Trading history

Recent media reports of antique arms sale executed a decade earlier stands out as a bitter example of our state’s apathy toward history and archaeology. It has been attested that at least 450 tons of old weapons including guns, cannonballs, rifles, cannon carriages, bayonets, armors, khukuri knives and weapons invented by the first Nepali scientist Gehendra Shusmher Rana were swept off the national armory and sold to US-based Atlanta Cutlery in 2001. Disclosure by the Ministry of Defense that it had obtained only half of the total amount of money from the sale is enough indication of a great deal of misappropriation and embezzlement. Monetary value aside, the antique weapons were a living witness of the expansion era of the late eighteenth century and Anglo-Nepal War (1814-16).



Details of events and actors involved in the shoddy deal are yet to come out. Chief of the Army Staff Mr Chhatra Man Singh Gurung has expressed ignorance about the case who reportedly told State Affairs Committee Friday that he had “no knowledge of the sale of the weapons until reports surfaced in the media.” But the nation is curiously watching what inside information the Ministry of Defense will furnish to the committee in the days ahead.



The incident has raised some serious questions. Why was such a million dollar deal kept confidential? Why did the then government have to siphon off weapons of archeological significance? The explanation that the weapons were too old to be retained in the national armory is the lamest, to say the least. Argument that Nepal Army had no sufficient space to store them is equally flabby. The then army officials are reported to have said that old weapons were exchanged for modern ones. If that is the case, the Ministry of Defense must tell the public how many weapons were bought from the amount obtained from the deal.



Nepal has an extremely poor track record of record keeping and documentation. Nepali libraries hardly have documents of historical significance in their store while British and American libraries are said to keep plenty of authentic historical documents from Nepal. This is the reason why Nepali students are forced to go Europe and the US to pursue their doctorate degrees in Nepali history. Under this backdrop, the sale of the weapons is tantamount to a crime. Hence, we applaud the initiatives taken by State Affairs Committee, albeit under media pressure.



But we also want to draw the attention of the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA) to bring all those involved in the trading of objects of archeological values under scanner. History is a window to understanding the present and the future. Those that attempt to break that window must not be spared.

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