Ten years after the creation of a separate Telangana: Dividing a culture Premium

Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy Museum in Hyderabad holds relics of Gautama Buddha, sparking a cultural asset division between Telangana and Andhra Pradesh.

Inside the Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy Museum in Hyderabad is a hallway where visitors are asked to remove their footwear. School children run inside with shoes when they are called back and they look guiltily at the no-footwear sign. Occasionally, flower petals and vermilion can be spotted near the doorway. A few steps away, inside a glass casing, are a few earthen vessels and an oddly shaped stone vessel with a cap.

“These are the relics of Gautama Buddha. If this collection goes, the gem of this museum goes. People from across the world come to pay homage to the relics of the Buddha. People from Nepal have chanting sessions, offer flowers and light up joss sticks when they come here,” says an official of the museum.

Within the four earthen vessels, arranged according to the way they were discovered in Bavikonda, about 16 kilometres from Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh, are gold objects and precious beads. The gold objects have not lost the shine. Relics of the Buddha include a small golden container that shimmers nearly 2,000 years after it was created by a goldsmith somewhere in Andhra Pradesh. These were discovered during the excavation in 1993 near Bavikonda by the Andhra Pradesh Department of Archaeology and Museums (DAM).

Now, these objects and relics will return to Andhra Pradesh, according to the plan of bifurcation drawn up by the Antiquities Committees of the two States. Just the list of brass objects runs into 269 pages, while the list of arms and weapons to be transferred runs into eight pages. One of the objects is a cannon brought from the Yakutpura Police Station in Hyderabad that will go to Kurnool Site Museum.

The key for division is the provenance and time of the acquisition of the object. All pre-1956 objects remain with Telangana. The objects, manuscripts, paintings, and artefacts acquired between 1956 and 2014 have been divided between the two states in ratio of the population with 52% going to AP and 48% in Telangana.

Hyderabad is no longer the capital of Andhra Pradesh. But, within the 430-year-old city is a treasure that belongs to the State, which is yet to have a capital. Among them are the Buddha’s relics, jade objects, brass statuettes, and manuscripts that are now housed in the State Museum, Telangana State Archives, Oriental Manuscripts Library and other lesser-known museums in Telangana. The antiquities are now at the centre of a shadow match that is being played out beyond the limelight.

“Further, an earthen urn or receptacle i.e. Samudgaka, large in size was found below the stone receptacle, which contains ashy deposit, burnt charcoal and corporeal remains of the Master, along with silver and gold caskets and a number of precious beads,” wrote N.R.V. Prasad, who led the excavation at Bavikonda in 1994 that transformed the understanding about the spread of Hinayana Buddhism in the post-Ashoka period along the Krishna River basin.