NEW DELHI: Archeologists and his colleagues at the Archeological Survey of India (ASI) remembered veteran archaeologist professor Braj Bansi Lal, who passed away on Saturday at the age of 101, as a ‘great personality and ‘passionate excavator’.
Among his several path-breaking findings are related to excavations conducted at the Mahabharata site in Hastinapur (Uttar Pradesh) and Kalibangan belonging to the Indus Valley civilisation in Rajasthan.
In 1976-77, Prof Lal claimed to have discovered columns of Hindu temple at Ram Janam Bhoomi-Babri Masjid site in Ayodhya.
He served as the director general of the ASI from 1968 to 1972.
He was conferred Padma Bhushan in 2000 and India’s second highest civilian award, Padma Vibhushan in 2021.
“Prof Lal was a great personality, archeologist and a passionate excavator. He would say an archeologist is a pathologist. Excavation is like a postmortem, which ascertains the cause of death. Similarly through excavation, you have to tell what it is,” said KK Muhammed, former Regional Director of the ASI.
Muhammed was part of Lal’s team who carried out archaeological digging in the periphery of Babri Masjid, which was demolished in 1992.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi paid rich tributes to Lal, saying that he would be remembered as a great intellectual who “deepened our connection with our rich past”.
“Shri B B Lal was an outstanding personality. His contributions to culture and archaeology are unparalleled. He will be remembered as a great intellectual who deepened our connection with our rich past. Pained by his demise. My thoughts are with his family and friends. Om Shanti,” Modi tweeted.
According to the website of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur, Lal also conducted many excavations in and around the world including in Egypt, which threw light on Egyptian prehistory.
“Prof Lal publications include over 150 seminal research papers, published in scientific journals, both in India and abroad. He authored books The Earliest Civilization of South Asia (1997); India 1947-1997: New Light on the Indus Civilization (1998). In 1994 Prof Lal was awarded D. Litt (Honoris causa) by the Institute of Archaeology, St. Petersburg, Russia. He has been the Chairman and member of several committees of UNESCO,” the portal states.