Gangtok, May 9: For those who have not seen the Ajanta paintings with the naked eye, here’s an “eye-opener” for them.

An exhibition, called “Ajanta: The Unseen Jewel”, will be held at the White Memorial Hall from tomorrow.

Sikkim chief minister Pawan Chamling will inaugurate the 10-day exhibition, which will be open from 10 am to 4 pm.

Organised by the National Museum in collaboration with the state cultural affairs department, the exhibition will display photographs of the paintings of the Ajanta caves discovered by the British in 1819.The exhibition will host a rare display of photographs of the actual paintings in the caves depicting the Jataka tales and the stories of Gautama Buddha.

The life of Gautama Buddha as depicted in the paintings will also be on display. A member engaged in organising the exhibition told The Telegraph that an Indian documentary filmmaker, who doubled as an art historian, had photographed all the sequences of the exquisite paintings.

The British were so struck by the beauty of the paintings that they decided to replicate them to show the rest of the world.

They hired artists and painters of that time to get the cave paintings translated into canvas ones. But, unfortunately, the replicated paintings were destroyed in a fire.

The exhibition on the unseen jewels should draw large crowds. An India Shopping Festival has been going on for the past week just outside Whitehall.

The exposition has been drawing huge crowds and the shoppers are also likely to enter the memorial hall to get a dekko of what is in store in the Ajanta exhibition.

Statue attack probe: The Sikkim government has constituted a six-member committee to “resolve” the “tangle” over the issue of the desecration of the statue of Nepali poet Bhanu Bhakta in Geyzing, the West district headquarters.The statue was vandalised last year. West district collector S.P. Subba will head the committee. Five other prominent members of the public from the district have been made members.