The plea for archeology in India

Posted on February 7, 2012


Archeology in India is one of the biggest neglected fields of study. If I sit down writing adjectives describing its state (dilapidated, broke, pathetic, abysmal) I might fill a few pages of this blog just doing that. We proudly claim our historical origins and start of civilized era tracingback at least 10000-15000 years even before the Egyptians, but still we have no proof, just a strong gut feeling.

1) The Mohenjo-Daro and Harappan sites lie in ruins . Nobody visits them except for in the last decade some promotional tourism done by Gujarat government.

2) We have so-called scholars fighting over the Aryan migration, Aryan Invasion, Indigenous Aryan theories but no field work done to find the so called missing horses.

3) The Indus script is still not deciphered.,

4) We know the location of Dwaraka, ISRO points out through satellite but nobody is willing to finance the dig. I myself wrote to Mr Narendra Modi (through his website), requesting to divert some finances for the dig but no response.

5) Indian and Sri Lankan governments want to construct a bridge on Sethu Samudaram (the bridge built by Rama and the Vanaras) . Nobody wants to actually go and look at it.

6) People know the lost river of Saraswathi might be the dry bed of Ghaggar Hakra and if they dig below they might find aquifers which could sustain water supply for whole of Rajasthan (confirmed by satellite images), but it is still low on governments priorities.

7) Bhakta Prahlada’s ruined city lies in Multan Pakistan. Nobody has ever cared to venture there

I feel we as Indians are too scared of our past. What happens if we don’t find something ? What will it do to our faith? Absolutely nothing. It will in fact strengthen it. Even if there is a 10% chance of finding some proof lets do it it will bring 100 % more followers. Because India is full of people with blind faith. E.g. Lord Ganesha idols drinking milk. everybody knew it was due to surface tension (plain physics) and not magic. But for those crazy couple of days everybody gave milk to the clay idols. Even if their idol didn’t drink they claimed it did ,so as not to look as a sinner in the eye of society. Lets go to the kurukshetra battlefield. Let’s dig and find some war artifacts , carbon date them and resolve the date of Mahabharata war  once and for all.

I have not heard a single student showing interest in archeology. Learning sanskrit as a secondary language is done in schools.But none of the students go and read our old texts to find clues.The namesake research done in the name of archeology is done sitting in offices and nothing on field. Egypt being economically backward than us still believes in its rich past even with its current political turmoil archeology is still a high priority. The whole supremely sensitive middle eastern belt of Jordan, Jerusalem , Palestine is an archeological hotbed. Not just civilization history but other kinds of digs are also missing in India related to dinosaurs and other creatures that roamed India in the Jurassic and the Triassic areas.

Archeology recreates history and it will bring tourism too. And who knows we might hit onto another hidden treasure , maybe below a temple like Sri Padmanabhaswamy Temple with more than couple of billion dollars worth of jewels. But atleast we should start looking