The Keezhadi debate has returned to dominate political discourse in Tamil Nadu. The village in Tamil Nadu’s Sivaganga district, located about 12 km from Madurai, is an archaeological treasure trove. Findings from the site have suggested that an urban civilisation and language was thriving near Vaigai river as early as 580 BCE, upending previously accepted theories regarding the emergence of civilisation in the subcontinent. However, as the latest eruption of controversy suggests, the journey forward from these discoveries has been far from straightforward.
The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) recently asked the archaeologist who led the first two seasons of excavation at the site to answer some fresh questions and revise the report he had submitted in 2023. Amarnath Ramakrishna, the archaeologist who was transferred out before the third season in 2017, refused to revise his report. As political parties in TN took up the cudgels to defend his report, the Union minister of culture called for more scientific proof to validate the findings. The DMK accused the BJP of attempting to suppress Tamil identity, history and culture, and had its students’ wing mount protests demanding the report’s release. The contentions hark back to 2017, when Ramakrishna was transferred to Guwahati and the ASI conducted one more season of excavation before stopping work at the site. The next seven seasons of digging were conducted by the state archaeological department.
Beyond the noise and fury are two key factors. First, the finds from Keezhadi are seen by TN political parties and a section of the state’s populace as a matter of Tamil pride in the antiquity of their language and civilisation. Others allege that Keezhadi is being used as a political gambit to validate or dispute the Aryan migration theory. The second and more important factor is the need to apply scientific and academic rigour in analysing the findings, which should be conducted without political pressure. The state archaeological department’s work at the site, so far published only in short booklets, also needs to be properly documented and published in full so that experts from across the world can study it and draw conclusions. If the story of Tamil—and therefore Indian—civilisation is to be rewritten, it must be done with utter care and without politics.