In a solemn ceremony held at Oxford's Pitt Rivers Museum on Monday, the University of Oxford formally handed back the remains of 39 individuals from India's Naga community, taken during the era of British colonial rule. The event marked the culmination of years of negotiation and a deeply personal journey for a delegation of about 30 people who traveled from Nagaland, a mountainous state in north-eastern India, to witness the handover.
A Historic Homecoming
The remains, most of which are skulls, will now be transported back to India, where Naga tribal leaders plan to give them what they describe as a "respectful rest." Under a joint memorial planned for a park in Nagaland, the ancestral remains will finally be laid to rest, closing a painful chapter that began more than a century ago.
Laura Van Broekhoven, director of the Pitt Rivers Museum, called the occasion "a historic moment that will be part of stories told to next generations." She noted that the return had been delayed by "so much red tape everywhere," but that the remains were finally on their way home.
From Display to Decolonisation
For decades, the human remains were displayed at the Oxford museum, but in 2020 they were removed from public view as part of what the institution described as a "decolonisation process." The formal handover on Monday included the signing of an agreement with Naga leaders, cementing the transfer of custody.
The Pitt Rivers Museum holds more than 6,000 objects associated with Naga culture, believed to be the largest such collection in the world. Most were acquired during British colonial rule in India and Myanmar, the former Burma. According to the museum's website, 219 items are listed as human remains, added to the collection between 1910 and 1940 and mostly collected by two colonial administrators who were also anthropologists. The website acknowledges that objects from this period were "frequently confiscated during punitive military expeditions, rather than freely given."
A Painful Legacy
During their visit to Oxford, the Naga delegation also met with descendants of one of the anthropologists involved in collecting the remains. The encounter underscored the complex human dimensions of the repatriation.
"The manner in which these human remains were taken away from our land leaves much for us to speculate," Thejao Vihienuo, one of the tribal leaders, told AFP. "I suspect that nobody would have given the skull of his father or his grandfather as a gift to another person."
Anthropologists note that the Naga people once practised head hunting, severing the heads of enemies as trophies, but they also kept the heads of their own chiefs at the centre of villages. The return of these remains is seen as a step toward healing and cultural restoration.
A Growing Movement
The Pitt Rivers Museum, founded in the 19th Century, has previously returned human remains to indigenous communities in Australia, New Zealand and the United States. The latest handover to India concerns only the 39 ancestral remains and follows a visit by a Naga delegation to Oxford in 2025, when it formally requested their return. The museum had announced in September that the remains would be repatriated.
For the Naga community, the return is not just about objects, but about honouring ancestors and reclaiming a history that was taken from them. As the remains begin their journey home, they carry with them the hopes of a people determined to ensure their forebears are treated with the dignity they were denied.
