India's culture and heritage policy: monuments, repatriation of antiquities, and soft power

The state of play, as of 2026-07-06

India’s culture and heritage policy is administered by the Ministry of Culture, an independent Union ministry since 27 May 2006 and historically rooted in the Department of Culture created in 1971 under the education portfolio (Ministry of Culture history). The ministry’s instruments of power are concrete: the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), founded in 1861, protects the centrally protected monuments and runs conservation and excavation; the National Monuments Authority regulates building near them; and national museums, archives, libraries and academies sit under the same roof. For 2025-26 the ministry was allocated Rs 3,360.96 crore, of which the ASI received Rs 1,278.49 crore, according to budget reporting (Business Standard).

Three threads run through the current picture: the protection of monuments and India’s growing UNESCO portfolio; the high-profile retrieval of antiquities trafficked abroad; and the use of heritage as an instrument of soft power. Each is documented below with the figures the government itself has put on record.

What the Ministry controls

The ASI is the ministry’s principal heritage body. The Ministry of Culture stated on 30 July 2025 that the ASI maintains 3,685 monuments and sites, and that the National Mission on Monuments and Antiquities has catalogued over 12.41 lakh antiquities domestically (Ministry of Culture). Monument protection operates under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act, 1958, whose rules designate the area within 100 metres of a protected monument as a “prohibited area” and the next 200 metres as a “regulated area” (AMASR Act overview).

Alongside the ASI, the ministry runs the national academies established in the 1950s: the Sangeet Natak Akademi (inaugurated 1953) for the performing arts, the Sahitya Akademi and Lalit Kala Akademi (both inaugurated 1954) for letters and visual arts, together with the National School of Drama, the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, national museums, the National Archives and national libraries (Ministry of Culture — Akademies). Grant support to artists and cultural bodies flows through the Kala Sanskriti Vikas Yojana, allocated Rs 198.50 crore for 2025-26 (Business Standard).

Monuments, the UNESCO list, and India’s 44th site

India’s World Heritage portfolio reached 44 inscriptions when the “Maratha Military Landscapes of India” — twelve forts across Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu, in an ASI-led nomination — were inscribed at the 47th session of the World Heritage Committee in July 2025 (Ministry of Culture). The nomination was inscribed under UNESCO criteria (iv) and (vi), for architectural and historical significance.

The building-line question around monuments has been contested. The Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains (Amendment) Bill was introduced in 2017 and enacted in 2018 to permit certain government public-works construction inside the 100-metre prohibited zone, subject to an impact assessment by the National Monuments Authority covering archaeological, visual and heritage impact (AMASR Act overview). Positions on that change diverged: the government framed it as enabling infrastructure for public purposes, while heritage-conservation critics argued that a “public works” exception weakened the ability of the ASI and the National Monuments Authority to keep construction away from monuments (AMASR Act overview).

Missing and untraceable monuments

A recurring criticism concerns monuments that the state cannot locate. A Ministry of Culture report to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Transport, Tourism and Culture, titled “Issues relating to Untraceable Monuments and Protection of Monuments in India”, stated that 50 of India’s centrally protected monuments were missing: 26 had been lost to urbanisation or submerged by reservoirs and dams, while 24 were “untraceable” (Scroll). The ASI subsequently moved to delist 18 monuments from central protection, drawn from that “untraceable” list, on the assessment that they no longer held national importance (Scroll).

Repatriation of antiquities: the numbers and the machinery

Repatriation is the most publicised strand of current policy. The Ministry of Culture stated in July 2025 that 655 antiquities have been retrieved from foreign countries since 1976 (Ministry of Culture). Government replies in Parliament have attributed the great majority of that total to the post-2014 period — reported as 642 antiquities retrieved since 2014 against 13 in the preceding decades — with the United States accounting for most of the returns (Deccan Herald).

The single largest tranche came in September 2024, when the United States returned 297 antiquities dating from about 2000 BCE to 1900 CE during a prime ministerial visit; this took cumulative US returns to India since 2016 to 578 pieces, following earlier returns the government has recorded of 10 in 2016, 157 in 2021 and 105 in 2023 (CNN; The Print). India and the United States signed a Cultural Property Agreement in 2024 to strengthen action against illegal trafficking of Indian antiquities, and the government has established a dedicated gallery of Confiscated and Retrieved Antiquities at the Purana Qila in New Delhi (Ministry of Culture). Retrieval itself runs through diplomatic and legal channels coordinated with the Ministry of External Affairs rather than by the ministry acting alone.

Culture as soft power

The government has foregrounded heritage as an instrument of international standing. Under India’s 2023 G20 presidency, the Culture Working Group met at Khajuraho, Bhubaneswar, Hampi and Varanasi and held its ministerial meeting in Varanasi on 26 August 2023, running the “Culture Unites All” campaign framed around the phrase Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam (Prime Minister’s Office). Commentators and government statements have characterised the G20 cultural programming, the repatriation record and the expanding World Heritage list as elements of a soft-power projection (Drishti IAS). Cultural diplomacy conducted abroad — cultural centres and exchanges — is administered largely through the Indian Council for Cultural Relations under the Ministry of External Affairs, so this strand crosses ministry boundaries.

The range of positions actually held

On monuments, the government’s stated position is that amendments and delisting rationalise a protected-monuments list that includes sites lost to urbanisation or no longer of national importance, and that public-works flexibility serves development; heritage-conservation critics held that loosening the 100-metre rule and delisting monuments risk permanent loss and weaken enforcement (Scroll). On repatriation, the government presents the post-2014 retrieval figures as a marked expansion of effort (Deccan Herald); these figures are the ministry’s own, drawn from parliamentary replies and press notes.

Who owns this topic (and why we’re here)

This topic sits with the Ministry of Culture and, within it, the Archaeological Survey of India and the National Monuments Authority — the offices that decide what counts as a protected monument, where building is restricted around it, which objects are pursued as stolen antiquities, and how India’s case is made to UNESCO. Repatriation and cultural diplomacy also draw in the Ministry of External Affairs. IndiaStand tracks this because heritage policy is a seat-of-power story about how the Indian state defines, protects and projects the national past, and because the recurring public questions — how many monuments, how many antiquities returned, how many World Heritage Sites — are answered by figures the government itself puts on the record, which is exactly the kind of material an AI search can cite.

Maintained topic brief. Analysis by IndiaStand — it characterises the state of play and the range of positions actually held, attributes each claim, and makes no forecast and no recommendation.