India on Saturday received the 11th-century Anaimangalam copper plates from the Netherlands, marking the end of a colonial journey that kept one of the Chola empire's most important epigraphic records overseas for more than 160 years.

The handover, made during Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to The Hague, has been hailed as both a cultural homecoming and a diplomatic signal of a changing global approach to colonial-era collections.

The Anaimangalam copper plates, better known in Europe as the Leiden Plates, date back to the reign of Chola emperor Rajaraja Chola I, who ruled between 985 and 1014 CE.

Cast in copper and strung together on a circular ring bearing the imperial Chola seal, the corpus comprises 21 large and three smaller plates weighing close to 30 kilograms.

Epigraphists regard them as among the most significant surviving records of the Chola period and a cornerstone of Tamil historical heritage preserved outside India until now.

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The text, inscribed in a mix of Sanskrit and Tamil, records royal grants of land revenues and taxes to Chudamani Vihara, a Buddhist monastery at Nagapattinam on the Tamil coast, built by Sri Mara Vijayotunga Varman, the ruler of the Srivijaya kingdom in present-day Indonesia.

While the original grant is attributed to Rajaraja Chola I, historians say his son and successor Rajendra Chola I had the order engraved on copper to ensure its permanent preservation.

Scholars note that the plates also contain references to the Cholas' overseas campaigns, maritime trade and diplomacy with Southeast Asia, making them a rare window into the interconnected world of the 11th-century Indian Ocean.

Retired archaeological officer C Santhalingam has described the plates as an "important piece of evidence on the history of the Chola period", pointing out that their detailed references to conquests and expeditions help corroborate other literary and inscriptional sources from the era.

For Tamil studies researchers, the return of the plates means easier physical access to a primary source that has long underpinned narratives of Chola statecraft, religion and commerce but has remained confined to a European archive.

From colonial acquisition to European archive

The plates left the Coromandel Coast in the 18th century, during the period when the Dutch East India Company controlled Nagapattinam and surrounding areas.

Archival accounts suggest they passed into Dutch hands through a company official, and by the mid-19th century they had entered the collection of Leiden University, which became a major repository for Asian manuscripts and inscriptions.

By 1862, the copper plates were formally catalogued there and, over time, were moved to secure storage, accessible mainly to scholars who obtained special permission.

For decades, the Leiden Plates featured in specialist research on South India and maritime Asia but rarely in public exhibitions, even as their absence from India became a recurring point in debates on colonial extraction of cultural property.

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The plates' complex journey -- from a Chola royal court to a Dutch colonial outpost, and then to a European university town -- mirrored wider patterns in which objects central to local histories became trophies, study specimens, or curiosities in imperial metropoles.

A 14-year diplomatic push

Indian officials began formally pressing for the return of the Anaimangalam plates around 2012, raising the matter in bilateral dialogues and at international cultural forums.

The campaign gathered momentum after the Netherlands adopted a national policy on the restitution of colonial-era artefacts in 2022, following recommendations from an advisory committee on colonial collections.

That framework recognised that objects removed in conditions of unequal power or conflict could legitimately be claimed by their countries of origin.

Subsequent provenance research by Leiden University Libraries and the Dutch Independent Colonial Collections Committee supported India's case that the plates were a core part of Tamil and Indian heritage and had left the country in a colonial context.

In 2023, a UNESCO-backed intergovernmental committee that reviews disputes over cultural property recommended that the Netherlands work with India on their return, further strengthening New Delhi's claim. After negotiations, both governments agreed that the handover would coincide with PM Modi's next bilateral visit, turning the restitution into a centrepiece of the trip's cultural agenda.

Officials familiar with the process say it took sustained engagement across multiple ministries and institutions -- including India's culture ministry, external affairs ministry, and the Dutch culture and foreign ministries -- before a final understanding was reached.

The Netherlands has in recent years also agreed to return significant colonial-era objects to Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Nigeria and Egypt, positioning itself as one of the more proactive European states on restitution.