The Homecoming of the Dead: Decolonising Museums Is Only the Beginning

For more than a century, 39 Naga ancestors lay in Oxford not as members of a community but as museum inventory. Their return from the Pitt Rivers Museum is more than the conclusion of an administrative process. It is a reminder that colonialism did not end when empires withdrew. Some of its deepest wounds still reside in the world's most celebrated museums.

The decision to repatriate the remains is welcome, but it also forces an uncomfortable reckoning. Colonialism was never merely about occupying territories or extracting wealth. It was equally about controlling knowledge, defining civilisation and deciding whose humanity deserved dignity. The theft of ancestral remains was perhaps its most disturbing expression.

Across the British Empire, colonial administrators collected skulls, skeletons, sacred objects and cultural artefacts under the banner of scientific inquiry. Museums were not passive storehouses of history but laboratories of empire. Anthropology often became an extension of colonial administration, classifying Indigenous peoples into racial hierarchies and transforming living communities into objects of study. What appeared to be scholarship frequently legitimised imperial superiority.

The experience of the Nagas illustrates this history. Between 1910 and 1940, colonial administrators and anthropologists John Henry Hutton and James Philip Mills transported Naga ancestral remains to Oxford, where they remained for decades. Detached from the communities that regarded ancestors as continuing members of society rather than scientific specimens, they became exhibits of colonial power disguised as academic curiosity.

The Pitt Rivers Museum deserves credit for choosing dialogue over denial. Its collaboration with the Forum for Naga Reconciliation, tribal Hohos, elders and churches recognises that repatriation is not merely the return of property but an act of restorative justice. Yet this success also exposes an uncomfortable truth. Why did it take more than a century to recognise that displaying Indigenous human remains was morally indefensible?

The answer lies in the persistence of colonial thinking. European museums frequently defend themselves as "universal museums", claiming that great collections belong to all humanity rather than individual nations. The argument sounds cosmopolitan until one asks a simple question: whose humanity? Universalism becomes ethically hollow when universality begins with conquest. A possession acquired through unequal power cannot become legitimate simply because time has passed.

Nor were these collections built on consent. Modern museums rightly demand informed permission before displaying contemporary human remains. Colonial collections operated on the opposite assumption, treating Indigenous peoples as subjects without equal moral status. Museums may describe themselves as neutral custodians of history, but every collection reflects political choices about what was taken, what was preserved and whose voices were ignored.

The Naga case also reveals the limitations of global restitution. While international norms, including the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, increasingly recognise Indigenous communities' rights over ancestral heritage, repatriation still depends largely on institutional goodwill rather than enforceable legal obligations. Even in this case, one ancestral remain was withheld because its provenance could not be conclusively established, demonstrating how colonial documentation continues to shape post-colonial justice.

This debate extends far beyond Nagaland. The Benin Bronzes, Māori ancestral remains, Aboriginal Australian sacred objects and India's claim over the Kohinoor all reflect a broader demand from the Global South to confront the material legacy of empire. Returning selected collections is welcome, but it cannot substitute for an honest reckoning with the political systems that filled Europe's museums in the first place. Decolonisation cannot remain an occasional gesture; it must become an institutional principle.

India, too, must resist easy triumphalism. The real test begins after repatriation. Will returned remains become bureaucratic possessions of the state, or will Indigenous communities themselves determine how their ancestors are honoured? Decolonisation requires more than replacing foreign custodians with domestic ones. It requires restoring agency to the people from whom both history and authority were taken.

Ultimately, this debate is about competing visions of humanity. Colonial institutions reduced ancestors to scientific evidence. Indigenous societies regard them as bearers of memory, identity and spiritual continuity. The return of the Naga ancestors therefore restores not only dignity to the dead but also recognition to a worldview colonialism sought to erase.

When these 39 ancestors finally return home, they will cross more than continents. They will cross the long shadow of empire. Their journey should become a measure by which the world judges every institution still built on colonial acquisition. History cannot be undone, but it can be confronted honestly. A truly post-colonial world will be measured not by what its museums possess, but by what they are willing to return.