At The Altar Of Acrimony

The first to offer help were the Indians. More out of sentimental than political motives, say Indian officials, the first team from the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) went to Angkor to prepare for restoration as early as in 1980, just a year after the genocidal Khmer Rouge had been routed by a Vietnamese invasion. Actual restoration, however, began only in 1986 and continued for seven dry seasons. But in May 1993—just before the UN-sponsored elections that ushered in the present coalition government—the ASI team withdrew amid a flurry of allegations in the Western media that it had damaged monuments by using strong chemicals to clear away vegetation and cement to reinforce the foundations. The original foundations at Angkor are of lat-erite stone, which is very strong anddurable and has already served well for centuries. Reinforced concrete cement (RCC), by contrast, is not so long-lasting.

Indian officials, however, insist that cement was used only when no other good option existed. "The international criticism targeting the work of the ASI was an exercise in hyperbole," says N.K. Saxena, first secretary at the Indian Embassy in Phnom Penh. "The Archaeological Survey of India's work in restoring Angkor Wat has been declared to be of highest quality by the experts deputed by UNESCO." However, he concedes that the clearing of vegetation may have been done a bit too enthusiastically. "It was perhaps an overzealous use of chemicals in cleaning the structure which led to this crit-icism." The Indian tendency to regard even ancient temples as living places of worship rather than monuments perhaps led to this, he says. In any case, he points out, it takes only a couple of rainy seasons for vegetation to grow and bring back the "antique" look most westerners seem to prefer.

French and Japanese teams which are currently handling the restoration work are known to be using much more cement than the Indians, who relied on expert knowledge of Hindu temple styles and painstaking, labour-intensive methods of retrieving original blocks and statues—sometimes using their own money to buy them back from farmers who had found mundane uses for them in their fields. In fact, French teams have actually dismantled original laterite foundations and replaced them with RCC. Members of the UNESCO technical committee are known to have been shocked to see what one called this "unprincipled work".

Cambodian Minister of Culture Vann Molyvann is known to be in favour of the Indian team returning, and UNESCO officials have said Indian participation in discussions on methods of restoration is essential. But the Cambodian Government's failure to invite the ASI to return has much more to do with politics and money than with expertise or alleged Indian blunders.

The French presence in Cambodia is strong and assertive—verging on the neo-colonial. Several trips to the French Embassy by this correspondent failed toyield an interview with a relevant official. Teams from the Ecole Francaise d' Extreme Orient (French School of the Far East, or EFEO) first began restoration work at Angkor in 1898, and continued uninterrupted—except during World War II—until forced to leave in 1972 because of the civil war. They returned again in 1993.

Angkor is only one of several matters on which France is accused of arrogance and bullying. Critics in the diplomatic community accuse France of blackmailing the Cambodian government, threatening to withdraw development aid unless French language, French experts and French fi rms are given preferential treatment. While few are willing to voice such suspicions on record, rumours and stories abound. Onerecounts how Prince Norodom Sirivudh, a son of King Norodom Sihanouk, who, while foreign minister in 1994, asked Indian Embassy officials to help develop a syllabus for English instruction in primary schools. Printing of material would have been cheap in India, and India's extensive experience in using English as a second language would have come in handy. Last autumn, allegedly under French pressure, the Cambodian Government quietly withdrew its request.

 The French "want to hang on to that colonial role when they were greater than they are today," says one diplomat. The Americans for their part "feel a bit thwarted here. There is a subterranean resentment against too overt an American pres-ence, which the French are playing upon." The new French Embassy building at one end of Monivong Boulevard seems to lend credence to these impressions of French intentions. Large and imposing, with high walls and a well-guarded front gate, that building is a statement of the powerful French presence in the country.

The French are the third-largest donors of foreign assistance to Cambodia (pledging US $208,570,000 for the period 1992 to 1995), after Japan and the United States. The fourth is Australia, which also has a strong presence here.

 In any case, all the restoration may be too little, too late. As Phnom Penh helplessly watches foreign governments wrangle over the restoration, smugglers blatan-tly continue to indulge in what journalistic shorthand calls "antiquities theft": heads and even whole statues are being stolen from the temples, many finding their way into Western museums. "Each day we lose a piece of our cultural heritage at the hands of local and international traffickers," complained Ministry of Culture official Michel Tranet in September, when the ministry declared a "state of emergency" to help combat the menace.

"This is quite a big problem," acknowledged Nhouy Vanisvung, director of the Phnom Penh office of UNESCO. Traffickers succeed mainly by paying local people to find statues in the smaller temples still hidden in the land mine-infested jungle. "No matter how much people are taught about protecting their heritage, if they only earn $10 to $15 per month and a smuggler offers them $150 to $200 to take a head, they will do it," French Embassy official Christian Guth told the Agence France-Presse. Guth, who supervises the special police unit responsible for protecting Angkor from smugglers, claims that in the past year, "it has become nearly impossible to steal from the big temples...now what we see is people stealing from the smaller temples in the forest." Perhaps he fails to understand that even these smaller temples are a part of Cambodia's history.

Unless the government takes immediate preventive steps, Angkor Wat, which has weathered the ravages of time and man for so long, may soon become another symbol of man's callousness towards the past.