Looks like history is going to make news. In 2021–22, the fortunes of the Ministry of Culture had dwindled with a cut of 15% in the Union Budget, which committed more to the ‘art and culture’ category than others. Last year, the ministry recovered with a raise of 11.9%, and the focus turned to archaeology and celebrations—like Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav, which it runs. This year’s budget establishes archaeology as the ministry’s lead project, with the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) bagging a third of the ministry’s outlay.
ASI’s list of digs for the year, announced this week, includes sites where new ground is being broken, like Keezhadi in Tamil Nadu, which has turned the clock back on the Sangam period, and happy hunting grounds like the Purana Qila in Delhi, where the veteran archaeologist B B Lal catalogued the Painted Grey Ware period, which came to be called the Mahabharata period. Thankfully, the Ram Setu controversy is not going to be revisited, and the squirrel in the Ramayana who contributed a few grains of sand to the project can rest in peace.
More financial backing for Indian archaeology has been overdue for decades, in which the only sign of the ASI at many important ruins was just that—a Chelpark-blue board threatening vandals with dire consequences. It had no effect, and ruins are liberally scrawled with the names of India’s leading vandals and their girlfriends etched in stone.
In a 2013 audit, the Comptroller and Auditor General of India noted that heritage structures were also going missing. Its survey that tracked nearly half of the 3,693 centrally protected monuments listed 92 which had vanished from sight. The reasons for these forced disappearances are numerous, ranging from government action—submergence by new dams or being paved over by highways—to unplanned urban development, in which someone’s tomb may be slowly absorbed into someone else’s kitchen. But lack of funds is the most common culprit—Razia Sultana, one of the most discussed women in history, sleeps in a nondescript grave in Delhi because the mosque to which it is attached could never afford its upkeep.
The subcontinent has been under-excavated, unlike countries like the UK. Over there, the people are stakeholders in the project of unearthing the past and actively report finds unearthed in the course of development, even if it slows down projects. Even misguided enthusiasts help to mainstream history. For instance, the early 20th-century theory of ‘ley lines’ connecting megalithic sites like Stonehenge with each other was rejected by formal historians, but it focused enormous public interest on the remote past.
In India, on the other hand, the past is visible everywhere, but few people care about it. More intensive archaeology might increase public interest by telling the stories of the ruins, but some stories which establish identity need careful handling. Origin stories become compelling when archaeology validates the epics and other ancient literature. Troy would not have been discovered but for the doggedness of Heinrich Schliemann, a student of languages actually and, thereby of the epics. Its discovery validated the Homeric record as history set in a real landscape.
However, in Europe, the Enlightenment had established Greece as the mother culture long before the discovery of Troy turned literature into history. It was only a final validation of a universally accepted theory at a time when classical Greek was required reading in European higher education. In India, on the other hand, there is a political project to impose an origin story upon a remote past whose validity is yet to be established beyond doubt and to insist that all history that followed, like the Islamic empires, were corruptions of the original truth of a Golden Age.
History—and especially prehistory—is rarely so clear-cut. Fresh truths are constantly emerging as science re-reads the evidence with new tools. For instance, developments in climate science question old theories of invasion and conquest, and now it looks like climate change was a significant factor in the rise and fall of cultures. Paleogenetics reliably maps the spread of populations in the remote past and often does not support traditionally accepted theories.
The search for origin stories, like the proposed digs at Purana Qila, calls for two caveats. One that there is no immutable truth in history—we do not know the whole story, only the story so far. It is constantly reinterpreted as fresh information emerges with the help of new technologies. And two, in an illiberal majoritarian culture, origin stories easily become founding myths of a dominant race. In 20th-century Europe, the myth that blonde-haired, blue-eyed Aryans are the original, superior race easily took hold in the popular imagination. Never mind that the genetic mutation which allows this recessive trait to be expressed happened no more than 6,000–10,000 years ago. Before that, everyone on earth had dark hair and eyes.
In India, the same myth of Aryan dominance has prevailed, minus the blonde and blue special effects. It’s no less potent for that, and fairness creams sell very well because, illogically, colour matters to us. Earlier, Indian archaeologists had become tools in the hands of the majoritarian cultural project. Now that they are getting the state financial backing they have always craved, it is important to remember that their job is not to validate anyone’s theory about group origins. It is to interpret the remains of times past with the methods of science, not of politics.
Pratik Kanjilal
The India CableEditor of
(Tweets @pratik_k)