian Robertson ------------------------------------------------------------ From all reports, the statues have lost and the Taliban have won. Already, missles have been fired at the statues of the Buddha, related items destroyed in museums and collections and more. If I were a good Buddhist, I'd follow the lead of those often quoted in the news who say that it is not for Buddhists to criticize others. I'd be peaceful and believe that the leaders are simply shooting missles at themselves, much as the Tibetan Book of the Dead advises us that the worst demons we see as we pass from this life are only ourselves and the fear is the fear of who we are that must be dispelled. If I were a really good Buddhist, I'd sit down and send waves of loving-kindness to the ones who pulled the triggers, who made the decision. Perhaps I'd step onto a higher view of things and think that karmic bonds are tight, that all things are so interwoven that this terrible, terrible injustice will not go unpunished. Well, perhaps being a better Buddhist, I'd say there's no punishment involved, that the destruction doesn't need a cosmic mediator to hand down a judgment -- the events have placed in motion their own end results beyond any God's or human retribution.l If I were a really really good Buddhist, I'd say that the world's concern over the statues' fate shows the ultimate compassion of people much more clearly than the other side's actions show the total inability to think, reason or feel. And if I were a really really really good Buddhist, I'd be nonplussed over all of this, because it's said that even the Dharma and Buddhism will one day fade, that the presence, as it were, of buddha-nature in the statues is in every molecule and atom wherever one travels. The problem is, I'm not that good a Buddhist.