The Harappan Hurdle

Why Hindu nationalists desperately claim Harappa as an Aryan Civilisation

- Snigdhendu Bhattacharya

ON September 20, 2024, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M. K. Stalin expressed his gratitude to John Marshall, the late British archaeologist who headed the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) when Daya Ram Sahni's excavations in Harappa (1921) and Rakhal Das Banerji's in Mohenjo-daro (1922) led to the discovery of the Indus Valley Civilisation (IVC).

Marshall announced the discoveries in a six-page report published in the Illustrated London News on September 20, 1924, drawing global attention. Remembering Marshall a century after the announcement of the discovery of South Asia's oldest civilisation, Stalin wrote in a social media post: "I look back with gratitude and say, thank you, John Marshall. By taking the right cognizance of the material culture of the #IVC, he linked it to the #DravidianStock." Stalin's mention of Marshall's linking of the Harappan or the IVC with Dravidian culture came roughly a month after India's new class six social science textbook released by the Union government-funded National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) called the Harappan civilisation as Sindhu-Saraswati civilisation. This nomenclature links the Harappan civilisation with settlements in northern India-considered the eastern extension of the Harappan civilisation-where Hindu nationalists claim the Saraswati river valley existed.

On September 20, Stalin also announced that the state government would organise an international conference to mark the centenary of the discovery of the IVC and install a lifesize statue of Marshall. Three and a half months later, on January 5, 2025, while inaugurating that international conference in Chennai and laying the foundation stone for Marshall's statue, Stalin took his war against Hindutva historiography to the next level. He announced a $1 million prize for anyone indisputably deciphering the Harappan script.