India’s an antique land, but its antiquities law needs to be modern

An outdated law today hampers collectors and prevents India from showcasing its heritage abroad. (Representative image)

In 2008, Ajay Kumar Mittal, a Delhi-based philatelist, sought to take parts of his stamp collection to an international exhibition. His plans ran into an unexpected barrier: several stamps in his collection were over a hundred years old and, under the Antiquities and Art Treasures Act of 1972, qualified as “antiquities.”

This meant that Mittal had to apply for export permits, which in turn, required clearance from the Department of Posts, the Ministry of Culture, and finally the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI). The process proved so cumbersome that the collection never travelled. Mittal challenged the restriction, but the Delhi High Court upheld the law, confirming that old stamps fell within its definition of antiquities.

What should have been an unremarkable cultural loan thus became a telling example of how an outdated law today hampers collectors and prevents India from showcasing its heritage abroad.

Framed to constrain

Part of the problem is in how the Act is framed. Anything more than a century old, coins, photographs, medals, documents, and portraits, can be deemed an antiquity. By making age the sole defining test, the law puts millions of ordinary objects into regulation without distinguishing the trivial from the truly significant. For example, the “1 Anna” India Map mass-produced postage series often sells in bulk by weight amongst dealers, yet under the Act, it is treated the same as a Chola bronze idol.

This vast over‑inclusion would be unmanageable for any regulator. In India, it has fallen to the ASI, an institution created to conserve monuments. Tasked additionally with policing every “antiquity,” it is ill‑suited to the role and overstretched, with fewer than 5,000 staff for over 3,700 monuments, and only a fraction of antiquities digitised.

This mismatch is evident in the case of the export permits. These decisions are at the discretion of the ASI Director General, but without the presence of an institutional authentication framework, a provenance archive, or an independent appeals process, it has become a complex and byzantine process for any collector to navigate.

Specialised items like philately suffer as ASI lacks crucial expertise. Ironically, this red tape has struggled to contain actual smugglers who exploit the same weaknesses. Major scandals have happened in the past. However, through concentrated efforts, the Modi government has improved the identification and recovery of stolen artifacts.

A market stunted by the legal framework

One of the broader unintended consequences has also been the stifling of India’s art and artefacts market. Indian auction houses rarely touch historical artefacts due to Section 19 of the Act, which permits compulsory acquisition of antiquities by the State. While compensation is required, the absence of transparent criteria for its application has pushed much of the antiquities trade underground in India, discouraging legitimate business and denying the exchequer revenue. The scale of this suppression is remarkable.

India’s art auction market was valued at only about ₹1,500 crore ($187 million) in 2024, whereas China’s exceeded $12 billion, and the United States topped $ 27 billion. In other words, India accounts for less than one per cent of the global market, despite its immense cultural reserves.

Even the exchequer loses on account of impractical laws

This is reflected in government earnings as well. Auction houses like Christie’s and Sotheby’s thrive on open sales governed by strict provenance norms, while their national laws focus on balancing preservation with circulation.

In the UK, legislation rewards disclosure by finders and permits exports, with a license only for high-value or sensitive objects. In the US, only specific archaeological and ethnological items, generally more than 250 years old, are restricted. Furthermore, any sale in the US can attract a capital gains tax of up to 28 per cent. In the UK as well, sales of antiquities and artworks carry 10-28 per cent capital gains tax, yielding the government hundreds of millions in annual revenue. India, in contrast, earns virtually nothing because legitimate trade is artificially suppressed.

In Italy and Greece, where antiquities are considered state property, the focus is on archaeological material and on preventing looting. In each of these contexts, not only do individual items travel abroad with relative ease, but they are part of an abundant and well-regulated private market. It is only in India that they are frozen in place.

The result is that even when Indian objects surface at global auctions, they do not fetch the valuations seen for Chinese or Japanese equivalents. For instance, a 12th-century Chola bronze Nataraja sold for $4.2 million in 2014, while a comparable Ming dynasty gilt bronze Buddha fetched nearly $30 million in 2013 (both sold by Christie’s). Mughal miniature paintings too rarely cross $1 million, whereas Chinese scrolls of the same period routinely exceed $10–20 million.

Missing out on soft power projection

This also extends to cultural diplomacy. Around the world, museum loans and travelling exhibitions are central to projecting soft power. Large national museums across Europe and North America freely loan objects internationally to cement these ties. Even Italy and Greece, despite strict ownership laws, permit short‑term loans. India’s restrictive export controls, however, make such exchanges nearly impossible. This has left Indian institutions excluded from international showcases and exhibitions.

A new law is thus urgently required, but it does not have to begin from zero.  In 2017, a draft Bill proposed scrapping licences, moving registration online, widening advisory committees, and permitting free trade within India while retaining the export ban. Though it ultimately lapsed, any meaningful reform today should build on it. Instead of applying a sweeping age‑based test, the law must narrow its scope to culturally significant objects. A modern registry built on provenance‑linked digital records could fill the existing vacuum.

Independent expert committees of archaeologists, historians, and specialised conservators should determine classifications. Compulsory acquisition under Section 19 could be reshaped with transparent criteria and rights of review, so that citizens feel safe in disclosure. Export rules should also evolve to permit structured short‑term loans for international exhibitions. At the same time, enforcement requires a dedicated body with art‑historical expertise and investigative authority, akin to Italy’s Carabinieri Heritage Command, which has combined policing with scholarship and restitution work for decades.

Ultimately, the 1972 Act was born of the suspicion that every collector might be a smuggler, every item a treasure waiting to be hidden abroad. Half a century later, India has changed. Citizens ought not to be treated as threats but instead, potential partners willing to aid the state in preserving the country’s collective heritage, and empowered to display and celebrate India’s rich past around the world. And that is precisely what a modern antiquities law should enable.

(Dinesh Kanabar is CEO, Dhruva Advisors, and Chetan Aggarwal is a Public Policy Consultant. Both are avid philatelists.)

Views are personal and do not represent the stand of this publication.