Burglaries often leave people feeling and looking a bit foolish. Any action taken afterwards is necessarily belated and likely to lapse into self-parody. The fact remains that none of the items of the Tagore booty has been recovered yet. The inventory itself has not been made definitively. It now appears, in spite of conflicting statements in the media, that the Nobel citation has not been stolen. Only the medal is gone. This seems to indicate a certain order of thievery and a particular kind of criminal profile. Yet, “insider” theories are still doing the rounds, and the authorities are continuing to give out the sense of a complicated affair. But the febrile hyper-activity of the police in the midst of all this is what enhances the sense of the ridiculous. They seem to have suddenly woken up to the existence of terrible goings-on in the antiques trade. Their high-energy serial raids on border villages and antique dealers, and their knocking together of a ragtag bunch of burglars from the Birbhum area are being made to look like a massive “crackdown”. To match the action, some momentous conclusions have been reached. “Preliminary investigation” suggests that “the thieves entered the building while India was batting”. Also, ingenious detective-work has revealed that a child was used by the burglars (shades of Oliver Twist). The brilliance and solemnity of these deductions, coupled with the recovery of a whole medley of stolen antiques, seem to have created a tremendous ferment in the scene. Such unthinkable offences as the forging of paintings or the trafficking in minor treasures at the border are being discovered and announced in the tone of dramatic revelations. It sounds as if all this is quite new, and has suddenly come to light, bringing out feats of quelling on the part of the police, inspired by the highest cultural values.

To such mock-heroic action must be added the political histrionics. Ms Mamata Banerjee has arrived with her inexhaustible reserves of passion. So has the chief minister. The highest authorities, from the prime minister to the Central Bureau of Investigation, have been invoked, and their interventions sought. Silent processions are haunting the streets of Santiniketan. But the sense of a post facto ineffectuality informs the entire situation. This would have been almost comical had the intangible stakes not been so high, and so serious. It is profoundly significant that the tragicomedy of icon-making is being played out now in the ruins of a museum. It is in the hallowed spaces of a culture and a society that the debasement of their most cherished values is miserably exposed.