A 10th-century sandstone sculpture of the Hindu god Rama returned to Cambodia decades after it was stolen from a temple during the kingdom’s civil war.

Denver Art Museum had acquired the 62-inch-tall torso from the Doris Weiner Gallery in 1986, which was stolen in the 1970s from the Koh Ker temple site. The museum says, at the time, it had no idea that the statue had been stolen. That only came from discussions with delegates from Cambodia.

Getting ready for the start of the handover ceremony of the Torso of Rama returned to Cambodia by @DenverArtMuseum. pic.twitter.com/rwikqspV8x

— Jay Raman (@ramanjr) March 28, 2016

The quiver on the statue’s back suggested that it had resided in the eastern gopura of the temple site. This section of the temple was home to two ferocious monkey kings, Valin and Sugriva, now in the National Museum of Cambodia.

But it still misses its head and other body parts. The kingdom of Cambodia continues to appeal to international art galleries and museums to return the missing limbs.

Documents sent to the Denver museum with measurements of the feet in a pedestal matched the legs of the torso. This confirmed that the statue had not left Cambodia legally. A chainsaw and hammer had detached the feet.

Cambodia’s Secretary of State, Chan Thani, thanked the Denver Museum of Art for voluntarily returning the Rama sculpture. And for its sensitivity towards Cambodian culture.

The statue dates back to the Khmer Empire, a Buddhist-Hindu dynasty famous for its temples and cities, including Cambodia’s Angkor Wat complex.

Authorities had located the pedestal which matched the Torso of Rama at Koh Ker’s Prasat Chen temple in 2012.

The Torso of Rama is the seventh statue to return to Cambodia from abroad.

On May 3, 2013, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York announced that two statues would return to Cambodia. The “Kneeling Attendants” – also called Pandavas – had been a feature of the museum’s Asian Wing for almost 20 years.

Mahabharata is a Sanskrit epic which depicts a wrestling match. Four other brothers, the Pandavas, had teamed with Duryodhana to wrestle Bhima. Observing the wrestling was the god Krishna and his brother, Balarama.

Like the Torso of Rama, thieves had severed the feet from their pedestals.

A year later and the Norton Simon Museum in California had agreed to return a looted statue to the kingdom of Cambodia. The 10th-century sandstone statue known as the “Temple Wrestler” or “Bhima” had been on display since 1976.

Archaeologist Tess Davies wrote a vivid and compelling account about the return of the Duryodhana statue to Cambodia in 2014.

The French protectorate absorbed Cambodia in 1863 and lasted until 1953. Colonialism shaped and dominated the scholarship of Cambodia’s history and culture. Academic classes on Cambodian architecture and history were taught by French professors. The French also helped establish the National Museum of Cambodia. Others argue that the looting of Cambodia’s cultural history began in this period. The civil war had served to extend an ongoing problem.

Against the backdrop of the Vietnam War, civil war and  political coups,  the  Communist  Party  of  Kampuchea (CPK),  also  known as Khmer  Rouge, seized power in 1975.

Pol Pot’s utopianism resulted in the murder of almost two million Cambodians in just three years. Under the ‘Year Zero’ directive, schools closed, religion was banned and money became worthless. Executions in the ‘killing fields’ involved torture, starvation and disease.

The Cleveland Museum of Art returned a statue of the Hindu monkey god Hanuman to Cambodia last year. It acquired the statue in 1982 from a now deceased New York art dealer.

A French museum returned the head of a 7th century  statue to Cambodia in January 2016. The statue which depicts the Hindu gods Vishnu and Shiva had its head stolen in 1886. It had stood in the Phnom Da temple in southern Takeo province prior to the theft. In Phnom Penh, a lavish ceremony saw the stolen head reattached.

The Norwegian collector Morten Bosterud returned two stone statues from the Angkor period to Cambodia in October 2015. Both statues were looted during the civil war and spent the past three decades in Europe. A ceremony in Phnom Penh saw Bosterud return a ninth century head of the god Shiva and a late 12th to early 13th century male divinity head.

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The festival of Navratri (nine nights) celebrates the triumph of good over evil. Navaratri begins around harvest time in October, and, celebrations last for nine days.

Navarati sits within the wider festival of Durga Puja, which honours the mother goddess Durga. In one retelling of the triumph of good, a demon named Mahisha, who took the form of a buffalo, threatened the gods. To meet this threat, the gods pleaded with Durga to do what they could not – kill the demon Mahisha.

Bestowed with the weapons and strength of the gods, including Shiva’s trident, Vishnu’s disc, Yama’s iron rod, and Indra’s thunderbolt, Durga took on this mission. But it did not prove an easy victory. For the demon Mahisha’s blood created new demons to attack Durga. A prolonged battle ended with the demon’s decapitation.

Another popular story in northern India concerns the slaying of the ten-headed demon King Ravana. In a final and epic battle with Rama, who pursued Ravana in his chariot. Rama’s golden arrows, which transformed into serpents as they reached the demon King. The arrows had decapitated Ravana’s many heads but they regrew in an instant. This prolonged the conflict for many nights as Rama fired hundreds of arrows.

Matali, Rama’s charioteer, advised that he use the divine arrow to end this battle. The ‘dreaded arrow of Brahma’ was a gift presented to Rama by Agastya. Its divinity stems from its capacity to never miss its target. That divine arrow, powered by the gods, pierced the demon King’s heart and killed him. Ravana’s ten heads represent the ten days of the festival. And Hindus use the each day to remove bad characteristics – such as jealousy and lust.

Motherhood is an important festival theme. Stories allude to Shiva’s decision to allow Durga to visit her mother for nine days of the year. Families attempt to follow this tradition and return on the tenth day.

To propitiate the nine planets and harvest season, nine different kinds of food grain seeds are grown in small containers and then offered to the goddesses.

Some devotees fast and offer prayers relating to health and prosperity. Others seek introspection. In Tamil Nadu, celebrations extend to the goddesses Lakshmi and Saraswati.

Durgashtami, Mahanavami and Vijayadasami are the names of the final three days of Navarathri. In Kerala, those celebrating worship Saraswathi as the goddess of knowledge. The deity of Gayathri represents the fountain of fine arts and science.

Diverse celebrations take place across India.

Vijayadasami marks the end of the nine-day festival. Across India, effigies are burnt and idols are cast into rivers in the hope of rekindling of the soil’s fertility.

The spectre of a growing Hindu nationalism continues to haunt parts of India. It morphed into a paroxysm of anti-Muslim anger and violence last year. Police had arrested 140 people after violence between Muslims and Hindus broke out in the state of Gujarat.

That violence came in a climate where radical Hindus, spurred on by the success of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), lobbied to ban Muslims and other religious minorities from participating festivals like Navratri.

Before his electoral success, the United States had denied him entry in 2005. The State Department can deny foreign dignitaries visas on grounds of “severe violations of religious freedom”. Narendra Modi remains the only person ever denied entry to the United States under this provision.

Modi faced allegations that he failed to stop deadly riots by Hindus against the Muslim minority in the state of Gujarat in 2002. At least 1,000 people died as a result of the riots that lasted a matter of days.  Though the courts later found that Modi had no case to answer.

A reminder of the faultlines of exploited religious tensions appeared in Bishara, near Delhi last week. A mob murdered Mohammed Akhlaq, a 50-year-old labourer, on the belief that he and his Muslim family had consumed beef, an animal considered sacred in Hinduism.

The seductive narrative of religious nationalism can undermine religious cohesion, even in times of celebration.

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