HARAPPAN FOOD WAS RICH IN FLESHY DELIGHTS

INTERVIEW Dr Nayanjot Lahiri, historian, archaeologist and author

- PRATUL SHARMA

The discovery of Indus Civilisation was a significant event in the history of Indian archaeology. As we commemorate 100 years of this discovery, how do you view this journey?

The journey is very different from what one usually encounters. It was 90 years in the making. It is also not a saga around one individual and his work. There are several heroes here—an Italian linguist-turned archaeologist, a brilliant Bengali scholar, British gazetteers and Archaeological Survey men, and above all, John Marshall, the director general of the ASI. These characters quite unexpectedly became heroes in the sense that it was in the course of their normal archaeological diggings that they discovered clues which would eventually change the way the Indian past was visualised. This means that it was an institutional achievement of the ASI.

This civilisation has cities and sites in both India and Pakistan. An appropriate tribute would be to have an exhibition where objects of the Indus Civilisation which were divided after partition are brought together. Partitioning of the collection in the way in which it was done—where some objects like the Mohenjo-daro girdle and a necklace with beads of gold, agate and jasper were divided down the middle—is unethical. They should be viewed as they were originally in both India and Pakistan.

How do you think colonialism shaped our early understanding of this civilisation?