For more than 160 years, a set of copper plates known abroad as the Leiden Plates lay in a Dutch university archive, far from the land where they were created and buried for safekeeping. On a visit to The Hague, Prime Minister Narendra Modi witnessed Leiden University’s announcement that it will return these Chola-period inscriptions to India after a provenance investigation found they left the subcontinent during Dutch colonial rule without the consent of local custodians.
Dated to the reigns of Rajendra Chola I and Kulottunga Chola I nearly a millennium ago, the copper plates are written in Tamil and Sanskrit and record royal grants to the Chudamani Vihara, a Buddhist monastery in Nagapattinam. Weighing almost 30 kg in total and bearing royal seals and detailed inscriptions, the plates are prized by historians for the rare administrative, religious and maritime information they provide, including links between the Chola kingdom and the Srivijaya polity of Southeast Asia.
Investigators accepted by Leiden University concluded the plates were likely unearthed around 1687–1700 during operations of the Dutch East India Company in Nagapattinam, then a VOC trading post, and removed without the consent of their rightful custodians. The artifacts are believed to have reached the Netherlands by 1712 and were donated to Leiden University in 1862, where they were preserved and studied for generations. In India the plates also came to symbolize the broader issue of cultural property taken during colonial times.
India requested repatriation in 2023. Leiden commissioned an independent provenance inquiry and sought advice from the Netherlands Colonial Collections Committee, which described the loss of possession as involuntary. Citing the plates’ great historical value for India, Leiden University accepted the committee’s recommendation and agreed to return them.
The Chola Plates will be handed over to the Archaeological Survey of India, which will decide on their public display. Beyond the physical transfer, many observers—including historians and members of the Indian diaspora in the Netherlands—see the decision as the restoration of a piece of medieval South Indian history to its place of origin and as part of a growing international movement for returning cultural heritage displaced during colonial eras.
