Change that chapter
ONCE upon a time, there lived in Mohenjodaro and Harappa on the Indus Valley a highly organised and urbanised people. Their towns and cities were so well planned that we have not been able to replicate that in India today. Their residences were in blocks and their drainages were far superior to the dirty open nullahs you see in Amritsar or Delhi. They had private granaries, forts and fortifications, sprawling upper, middle and lower towns. They were great mariners, manufacturing goods and trading them far and near. They may not have had currency, but their seals, pottery, arts and crafts suggest that they had a sense of mathematical proportion, standardisation, precision and a writing system. Overnight, their towns were destroyed, and they were driven out, probably by a hoard of horse-riding, fair-skinned aliens. Then followed the Dark Ages, till the birth of Buddha in 600 BC. That is roughly what children learn about ancient Indian history. There is not a clue in the textbooks as to who built that fabulous civilisation, and where they came from. And why did the aliens destroy the towns instead of occupying them? The chapter on the Indus Valley civilisation, and much of ancient Indian history, has to be rewritten, say archaeologists who have been working on the Harappan sites.
The lesson being taught is based only on the excavation of Mohenjodaro and Harappa, the first Indus sites to come to light, in 1921-22. Excavations in India, Pakistan and Afghanistan in the last 50 years have shown that the Indus Valley civilisation was not just the story of two towns,
it touched Manda on the Beas in the north, Bhagattrao on the Tapti in Maharashtra, stretched to Alamgir on the Hindon in the east, and in the west to Satkangedor near eastern Iran! An area of 1.25 million square kilometres. The civilisation included metros like
Mohenjodaro, Harappa, Ghaneriwala (in Pakistan),
Dholavira and Rakhigarhi; towns like
Lothal, Surkotda, Banawali and Kalibangan, and villages like Kunal. The excavations exposed not just a town or city, but an earlier settlement beneath it, and an even earlier one further down. According to archaeologist Ravindra Singh Bhist (pic: above), before the mature Harappan stage, many regional cultures-Amri, Kot dirji, Kalibangan, Dholavira and Lothal-had coalesced into the cultural umbrella of Harappa. They were strongly bound by common economic compulsions, system and cultural ethos. Could it have been an internal conflict-a civil war of sorts-that brought them to ruin? Bhist says: "Every raja wanted to be the emperor. And so the break-up. And now we have the continuous history of India, from 7000 BC to 600 BC to date. No dark ages." History books have to be revised not only in the context of the Harappan culture, but also other things, these archaeologists suggest. "I
f we followed history books, the whole civilisation would start and end with Harappa and Mohenjodaro," says Amarendranath.
"Nobody teaches students about Kalibangan, which was exposed in the early 60s." He also laments the fact that there is no matching of literature and excavations.
Brahminism's new archeological evidence suggests that history of civilisation dates to Rig Vedic people
French Gentleman selected for doubting Pakistanis)
