Archeological Survey of India has served the agenda of Hindu right for rewriting history ever since 1947: Scholar

Somnath in ruins

By A Representative
In what appears to be one of the strongest critiques of the Archeological Survey of India (ASI), the huge organization which seeks to preserve the country's historical monuments, a London School of Economics (LSE) blog has found nothing new with regard to the reported decision of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to appoint a committee headed by KN Dikshit, ex-Joint Director General of ASI, to "help" government rewrite "certain aspects of ancient history.”
If the aim of the committee is said to be to find "archaeological and DNA evidence" to establish the Hindus as the descendants of the original inhabitants of the territory and to make a case for factual proof for the existence of the Hindu myths, the blog, by Rachel A Varghese, a Jawharlal Nehru University (JNU) scholar, says that ASI was used immediately after Independence exactly for this.
Citing the case of Somnath Temple in Gujarat, the scholar, who studied archaeology in Portugal and Italy, andrecently submitted her doctoral thesis at the Centre for Historical Studies, JNU, says, the removal of the ruins of the temple to ‘reconstruct’ the temple in its ‘original’ form was "against the principles that govern protection of such monuments, one of the primary functions of ASI."
Pointing out that "there was resistance from some quarters of the archaeology department to the removal of the ruins", yet, "the ruins were replaced by a new structure", Varghese says, this was done to satisfy Congress leader KM Munshi's "Hindu nationalist view that the raid on the temple by Mahmoud of Ghazni in 1024 was a wrong done on the people (read Hindus) of India by the Muslims."

Drawing a parallel with the committee formed by Modi, Varghese says, "Soon after independence, an advisory committee was formed in 1949 which included the then Director General of the ASI to decide on the matter of ‘reconstruction of the temple’."
Calling it "explicit manipulation of history and archaeology by the Hindu Right in India", the scholar says, it was also meant to establish "intimate association that archaeology has had in the creation of a particular imagination of the nation based on religious identity in India." Thus, "the archaeology of Indus Valley sites" has been used for "identity assertions", with the pre-historic population "being dubbed varyingly as Indian, Aryan, Dravidian, Hindu or Tamil."
Calling it a "nationalist obsession of attributing ‘Indian-ness’ to the Indus sites", the scholar says, this prompted "large scale excavations for new sites in the western states of India following independence, the Tamil assertions of the Dravidians being direct descendants of the Indus population and the attempts to link the Vedic Aryans to the Indus Valley civilization."
Asserting that "this should be understood in the atmosphere of majoritarian and exclusionary politics of the Hindutva, whereby Aryan equated to Hindu becomes the original inhabitants of India", leading to "Muslims and the other minority groups being automatically cast as aliens", Varghese says, ASI's role becomes clear when it examined the Ayodhya case.
Thus, "ASI was asked to give a definitive answer to a legally formulated question of whether or not a temple existed at the site of the Babri Masjid, which was demolished to build the mosque. If one examines the excavation report that the ASI submitted to the court in the Ayodhya case, one finds that the institution also shares with the judiciary positivist notions of archaeology as a science which can make claims to such ‘truths’..."
Now, according to the scholar, things have gone so that ASI's projects include locating "the places mentioned in the epics Mahabharata and Ramayana." There is Saraswati Heritage Project "that aims to identify the archaeological sites on the banks of the mythical river Saraswati, mentioned in the Rigveda."
"In a more recent instance, ASI is reported to have allowed excavations at Barnava in Baghpat district of Uttar Pradesh at a site which is popularly held to be the ‘Lakshagriha’ (literally house of lac) mentioned in the Mahabharata", the scholar says, adding, earlier that were "excavations at Ayodhya by BB Lal as part of the Ramayana Sites Project" to "prove" that there existed a "temple below the Babri Masjid."
Emphasizing that this had "a direct influence on the right wing assertions in the early 1990s,that led to the demolition of the Babri Masjid on 6 December 1992", the scholar believes, "The court-ordered excavations by the ASI at Ayodhya also have to be seen in the context of such established traditions of archaeological practice in India."

Comments

Uma said…

That K. M. Munshi was a right-wing Hindu is rubbish. What ASI does or does not do, I don't know, but our monuments and their suuroundings are in a sorry state and a shame for the country

May 17, 2018

The Editor Times said…

Hindutva has no face value. so that they're decorating their face to survive.

May 27, 2018

10,000 students deprived of classes as Ahmedabad school remains shut: MCC writes to Gujarat CM

By A Representative The Minority Coordination Committee (MCC) has written to Gujarat Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel, urging him to immediately reopen the Seventh Day Adventist School in Maninagar, Ahmedabad, where classes have been suspended for nearly two weeks. The MCC claims that the suspension, following a violent incident, violates the constitutional right to education of thousands of children.

Gujarat minority rights group seeks suspension of Botad police officials for brutal assault on minor

By A Representative A human rights group, the Minority Coordination Committee (MCC) Gujarat, has written to the Director General of Police (DGP), Gandhinagar, demanding the immediate suspension and criminal action against police personnel of Botad police station for allegedly brutally assaulting a minor boy from the Muslim community.

On Teachers’ Day, remembering Mother Teresa as the teacher of compassion

By Fr. Cedric Prakash SJ It is Teachers’ Day once again! Significantly, the day also marks the Feast of St. Teresa of Calcutta (still lovingly called Mother Teresa). In 2012, the United Nations, as a fitting tribute to her, declared this day the International Day of Charity. A day pregnant with meaning—one that we must celebrate as meaningfully as possible.

A comrade in culture and controversy: Yao Wenyuan’s revolutionary legacy

By Harsh Thakor* This year marks two important anniversaries in Chinese revolutionary history—the 20th death anniversary of Yao Wenyuan, and the 50th anniversary of his seminal essay "On the Social Basis of the Lin Biao Anti-Party Clique". These milestones invite reflection on the man whose pen ignited the first sparks of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and whose sharp ideological interventions left an indelible imprint on the political and cultural landscape of socialist China.

Targeted eviction of Bengali-speaking Muslims across Assam districts alleged

By A Representative A delegation led by prominent academic and civil rights leader Sandeep Pandey visited three districts in Assam—Goalpara, Dhubri, and Lakhimpur—between 2 and 4 September 2025 to meet families affected by recent demolitions and evictions. The delegation reported widespread displacement of Bengali-speaking Muslim communities, many of whom possess valid citizenship documents including Aadhaar, voter ID, ration cards, PAN cards, and NRC certification.

Gandhiji quoted as saying his anti-untouchability view has little space for inter-dining with "lower" castes

By A Representative A senior activist close to Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) leader Medha Patkar has defended top Booker prize winning novelist Arundhati Roy’s controversial utterance on Gandhiji that “his doctrine of nonviolence was based on an acceptance of the most brutal social hierarchy the world has ever known, the caste system.” Surprised at the police seeking video footage and transcript of Roy’s Mahatma Ayyankali memorial lecture at the Kerala University on July 17, Nandini K Oza in a recent blog quotes from available sources to “prove” that Gandhiji indeed believed in “removal of untouchability within the caste system.”

'Govts must walk the talk on gender equality, right to health, human rights to deliver SDGs by 2030'

By A Representative With just 64 months left to deliver on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), global health and rights advocates have called upon governments to honour their commitments on gender equality and the human right to health. Speaking ahead of the 80th United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), experts warned that rising anti-rights and anti-gender pushes are threatening hard-won progress on SDG-3 (health and wellbeing) and SDG-5 (gender equality).

Is U.S. fast losing its financial and technological edge under Trump’s second tenure?

By Dr. Manoj Kumar Mishra* The United States, along with its Western European allies, once promoted globalization as a democratic force that would deliver shared prosperity and balanced growth. That promise has unraveled. Globalization, instead of building an even world, has produced one defined by inequality, asymmetry of power, and new vulnerabilities. For decades, Washington successfully turned this system to its advantage. Today, however, under Trump’s second administration, America is attempting to exploit the weaknesses of others without acknowledging how exposed it has become itself.

What mainstream economists won’t tell you about Chinese modernisation

By Shiran Illanperuma China’s modernisation has been one of the most remarkable processes of the 21st century and one that has sparked endless academic debate. Meng Jie (孟捷), a distinguished professor from the School of Marxism at Fudan University in Shanghai, has spent the better part of his career unpacking this process to better understand what has taken place.

Counterview

Search This Blog