Oxford University returns human skulls of Naga community taken during British rule to India

According to a BBC report, Oxford University has returned the remains of 39 individuals taken from the Naga community during British colonial rule in India. To mark this handover, a delegation of about 30 people from the northeastern hill state of Nagaland attended a ceremony at Oxford's Pitt Rivers Museum on Monday.

These remains, mostly skulls, will be taken back to India and given a "respectful rest," as described by Naga tribal leaders. There are plans to bury these remains under a joint memorial in a park in Nagaland. Museum Director Laura Van Broekhoven described this as "a historic moment" that will become part of the stories told to future generations. She stated that after cutting through "a lot of red tape" (administrative hurdles), these remains are finally going back home.

These human remains were displayed at the Oxford Museum for decades and were later removed from public view in 2020, which the museum described as a "decolonization process." The Pitt Rivers Museum holds over 6,000 items related to Naga culture, considered the largest collection of its kind in the world. Most of the items were acquired during British colonial rule in India and Myanmar (formerly Burma).

The museum's website lists 219 items as human remains. These items were added to the collection between 1910 and 1940 and were mostly collected by two colonial administrators who were anthropologists. The museum's website states that items collected during this period were "frequently seized during punitive military expeditions, rather than being given voluntarily."

During the visit to Oxford, the Naga delegation also met the descendants of one of the anthropologists involved in collecting the remains. One of the tribal leaders, Thejao Whihienuo, told AFP that the manner in which these human remains were taken from our land leaves much for us to ponder. He expressed doubt that anyone would gift the skull of their father or grandfather to another person.

According to anthropologists, the Naga people practiced headhunting in the past, in which the heads of enemies were severed as trophies. However, they also kept the heads of their own leaders in the center of villages.

Pitt Rivers Museum, established in the 19th century, has previously returned human remains to indigenous communities in Australia, New Zealand, and the US. This recent repatriation to India concerns only 39 ancestral remains and follows a visit by a Naga delegation to Oxford in 2025, when they made a formal request for their return. The museum announced in September that these remains would be returned to India.