Displaying Our Common Heritage

I just read a news article about the museums in Taiwan and China working together to track down some of the missing Imperial Treasures. Apparently these are part of the collection of the Imperial Family accumulated over the last 1000 years.

Initially the effort was to hide the treasures to prevent it from falling into the hand of the Japanese invaders.The collection was packed into tens of thousands of wooden cases and hidden in the country side. Subsequently when the war ended and there was dissension between the Nationalist , headed by General Chiang Kai-Shek and the Communists by Chairman Mao Tse-Tung, the Nationalists shipped off the prime pieces to Taiwan when it declared independence. The museum was built into the side of a mountain. I remember visiting it in the mid-seventies. Some of the exhibits were exquisite.

Now that relations between Taiwan and China are improving, effort is being made to track down the missing pieces. It is after all a common heritage.

Reading about it made me wonder why the countries in the sub-continent do not make an attempt to at least display and share our mutual history. Can the museums from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh ( and perhaps Nepal and Sri-Lanka as well),not put on a display on a common theme in our respective countries or even a traveling exhibit shown in other countries. The political issues can be sorted out later. Much as we like to pretend we are different, we are children from the same womb and have much in common culture, history, race and religion.