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Acclaimed Uyghur poet and human rights advocate Abduweli Ayup has been invited to give a presentation at the Sorbonne University in Paris on Oct. 24, documenting linguicide and family separation in Xinjiang.

Speaking from his home in Norway, Ayup said he plans to use the occasion –which he will fund using his own resources – to reveal that 47,000 Uyghur children in Kashgar county have been separated from their parents.

He also plans to share videos and photos from so-called boarding kindergartens, an established concept in China that critics allege are used to instill national culture and result in Uyghur kids who “forget” their first language.

A translation of the invitation, written by the European Uyghur Academy, said that Ayup has been invited to give a lecture about his research as part of a “scientific symposium” that “will bring together Uyghur academics, engineers, artists, writers and young entrepreneurs working across different parts of Europe.”

The meeting “aims to exchange views on preserving the Uyghur language and cultural heritage, how the Uyghur diaspora – especially youth – can approach opportunities in modern science, technology, and business, as well as the future of the Uyghur diaspora and strengthening mutual cooperation.”

Linguicide by school

Ayup said one part of his presentation will focus on linguicide – the forced death of a language through policies, violence, or other ways.

“According to my documentation, Uyghur kids under 13 don’t speak Uyghur. The boarding kindergartens are the most dangerous [places] which [are] killing the Uyghur language. Uyghur language was eliminated from public life, like street signs, tables and even the menus at the restaurants. The kids have to report every morning at the school what language they spoke at home – if the schools found that kids speak[Uyghur] at home, their parents would be punished [by losing] their security scores,” Ayup said.

Kids, whom Ayup described as “prisoners,” “have to speak Chinese when they meet with their family members once a month.” Ayup also said these residential schools are “killing” the Uyghur language by keeping children there up to 270 days a year.

“If their kids speak Chinese well, their score will rise. If they don’t speak Chinese to their family members, they will lose their scores. The complete surveillance mechanism makes linguicide possible in the Uyghur homeland.”

The other part of Ayup’s presentation will focus on the Chinese ethnic unity law, which he says is his “main focus” because “we need to tell the world how dangerous it is.” The Law on Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress, which took effect on July 1 this year, aims to protect minority rights and strengthen ethnic groups.

When the law took effect, the World Uyghur Congress said the legislation “seeks to forcibly assimilate ethnic groups” such as Uyghurs “into a single ‘Chinese nation’ by discouraging the expression of distinct ethnic identities while promoting a state-imposed concept of ‘ethnic unity’ that elevates Han Chinese identity as the national norm.”

Ayup, who has co-authored a new book about Uyghur exiles fighting in Syria, said the law has “criminalized freedom of expressions in diaspora, like expressing your opinion, send[ing] your kids to Uyghur schools in diaspora [and] participating in Uyghur gatherings outside of China.”

The law also “legalized demolishing Uyghur mosques, replacing place names, changing Uyghur culture [and] banning [the] Uyghur language,” Ayup said.

“We will publish a report about [kids aged between three and six years old who are in] the Chinese boarding kindergarten system because of their parents [being] in prison or because of their parents being transferred to other provinces.”

He said that while he is documenting testimonies of both crimes, he and his team of volunteers at Uyghur Hjelp, a not-for-profit he co-founded in Norway, are not pursuing legal action.

“I just document and publish reports. But legal action? That’s not my job,” Ayup said. ”We are focusing on documenting and explaining.”

However, Ayup said a legal case has been initiated by international human rights lawyer Rayhan Asat in the United States, “but the case is really slow.”

Verifying, documenting, exposing

Ayup, who is the only linguist in his group, said his process of documenting involves verifying claims by confirming identities and reports through open-source data and other ways.

Ayup said this open-source research extends to cultural artefacts: “We use Google Earth. For example, if you say that the mosque in your neighborhood is being destroyed, we use Google Earth to check if it happened or not.”

“We don’t publish anything if we are not sure it happened, but we hide some parts of the facts if it will put someone in danger, and we will not share that. So we never share the source.”

One challenge is corroborating claims. For example, in speaking with Uyghurs who have witnessed mass graves, he said, “The problem is people only can share with us that they have seen it and their family members are being buried there.

“It is really hard to prove it because we need to have solid evidence” such as photos, Ayup said.

“People can tell us what happened, but they can’t share the names and they can’t share the exact location” because they worry that the Chinese government will find out and family members will be persecuted.

Ayup also said that Uyghur Hjelp now focuses on telling detailed stories of Uyghur people who are arrested in China, rather than simply counting how many have been arrested.

“We did something like that in 2021 or 2020. At the time, we investigated 5,000 people being arrested. But since then, we focused on how many people were being arrested, then we focused on who they are.

“Now we are publishing their story. We published books of the people in jail, and we are going to publish an anthology of Uyghur writers who have been arrested,” Ayup said.

More broadly, while Ayup and others continue to raise awareness, he said the “crucial part” is stopping the genocide of Uyghur people and holding accountable those responsible.

While he noted the US government’s passage of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act in 2021, which prevents goods made with forced labor throughout Xinjiang from being imported into the US, he said other countries and international organizations like the United Nations haven’t played their part.

A recent Human Rights Watch report, for example, concluded “that what’s happening in the Uyghur homeland may constitute crimes against humanity,” Ayup said, but there weren’t any real accusations or action.

“Unfortunately, people are still being arrested,” Ayup said. “I am concerned that those people who were arrested in 2017 and 2018 … are dying. That’s the sad part.”

Cameron Magusic is an Australian journalist who has contributed to academic and public discussions regarding the human rights situation of China’s Uyghur Muslim minority.

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Singaporean courts have become a battlefield where commodities trading companies are suing each other for billions of dollars. Multiple creditors have sued Radiant World Corporation, a Singaporean metal and mineral trader, with a US fund accusing Radiant of possibly committing the biggest commodities fraud since the Enron scandal in 2001, when US energy firm Enron suffered one of the biggest US bankruptcies with US$63.4 billion in assets. In turn, Radiant and its associate companies have sued Glencore, an Anglo-Swiss commodities trading and mining company.

Radiant’s website states, “Radiant World and ten other companies have commenced proceedings in the Singapore courts against Glencore International AG and associated companies, arising out of a commercial relationship spanning more than a decade. The claims, which include claims for damages exceeding US$2 billion.”

“Radiant World rejects, in the clearest terms, the allegations of wrongdoing that have been made against it and the companies associated with it,” its website added.

Glencore retorted in a statement on September 15, “Radiant World and Sapphire Minmetals have alleged that they have claims against Glencore for substantial amounts. These claims are meritless and we will contest them vigorously. We have incurred losses and been exposed to risks by Radiant World companies and will take appropriate action.”

“Glencore has confirmed evidence that these companies sent falsified invoices and contracts as well as fabricated emails, which they fraudulently claimed to have received from Glencore personnel, to a number of financial institutions,” the London-listed firm alleged.

“We take these issues seriously and are conducting a review of our historic business activities with Radiant World, Sapphire Minmetals and associated companies. We have stopped doing business with these companies and have exited all obligations,” Glencore added.

In a judgment of the Singapore High Court on September 25, Judge Kristy Tan said, “I do not accept (Radiant World’s) argument that its claim against Glencore for approximately US$2 billion…. should be regarded as a realisable asset. It is pure speculation as to how the claim will fare and that it will be “resolved within 12 months”.”

Tan placed Radiant under the judicial management of several executives of KPMG, a Big Four accounting firm.

“There is an urgent need for interim judicial managers to investigate the Company’s affairs in the light of the prima facie pattern of fraudulent conduct on the part of the Company’s management that has been seen,” Tan explained.

The Singapore High Court judgment concerned a lawsuit by Mizuho Bank against Radiant.

Three statutory demands have been made against Radiant, which it has not satisfied within three weeks thereafter, Tan noted.

On August 17, Mizuho, a Japanese bank, served a statutory demand for US$97.3 million on the company.

On August 21, Deutsche Bank, Singapore Branch (“DBSG”) served a statutory demand for US$102.6 million on the company.

On August 14, Intesa Sanpaolo (“ISP”, an Italian bank) served a statutory demand for US$126.15 million plus interest on the company.

“ISP’s experience prima facie comports with and contributes to the prima facie pattern of fraud seen in Mizuho and DBSG’s experiences with the Company,” Tan said.

On July 30, two of the world’s largest commodities trading companies, Vitol and Cargill, announced they had halted all business with Radiant, said a report by Control Risks, a UK risk consultancy, on September 28. “This was based on concerns that the Singapore-based trading house had provided allegedly falsified trade documents and invoices to its creditor banks.”

In the judgement, Tan noted, “It is again telling that the Company has avoided addressing the specific details of fraud provided by DBSG in respect of the Vitol Transactions and Glencore Transaction.”

Singapore Police, the US Justice Department and the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission announced they were probing transactions related to Radiant, according to Control Risks’ report. Multiple banks froze accounts held by Radiant, while trading houses halted their transactions with the firm and civil lawsuits were filed against Radiant in Singapore by Mizuho and a Singapore trade finance platform, Incomlend, the report added.

In late September, court filings revealed six creditors held a combined US$870 million exposure to Radiant, said Control Risks’ report.

One of the largest frauds in commodities trading since Enron?

On September 14, Mariner Atlantic Multi-Strategy, a New York fund, filed a criminal complaint with the Geneva Public Prosecutor’s Office in Switzerland for fraud and money laundering against Radiant World Corporation SA (Radiant’s Geneva-based subsidiary), Radiant’s founder Pinkesh Nahar and other parties.

Mariner has requested a criminal investigation, searches of premises in Geneva, and the seizure of bank accounts and assets in Switzerland, said a US court document filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York on September 29.

According to the US court document, Mariner has requested the New York court to permit Mariner to obtain documentary discovery from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the Clearing House Interbank Payments System for use in the legal proceedings in Switzerland.

On June 26, Mariner entered into an agreement with Radiant World Corporation, the Singaporean company, and Radiant World Holding Limited, a related Hong Kong company, under which Mariner made available to these two firms two revolving credit facilities totaling US$50 million. On June 30, Radiant made four drawdown requests totaling US$48.6 million.

“However, after the funds were released, Mariner learned that Radiant systematically had falsified commercial documents in order to simulate transactions and thereby obtain financing from international lenders, including Mariner, through fictitious trades,” Mariner alleged in the US court document.

Several of Radiant’s purported counterparties were entities controlled by Nahar, Mariner alleged. “The scale of this blatant fraud is considerable: the value of the fraudulent invoices issued as collateral could reach US$1 billion, which would make it one of the largest frauds in the commodities trading sector since the Enron scandal.”

“This is just the latest in a series of scandals centred around document fraud involving commodities traders in Singapore,” said Control Risks’ report.

In 2020, a crash in global oil prices exposed two significant trade finance frauds, leading to the spectacular collapse of oil trading companies Hin Leong Trading and ZenRock Commodities, Control Risks’ report cited. Hin Leong’s founder, O.K. Lim, confessed to having concealed over US$800 million in futures losses and directing the forgery of trade documents to secure US$3.85 billion in credit from over 20 banks, while secretly selling off the oil pledged as collateral. Around the same time, ZenRock collapsed under more than US$600 million in debt, after lenders discovered the firm had used fabricated documents and round-tripping transactions to repeatedly pledge the same cargo to different banks.

In 2023, Singapore-headquartered Trafigura uncovered a US$577 million deception, Control Risks’ report cited. The commodities giant discovered that thousands of shipping containers, which had been documented as holding high-grade nickel, were filled with low-value carbon steel, scrap metal and rubble.

“These incidents showed that even the world’s most sophisticated trading desks remain vulnerable to physical substitution fraud when they rely on paper documentation for cargo that is non-existent, substituted or double-pledged,” Control Risks’ report said.

Toh Han Shih is a Singaporean writer in Hong Kong and a regular contributor to Asia Sentinel.

When Nguyễn Thành Nam released In Conversation with Thanh: A New Account of the Light in April, Vietnam’s state media fell in line. Twenty official outlets, including major Communist Party mouthpieces, coordinated their praise. Nam, a former CEO of telecoms giant FPT (now half-owned by the Ministry of Public Security), is now a lecturer on Hồ Chí Minh ideology at Hanoi’s VinUniversity, a non-profit institution established in 2018 by Vingroup. The book appeared to be an approved project, a dialogue between Thanh, a Gen Z college student indifferent to history, and her teacher Thành, who embodies Nam’s own life story, through which the journey of Hồ Chí Minh, founder of the Communist Party of Vietnam, gradually unfolds.

But less than two months later, the orchestrated celebration turned into complete erasure. After a handful of Facebook users accused the book of distorting history and disparaging “the Father of the Nation”, state outlets that had championed it quietly removed their praise in unison. By July, Nam, the chief promoter of his book, Trần Việt Anh, and three publishing officials faced charges under Article 117 of Vietnam’s Criminal Code, accused of “Making, storing, distributing or propagandizing information, documents, or objects aimed at opposing the Socialist Republic of Vietnam State.” If convicted, each could face up to 20 years in prison. Nam reportedly admitted that much of the content in the book was false, expressed regret, and apologized to readers.

Human Rights Watch called on Vietnam to drop all charges and release those arrested over the publication and promotion of the book. It is perhaps rare for the organization, which had reported 160 political prisoners still locked up in the country, to call for justice for a group of regime-friendly propagandists.

“For the Communist Party leadership, even a book about their founding father written for young people can be deemed a threat to the party’s monopoly on power,” said Elaine Pearson, Asia director at Human Rights Watch.

The case sends a chilling message to Vietnam’s intellectual class: no author, no matter how wealthy, politically connected or institutionally protected, is safe if they stray from approved orthodoxy, not even in service of the regime’s own heroes. Yet to dismiss Nam’s book as pure propaganda oversimplifies its actual contributions and potential “threats.”

The wrong author

The aftermath was swift and severe. Nguyễn Quang Thiều, chairman of the Writers’ Association and head of the state-owned Vietnamese Writers Publishing House, a former police official, was expelled from the Communist Party. The Publishing House was fined VND 100 million ($3,900) and suspended from operations for two months. In addition, the Publishing House must recall and destroy all copies of the book. It also must return the “illegal” profits obtained from the violations, amounting to VND 424 million.

The Ministry of Public Security’s formal allegations were damning: the book “distorts the history of revolution, the political lines and policies of the Party and State; insults President Hồ Chí Minh, general Võ Nguyên Giáp and many other Party and State leaders.” But these charges obscure the deeper transgression.

Nam was previously awarded a Certificate of Merit by former Prime Minister Nguyễn Xuân Phúc for exemplary achievements in “studying and following Ho Chi Minh’s thought, morality, and style during the period 2016-2019,” and was honored by the Central Propaganda Department in 2019. He had reportedly invested VND 1 billion in publishing this 300-page book. Yet the first real transgression was Nam as the author. Within Vietnam’s tightly controlled publishing system, authorized Ho Chi Minh biographies are often designated to be written by very red writers. Nam, a mathematician by training and an entrepreneur by profession, became the first author of his kind to write about the revered leader. Even Nam’s current affiliation with Vingroup, one of Vietnam’s largest conglomerates, offered no shield.

Nam’s inspiration came from Ho Chi Minh: A Life, a 2000 biography penned by former US State Department Foreign Service officer William Duiker. Duiker’s work is widely regarded as the first comprehensive, major Western biography of Hồ to draw on extensive archival research conducted in Vietnam. Nam had enjoyed the book so much that he even translated it into Vietnamese. The treatise was cited verbatim numerous times in Nam’s book. The teacher character even urged his student to find anecdotes of Hồ’s love life in the book, an absolute taboo given the official narrative that Hồ remained single and selflessly sacrificed everything for the country all his life.

Nam broke with the convention by referring to Hồ by his various names across different periods: Nguyễn Sinh Cung, Nguyễn Tất Thành, Nguyễn Ái Quốc, etc., rather than exclusively as “Uncle Hồ,” the official honorific. This seemingly small choice reflected a larger methodological commitment to treat Ho as a historical figure subject to normal scrutiny rather than as a quasi-religious icon. The book’s Gen Z-friendly tone and language have been equated with the trivialization of Hồ’s image. Nam presented Hồ as admirable but imperfect, a down-to-earth but dignified figure. It is a portrait that allows readers to recognize Ho’s genuine achievements without placing him on an untouchable pedestal.

Pro-democracy activist Nguyễn Quang A interpreted the book as an example of “soft propaganda” and the repercussions on Nam as a top-down attempt to “monopolize the worship” of political leaders. The message sent to Vietnam’s intellectual class was unmistakable: even those who adore the heroes the Party loves are not free to love them thoughtfully. Even propaganda can be considered seditious if it deviates from the approved narrative.

Dangerous nuance

What truly alarmed the authorities was not only Nam’s alleged disrespect toward Hồ, but rather the intellectual pluralism the book embraced and even encouraged among young people. The book examines Vietnam’s past with nuance and reference to different sectors rather than conformity to traditional textbooks. Such balance is, by Vietnamese state standards, heretical.

The book’s timeframe goes from the French invasion in 1858 to NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang’s visit to Vietnam in December 2024. The leaders of the Nguyễn dynasty (1802 – 1945) emerge not as pure villains but as complex historical actors. The book acknowledges their role in enabling the French invasion while crediting their dedication to national sovereignty, a characterization that diverges sharply from the villainy and cowardice portrayed in Party-centric histories.

More tellingly, the book addresses American support for the Viet Minh during the anti-Japanese resistance of World War II. Historical records and declassified documents confirm that the US military did assist Hồ’s forces against Japanese occupation, though no formal alliance was ever established. Hồ himself, in the war’s early stages, believed that only the United States had the capacity to help Vietnam achieve independence. The Communist Party of Vietnam has never publicly acknowledged this fact.

The book also treats South Vietnamese leaders with unprecedented fairness. Rather than depicting them as mere foreign puppets, Nam presents Bảo Đại and Ngô Đình Diệm as leaders possessing their own vision and agency. Moreover, he notes that the South’s land reforms and market-oriented economic policies achieved “considerable high growth rates in 1955–1963” – a comparison that implicitly questions the superiority of the Communist path. Such statements would never appear in state-approved textbooks.

Darker chapters also surface throughout Nam’s narrative. He discusses land reform injustices, the brutal Nhân Văn-Giai Phẩm literary and intellectual movement of the 1950s, South Korean participation in the Vietnam War and the atrocities committed, the reeducation camps that imprisoned former Southern officials without trial, the exodus of boat people fleeing Communist rule, and the rupture with China following reunification, etc. All are subjects the regime prefers left unexamined, or examined only through the lens of approved Party interpretations.

The book’s true offense was not disrespect toward Ho Chi Minh. Nam is a genuine admirer, someone who had organized ceremonies in Hồ’s honor and reportedly spent a billion dong publishing this book and thus promoting his legacy. His crime was allowing Hồ the complexity and humanity that the regime demands be denied him. The book presents Hồ as a polymath and patriot who “encouraged critical inquiry,” a characterization that, ironically, suggests young readers should engage with history the way Hồ himself supposedly did.

The broader campaign

This case comes at a time of systematic tightening of state control over historical narrative. The National Assembly passed an amended publishing law in late August – approved for implementation in 2027 – that explicitly aims to “rein in the distortion of historical facts.” Also this year, politicians who championed liberal arts education were denounced as “posing a threat to the Party’s ideological foundation, losing its grip on the younger generation.”

In educational settings, where students are expected to respect teachers unquestioningly, Nam’s dialogue format was already revolutionary. Students and teachers engage as “equal inquirers,” examining Vietnamese history together rather than having it transmitted downward from the Communist Party as received truth. But more provocatively, the conversations introduce complexities that Party-controlled textbooks have so far systematically excluded.

Nam also recounted his giant enterprise’s little-known political involvement. In 2019, he helped fulfill Võ Nguyên Giáp’s wish to organize a formal ceremony to honor soldiers who fell in the border war with China, a corporate gesture that would not be encouraged by the Communist party.

“Having contributed to organizing an event that was somewhat considered sensitive at the time, it remains one of the most moving memories from the early days of our work at FPT”, wrote Nam.

Vietnam’s Communist Party does not actually seek honest discourse about its founding father or its history. It seeks monopoly control over the narrative and absolute uniformity, not understanding. Deviation, no matter how respectfully framed or authentically motivated, is treated as ideological subversion.

Now fear grips Vietnam’s publishing industry and the reading public. Pirated copies of Nam’s book circulate online and in secondhand bookstores, treated as contraband the way banned books have been treated throughout history. Even Nam’s considerable institutional protection—his ties to Vingroup, one of Vietnam’s largest conglomerates and a company politically untouchable in most respects—offered no shield against state punishment. Nam’s own fate remains uncertain; imprisonment remains a real possibility.

From strategic partnership between to the effects of natural disasters and climate phenomena, the past week brought developments with implications across Asia.

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Southeast Asia could face a double energy shock over the coming months as a strengthening El Niño threatens hydropower generation just as the region struggles with elevated and volatile imported energy costs due to energy supply disruptions from the on-again and off-again closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

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The recently concluded Veer Guardian 2026 air exercise between India and Japan, which ended on Sept. 22, marks a capstone moment in the defense ties between the two countries.

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Indian modern art sales took a gigantic leap this week when an auction at the Mumbai- based Pundole gallery moved the star focus from the traditional top names like M.F.Husain and S.H.Raza to indigenous art with an exceptional large work by Jangarh Singh Shyam being sold for a record hammer price of Rs18 crore. That is approximately $2.15m, including Pundole’s (generous) 15% buyer’s premium, just over seven times a $303,000 record set for the artist just five days earlier at Saffronart in Mumbai, which beat a $91,000 sale at Pundole in 2023 and far exceeded prices around $30,000 or far less in earlier years.

Shyam is probably India’s most famous indigenous artist. He belonged to the central Indian Gond tribe and lived in the state of Madhya Pradesh.

He was a flute player and painted traditional motifs and scenes using natural pigments on the walls of Patangarh, his hill-top village, until he was discovered in the early 1980s by Jagdish Swaminathan, an established artist whose works have also figured in the recent auctions.

While his records are an unexpected breakthrough for indigenous art, the $2.15m is of course not large compared with South Asian auction records that are currently heading towards $20m for prominent Indian artists including the Mumbai-based Progressives group. M.F.Husain topped the Pundole auction with a striking 48in x 24in oil on board (below) titled Red Girl that sold for a hammer price of Rs65 crore ($6.7m), thirteen times the top estimate of Rs5 crore.

Shyam belonged to the Pardhan Gond community that had strong musical traditions. Bards told stories that preserved the myths and genealogy of Gond rulers and their people.

As Shyam’s works this week show, the Gond artists transfer these stories onto canvas and paper, portraying scenes, real and imagined, from their lives in India’s jungles and forests, weaving tales that combine their tribal gods and animals such as tigers, leopards and deer with birds, snakes, trees and people.

Villagers in Patangarh and elsewhere continue to produce intriguing works that are available at modest prices in India, while more sophisticated works are increasingly listed in art auctions for thousands of dollars. International museums including the Guggenheim in New York and the Chicago Cultural Institute have examples of Shyam’s work, and Mumbai’s annual art fair in November will feature tribal and folk art.

Shyam’s story began when Swaminathan introduced him to acrylic paint and then, seeing his talent, took him to Bhopal, the state’s capital, where he was assembling local artists at a cultural centre called Bharat Bhavan. Shyam’s art developed sufficiently for him to be invited to Japan, where he was on an artist’s residency when he tragically died in 2011 by suicide, age 39.

“Jangarh has left his footprints and legacy in the history of Indian contemporary art,” says Alka Pande, a leading curator, who has written a book about him. “He brought alive the magic of his ancestral village of Patangarh and initiated a style of painting which has come to be known as the Jangarh Kalam. The prices of the Jangarh Kalam at the recent auction is a tribute to his creative genius”.

Both the Pundole and Saffronart record breakers are unusually large. Saffronart’s work, showing birds removing insects from the backs of cows, is 66in x 43in.

The untitled Pundole work, depicting a spirit figure with snakes and birds in a tree, is significantly larger at 91in x 69in and has spectacular colours. Both works are acrylics on canvas, painted in 1999, and they both originated in Japan, where many of Shyam’s works are located from his time there.

“The complex composition reveals the artist’s ability to paint to any scale. His patterning and technique is varied across the composition and shows his experimental nature and his skill and versatility as an artist,” says Rob Dean, a director of Pundole auctions.

The Pundole painting has never appeared before at an auction. It was estimated at Rs4 to 6 crore, and bidding on Sept 24 seemed to hesitate around Rs7 to 9 core, but then went ahead with three bidders narrowing to two, rising by a crore with each bid till one bidder gave way and it was sold for a hammer price of 18 crore. It was won by the collector with paddle 1730 who also bought a Swaminathan marble sculpture of a white owl and a bronze water buffalo by Somnath Hoare.

There was less bidding for the Saffronart record Shyam that came at the end of its auction and went for Rs2.88 crore ($303,158) including the premium against a Rs2 to 3 crore estimate.

The Pundole auction also had three other paintings by Shyam which were sold well above estimates, and a striking 32in x 44in oil on canvas from Swaminathan’s Bird, Tree and Mountain Series that sold for Rs5 crore (including premium) against a top estimate of Rs3 crore ($315,790). The catalogue said his style of presented “natural objects in intangible landscapes glowing with luminous colours”.

Records were set for many artists during the current season’s South Asia auctions with Christie’s sales totalling $22.57m on September 16 in New York, and Saffronart reaching $23.01m in New Delhi along with $3.3m in a two-day online sale. Pundole led the pack with $27.87m.

These results come at a time when collectors in the diaspora, as well as in India, have substantial funds and are looking for new types of art. “Buyers are moving on at a time when there are fewer top artists’ works available for auctions, and when art is becoming recognised as something that maintains its value through generations,” says Dinesh Vazirani, Saffronart’s co-founder and ceo.

The stars of Christie’s New York auction were the Progressives’ F.N. Souza, along with Ganesh Pyne who dominated Christie’s £18,91m ($25.37m) London auction last November with works from a Calcutta tea company’s collection.

Souza’’s Woman with Lamp (1949) was the top lot fetching $2.3m (including premium), almost four times its high estimate, and his Building in Trafalgar Square (1955) which made $1.1m. Ganesh Pyne’s The Slave at $1.2m went for more than four times its low estimate. There were also two Jagdish Swaminathan’s with hammer prices of $ 120,000 and $280.000. Christie’s set eight world records during the sale.

Souza also led at Saffronart with a remarkable record breaking Rs15.6 crores ($1.6m) for a work on paper – a brightly coloured 21in x 13in gouache titled Hanuman the Monkey God, (1965)

These top sales are sure to continue. Sotheby’s has its usual autumn auction in London next week including two small mid-1990s Shyam line drawings (below) offered as one lot with a £4,000-£6,000 estimate – and, rather irrelevantly given this week’s records, a “no reserve” tag.

Indian Gonds, especially Shyam, are clearly artists to watch.

John Elliott is Asia Sentinel’s South Asia correspondent. He blogs at Riding the Elephant. He is the author of IMPLOSION: India’s Tryst with Reality

From China’s political and development ties with Southeast Asia to territorial disputes and agreements, the past week brought developments with implications across Asia.

Here are some of the stories we published in recent days, covering political, economic and security issues worth keeping an eye on.

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Pakistan and China formally launched their Boundary Joint Commission in Islamabad on September 16-17, activating a mechanism provided for under their 2013 Agreement on the Boundary Management System but left dormant for more than a decade. The commission will deal with seemingly mu…

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Southeast Asia has become one of the most consequential arenas to witness the shifting balance between Chinese and American influence play out. Home to approximately 700 million people an…

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