Archaeologists From India

"Chakrabarti (1997b) believes such constraints have severely crippled the visualization of "protohistoric growth in inner India in its own terms, without any reference to the supposed multiple waves of people pouring in from the West" (35)."

"When the Harappan civilisation experienced the Copper Age in the Indus valley, southern India experienced the Iron Age."

"The idea of break between the early periods was for some unknown reasons, was almost axiomatic in the Indian archaeological writing of the period."

"Mill’s contempt for ancient India extends to the other Asian civilizations as well and . . . much of Mill’s framework has survived in the colonial and post-colonial Indology. For instance, his idea that the history of ancient India, like the history of other barbarous nations, has been the history of mutually warring small states, only occasionally relieved by some larger political entities established by the will of some particularly ambitious and competent individuals has remained with us in various forms till today."

"This book explores some underlying theoretical premises of the Western study of ancient India, These premises developed in response to the colonial need to manipulate the Indians’ perception of their past. The need was felt most strongly from the middle of the nineteenth century onwards, and an elaborate racist frame work, in which the interrelationship between race, language and culture was a key element, slowly emerged as an explanation of the ancient Indian historical universe. The measure of its success is obvious from the fact that the Indian nationalist historians left this framework unchallenged, preferring to dispute it only in some comparatively minor matters of detail, This book argues that this framework is still in place, and implicitly accepted not merely by Western Indologists but also by their Indian counterparts. The image of the ancient Indian past remains the same. The persistence of the old image is reflective of India’s relationship as a part of the Third World with the West and Western historical scholarship,"

"The academic scope of the present volume may be clearly stated at the outset, It begins by arguing that one of the underlying assump- tions of Western Indology is a feeling of superiority in relation to India, especially modern India and Indians. This feeling of superi- ority is expressed in various ways. On one level, there are recurrent attempts to link all fundamental changes in Indian society and history to Western intervention in some form. The image of ancient India which was foisted on Indians through hegemonic texts emanating from Western schools of Indology had in mind an India that was steeped in philosophical, religious and literary lores and unable to change herself without external influence, be it in the form of Alexander the Great, Roman ships carrying gold or the Governor-Generals of the British East India Company. On a different level, expressions of Western superiority can be more direct and encompass a wide range of forms: patronizing and/ or contemptuous reviews of Indian publications, allusions to per- sonal hardships while working in India, refusal to acknowledge Indians as “agents of knowledge”, or even blatant arrogance which makes one wonder if the civilized values of Western academia have not left its Indology mostly untouched."

"Historically, this should hardly cause any surprise. After all, Western Indology is an essential by-product of the process of the establishment of Western dominance in India. Racism—in this case a generic feeling of superiority in relation to the natives—was, quite logically, one of the major theoretical underpinnings of this process. Itis but natural that Western Indology should carry within it a lot of this feeling of superiority. We are not surprised by this."

"...without bothering to find out if.. such blind fetishism did not sometimes lead to a theoretical position undermining the Indian national identity."

"To us, this is the first major racist elaboration of the ancient Indian history and culture in Western Indology, and all that we note here is that Mill’s contempt for ancient India extends to the other Asian civilizations as well and that much of Mill’s framework has survived in the colonial and post-colonial Indology. For instance, his idea that the history of ancient India, like the history of other barbarous nations, has been the history of mutually warring small states, only occasionally relieved by some larger political entities established by the will of some particularly ambitious and competent individuals has remained with us in various forms till today. His ideas that the Indian civilization never prospered except under foreign domination and that it was no doubt inferior to the Greek and Roman civilizations have been accepted almost as axioms by Western and neo-colonial Indian Indology..."

"The way in which the evidence of pre-Sargonic contact of the Indus civilization with Mesopotamia has been pushed into the background while making its chronological assessment and the way in which the sporadic material from the Bactria-Margiana complex ... has been dated to make that related to the end-phase of this civilization may be considered singularly interesting and indicative of a great mental block suffered by some archaeologists to accept the obvious and admit of the possibility of a considerably earlier beginning of the Indus civilization and its much larger duration."

"We need not follow Spooner further in his exploration of the bylanes of Indology where anything goes."

"Indians would certainly try to understand the fact that for more than a hundred years in the late fourth, third and early second centuries BC, there was a state which controlled the entire natural geographical domain of south Asia. Not even the British controlled such a large area for such a long period. This fact should in any case be one of the answers to the notion that there have only been divisive tendencies in the political history of India."

"Chakrabarti himself served at Delhi University for a while, and was the target of Communist slander there. Editing A History of Ancient India in 2013, he found that major publishers refused, slated contributors withdrew etc.: “cancel culture”."

"S.R.Rao found at Lothal “terracotta wheels ...with diagonal lines suggesting spokes” (1973:124)."

"Addressing a rally at the conclusion of the march, Dina Pathak bitterly castigated Doordarshan for showing another "communal" item on its network—a report of the archaeological discovery, by Dr. S.R. Rao, of the remains of ancient Dwarka, under the sea, off the coast of Gujarat (Dwarka, having sunk under the sea long before the birth of Islam, any report on it would obviously be a "communal" one). Need we say more?"

"There is no indication of any invasion of Indus towns nor is any artefact attributable to the so-called ‘invaders’."

"When I was repairing the temple of Dwarkadeesh at Dwaraka (on land) I had to demolish a modern building in front of it and I found the 9th Century temple of Vishnu. I got curious and dug further deeper (30 ft) in 1979-80 on land. We found two earlier temples, a whole wall and figures of Vishnu. We dug further and actually found eroded material of a township lying at the bottom. Then arose the question of dating the remains of the township destroyed by the sea. Thermo-luminescence dating revealed a date of 1520 B.C. The Mahabharata refers to Dwaraka ..."

"Habitational areas yield bones mostly of those animals which were killed and eaten—the horse, the camel, the elephant are only rarely represented in actual bones, very few indeed at every site, simply because these animals are not likely to have been as regularly eaten as sheep and goats as well as fish whose bones are abundantly found at all Indus-Sarasvati settlements. Wheeler seems to accept this position and never uses the absence of horse in Indus-Sarasvati art to prove that the civilization was non-Aryan or Dravidian."

"The fact that the Vedic people imported the 'horse' from Kacch is supported by Vedic literature which is full of references to the a5va owing its birth to water or sea. Uccaihfrava, the a.Sva emerging from the churning of the sea of milk or k#rasllgara, is the ass found as a wild animal in Kacch. It may be pointed out that Khirsar was a port in Kacch and it has a mound of Harappan times. It is all the more important for us that another name of Khirsar is 'Ghodewali wadi', the town (marketing centre) of horses."

"Unfortunately, the horse has become a bone of contention between two groups of historians dealing with the 'Aryan Problem' in India, the so-called Nationalists and the so-called Marxists. The former, basing their views on the archaeological findings, maintain that the people of the Indus-Sarasvati Civilization may have been the Vedic Aryans who are known in history for their chariots driven by horses, while the latter hold that the archaeological findings are 'minor', ' limited', and 'marginal', and hold onto the age-old view that the people of the Indus-Sarasvati Civilization were not horse- users, hence could not be the Vedic Aryans. To say the least, this is a strange logic. For the scientists, Indus-Sarasvati people were definitely horse-users, whether they were Vedic Aryans or not hardly concerns them. But Marshall certainly erred gro.55ly when he observed that the Indus people could not be Vedic Aryan because they were not familiar with the horse, let alone its users. Incidentally, in the Vedas the people are never called a.Warohis, that is, horsemen, they are credited only with chariots driven by horses. They ate sheep, etc. but not horse meat or camel meat. Hence, it is not surprising that the horse and camel bones are only rarely found in excavations."

"S.P. Gupta offered a sensible reply to the further objection that horse remains, if at all they are accepted, rarely account for more than 2% of the total animal remains at any site. Pointing out that the same holds true of the camel and elephant (animals undeniably present in Harappan sites), he explained that this low proportion is 'simply because these animals are not likely to have been as regularly eaten as cattle, sheep and goats as well as fish whose bones are abundantly found at all Indus-Saraswati settlements' (Gupta 1996: 162)."

"It would therefore, indicate quite clearly that there were at least two phases in the Kot Diji ot the Early Indus-Sarasvati culture : Old (3500-3000 b.c.) and New (3000-2700 B.c.) The period between 3500 B.c. and 3000 B.C. was very crucial— the Early Indus- Civilization was spreading far and wide, informing us that it Was the proto-urban phase in which new townships were getting established in and also beyond the Indus and Sarasvati basins; the large cities of Harappa, Mohenjodaro, etc. were the culmination of the long process of urbanisation and not its beginning."

"The chain of tectonic events... diverted the Satluj westward [into the Indus] and the Palaeo Yamuna eastward [into the Ganga]... This explains the ’death’ of such a mighty river [ i.e, Sarasvati] ... because its main feeders, the Satluj and Palaeo Yamuna were weaned away from it by the Indus and the Ganga respectively."

"The balance of trade appears to have been in favor of India; more items were exported from India than imported from the Gulf and Mesopotamia.”"

"Generally speaking, a temple is a 'Place of Worship'. It is also called the 'House of God'. However, for a Hindu, it is both and yet still more. It is the whole cosmos in the miniature form."

"Indian art has been the product of Indian culture as the Greek art has been the product of Greek culture or the Roman art has been the product of Roman culture. Indian culture, however, has been the product of two streams of thoughts and practices, one, the Folk, belonging to the oral traditions operating at the folk level, in the villages, and, the other, classical, belonging to the sophisticated literary traditions, the former is sometimes called 'Lower Tradition' and the latter 'Higher Tradition'."

"What is, however, much more significant to note is that here we have the longest sequence of cultures, without any break whatsoever, upto the Early Indus-Sarasvati. In other words, this sequence does not allow any outside agency to come and effect changes in the step-by-step growth of culture. If this is realised clearly, it will not leave any scope for doubt in the indigenous of the origin and growth of the Indus-Sarasvati Civilization; at Mehrgarh from around 4000 B.c. we start getting all those characistic features which went directly into the make-up of the Early Indus sarasvati Civilization."

"With regard to the problem of communalism whether it be Hindu- Muslim, Vaishnava-Saiva or Shia-Sunni it may be assumed that the people of India have come of age. If that is so the historians of India should neither look for forces of communal synthesis nor for those of conflict; they should just look for facts as they unfold themselves in the historical process. If they only look for facts supporting synthesis they may be good nationalists but they would at the same time be inverted communalists. Let history be our psychoanalyst. Once we are able to accept ourselves for what we are we will be able to give the right direction to our present and future. … A historian’s commitment to history must remain untouched by his loyalties, political, religious or others."

"The Indus-Sarasvati Civilization is found extending for more than 1600 km from north to south and equally from east to west, covering an area of about 2.5 million sq. km and more. The northernmost site known to us so far is Manda, located on the River Beas near Jammu; the southernmost site is Bhagatrav on the RiverTapti in Gujarat; the easternmost site is Bhorgarh in east Delhi and Alamgirpur in district Meerut; and the westernmost site is Sutkagendor, located on the ancient shore of the Arabian Sea, near the eastern border of Iran. The Indus-Sarasvati Civilization was, therefore, around four times more in area coverage than any contemporary civilization, including the Egyptian and the Mesopotamian."

"All this clearly shows that, in the process of the formation of the Indus-Sarasvati Civilization, which was typically a lowland cultural phenomenon, not one but several regions were directly or indirectly involved, as has been pointed out by Mughal. The usual American perception (of scholars like Possehl) that the highland Baluchi cultures, such as the Quetta culture with roots in Iranian Neolithic cultures of the Zagros mountains, and the Iranian Bronze Age cultures were primarily responsible for the birth and early growth of the Indus- Sarasvati Civilization, therefore, requires serious reconsideration since the pre-4000 BC cultures leading to the 4000 BC settlements are now locally available in Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, and Gujarat, particularly at Harappa, where a four-metre deposit of handmade black painted red ware with mud-brick houses was found in early 1996."

"This led to a serious debate amongst all the archaeologists, of the world who were dealing with the Indus-Sarasvatj Civilization, directly or indirectly, What one group called ‘Pre-Harappan’, the other group called ‘Early Harappan’. Why this controversy cropped up? It is all a question of ‘approaches’ in archaeological Studies which are primarily two—the ‘culture-historical’ and “culture- processual’."

"At Ayodhya, as many as fourteen trenches were laid out at different spots, one of which was the area known as the Janmabhumi. Over here is a trench hardly three metres to the south of the compound wall of the structure known as Babri Masjid, a series of square brick-bases, running in parallel east-west and north-south rows, were discovered within about 25-30 cm. below the surface. Since one row of these pillar-bases lay under the edge of the trench towards the compound wall of the mosque, it is likely that there may exist many more such pillar-bases in the unexcavated area in that direction. Stratigraphic evidence indicates that these pillar-bases are ascribable to a period around A.D. 1100. From the level associated with the destruction of these pillar-bases has been found glazed pottery ascribable to fourteenth-fifteenth century A.D."

"Under a project called ‘Archaeology of the Ramayana Sites’ excavations were carried out between 1975 and 1986 at five sites, viz. Ayodhya, Sringaverapura, Bharadvaja Asrama, Chitrakuta and Nandigrama, all associated with that epic."

"Here it may perhaps be stated straightaway that so far no unimpeachable evidence has been adduced to prove or even to disprove either of the above-mentioned theories. (about Indo-Aryan invasions or migrations) In such a situation there is little wonder that guesses run wild and pride and prejudice safely prey on them."

"What is that ‘something’, some inherent strength? Doubtless it lies in the liberal character of the Indian civilization, which allows for cross-fertilization with other cultures, without losing its own identity. Even time (kala), the great devourer, has stood testimony to the fact that the deep foundations of Indian culture could not be shaken either by internal upheavals, however great may have been their magnitude.... " the soul of India lives on!""

"The great civilization of the Indian subcontinent, has had its roots deep in antiquity, some seven to eight thousand years ago, and its flowering in the third millennium B.C. still lives on. In contrast, when we look round the world we are surprised by the fact that the Egyptian and Mesopotamia civilizations that flourished alongside this Indic Civilization have all disappeared, leaving hardly any trace behind. Why? The Indian psyche has indeed been pondering over this great cultural phenomenon of 'livingness', and this quest."

"It is true that the Rigveda does not provide us details of the inner layout of these forts, but surely the text was not meant to be a treatise on Vastusastra. May it be remembered that it is essentially a compilation of prayers to gods and should be looked at as such. All the evidence that it provides regarding the material culture of the then people is only incidental."

"This Nehruvian-Left bias began right from the days of independence. For example, scholars, especially in humanities, like Sita Ram Goel, Ram Swarup and many others found themselves without employment. As mentioned above, if a scholar found some academic job, he or she would be hounded out if there was suspicion about his or her loyalty to the Red cause. The existence of a ‘JNU lobby’ is a well-known fact in academia and the media. Scholars like B B Lal and others can be insulted and doubts raised about their antecedents built over years of hard work if they change their views which are not in conformity with their friends’ established views. He was put out of charmed circles and slandered for his discovery of Ram Temple below the Babri structure. K. Mohammed a senior ASI director was trashed because he confirmed B B Lal’s discovery as part of his team in 1978 during discovery, and because he declared that Ram Temple issue was complicated by Left historians who egged on extremist Islamists to go against the truth."

"B.B. Lal made his name as an archaeologist in the 1950s and 60s by exploring the Painted Grey Ware culture, which he then identified as the Aryan invader culture during its expansion from the Panjab border zone deeper into India; but along the way he realized that his data offered no support to the AIT which he had been using as a prism through which to interpret the data... Especially in his case, this latter fact is remarkable. It was he who, as a young archaeologist in the 1950s, made his name by finally digging up the long-awaited proof of an Aryan invasion. He had identified a pottery style, the Painted Grey Ware (1200-800), as typifying the Aryans penetrating deeper into India. That is what was taught to us in university, and even recently-published books upholding the Aryan Invasion Theory cite this finding as “proof”. But Lal himself has grown away from it. At the time, he had simply applied the reigning invasionist framework, until he understood that this was but a hypothetical construct unsupported by hard findings. ... Thus, the anti-invasionist case put forward by the archaeologists like B.B. Lal and the late S.P. Gupta has often been dismissed without further ado “because they are, not coincidentally, the same ones who claim to have discovered pillar-bases underneath the Babri mosque in Ayodhya and thus supported the Hindu claim to the site”. Of course, this finding on Hindu-Muslim relations in medieval history wouldn’t make any difference to their case on the Aryan question in ancient history, at least not to scientists. ... But in this case there is an even more pertinent fact: the finding of the pillar-bases, ridiculed by self-appointed “experts” and their foreign dupes, has been confirmed. Both the Archaeological Survey of India and the Allahabad High Court have, after gathering solid evidence during thorough excavations as well as questioning many “experts” (whose performance under oath was extremely embarrassing, undercutting whatever credibility they had been credited with, see Jain 2013:201-273), ruled that there had indeed been a Hindu temple until it was demolished and its foundation (“pillar-bases”) reused to underpin a mosque. These archaeologists were lambasted worldwide for upholding a case that has ultimately been proven correct.... On the Aryan question too, they may well end up being proven correct. Conversely, the anti-Hindu academics worldwide who parroted the “experts” and expressed seething (though borrowed) hatred for the temple party, have been shown to have been babes in the wood, led by the nose by political agitators using the aura of the academic positions they had cornered to promote a very artificial lie, launched in the late 1980s against what had been a consensus about a pre-existing temple among all concerned parties. (see Elst 2011) On the Aryan question too, they might end up finding that they had safely chosen the side of a dominant opinion fated to be proven wrong... In our midst is the nonagenarian dean of Indian archaeology, Prof. B.B. Lal. I first heard from him in the 1980s at university in Leuven, Belgium, where Prof. Pierre Eggermont taught us that Lal had at last identified the Aryans on their way deeper into India, viz. through the Painted Grey Ware. That is how Lal first made his name: by identifying the theoretically deduced Aryan invasion with something tangible. Indeed, that is how Pradhan (2014:67) cites him even now: “Lal considered Painted Grey Ware to be intrusive”. Yet, Lal has later described that identification as false and written books denying an invasion, e.g. Lal 2002. Like most Indian archaeologists, he has had to face the fact that all attempts to find traces of the Aryan invaders had proved erroneous. You all have heard him say it right here: “Vedic culture and the Harappan cities are but the two sides of the same coin.”"

"Most older OIT champions are converts from the AIT. The most important conversion to the Out-of-India position was by the dean of Indian archaeology, Prof. BB Lal, deceased last year at age 101. As we personally learned in our student days from leading Indologist Pierre Eggermont, it was Lal who first added an archaeological scaffolding to the linguists’ hypothesis of an Aryan immigration. In the 1950s, he had mapped out the newfound Painted Grey Ware in the Mahābhārata cities, and theorized that this must be typical for the Aryans on their way deeper into India. From the 1980s onwards, he understood that this had merely been an application of the Aryan Invasion paradigm, not proof of it as he and the AIT crowd had believed. The last decades of his life he wrote several books against the AIT, summing his position up as: “Vedic and Harappan are two sides of the same coin.” Pray, why can the mature BB Lal, with many other feathers in his cap (e.g. identifying the Harappan script’s now-unquestioned writing direction), be cavalierly ignored while the young BB Lal could be trumpeted as the decisive voice of archaeology in the Homeland debate?"

"The most telling illustration has been provided by the silence over the new archaeological findings. .... When the findings of the excavations which had been conducted over a decade ago became public, and these left little doubt about the fact that there had indeed been a temple at the site, archaeology itself was denounced. Papers made themselves available for tarnishing one of the most respected archaeologists in the world - the former Director General of the Archaeological Survey of India who had led those excavations. ... The lesson is plain: should such double-standards continue, Hindu opinion will become even less amenable to the minatory admonitions of our editorialists than it has already become."

"Today, even taking the name of Mahabharata and Ramayana is considered as anti-national and communal by the communist leaders, Babri Masjid Action Committee historians and the pseudo-secularists... I have been thinking about the behavious of our Marxist friends and historians, their unprovoked slander campaign against many colleagues, hurling abuses and convicting anyone and everyone even before the charges could be framed and proved. Their latest target is [so] sobre and highly respected a person as prof. B.B. Lal, who has all his life (now he is nearing 70) never involved himself in petty politics or in the groupism [which is] so favourite a sport among the so- called Marxist intellectuals of this country. But then [slander] is a well-practised art among the Marxists.""

"Though he himself never allowed his successes to go to his head, it must, in hindsight, be an archaeologist’s dream come true to play a prominent role in major controversies and be proven right in the end. At any rate, such are the highlights of Prof. B.B. Lal’s career."

"The obvious result [of the diversion of the Sarasvatī’s waters into the Yamuna system] was the migration of the [Harappan] people towards the north-east where some water was still available in the uppermost reaches of the Sarasvatī and Ghaggar and further east in the upper plains of the Gangā-Yamunā Doāb.’"

"Lal (1997, 9) considers the Sarasvati to have been alive in Kalibangan in the third millennium B.C.E. and dried up at the turn of the millennium: "The Sarasvati dried up around 2000 BC. This clearly establishes that the Rigveda, which speaks of the Sarasvati as a mighty flowing river, has to be assigned to a period prior to 2000 BC. By how many centuries it cannot be said for certain" (Lal, forthcoming)."

"To put the tale synoptically. The Harappan cities collapsed, the civilization declined, but the people survived it all, though bereft of their glorious past. Their great, great, great _.. grandfathers had brought into being these Gites — gradually from a village economy to that of a town and through great strides to that of a city. The decline of the civilization entailed an end of the cities and reversed the direction. To borrow a simile, the Harappan urbanism may be likened to a storm on the vast ocean of Indian time, which raged, held on for some time but finally subsided, leaving the waters as placid as before. Cities came and went, but the villages kept on for ever!"

"I don't say so, but my spade tells me so."

"The supporters of the Aryan-invasion theory have not been able to cite even a single example where is evidence of 'invaders.' represented either by weapons of warfare or even of cultural remains left by them."

"In the mosque there are fourteen stone pillars some of which appear to be in position and oriented east-west and north-south. On the basis of the decorative motifs, sculptures, etc. these pillars are also ascribed to the eleventh century A.D. In all probability, there the brick-bases found in the excavations and the stone pillars standing in the mosque belong to one and the same structural complex which stood at the site immediately before the Babri Masjid."