PRESSURE OF HISTORY

India's collective cultural history is shaped by continuous experiences stretching back to prehistory. Any attempt to build a singular narrative around its plural identities is fraught with danger

- R. BALAKRISHNAN

On September 20, 1924, Sir John MarOn shall, director-general of the Archaeological Survey of India, made a historic announcement in the Illustrated London News: "First light on a long-forgotten civilisation: New discoveries of an unknown prehistoric past in India." What his team stumbled upon was not just a localised culture, but a civilisation that radically pushed back the known history of India.

Before the discovery of the Indus Valley civilisation, the origins of any civilised society in India were always traced back to the Vedic age. The ruins of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro altered this perspective. The discovery pushed back the origins of ancient Indian civilisation far beyond the Vedic period (1500 BCE).

The significance of Marshall's announcement can be fully appreciated when we note that Alexander Cunningham, the first director general of the ASI, had missed the opportunity to investigate the first Harappan seal, discovered by his associate Major Clarke. Cunningham had erroneously concluded in 1872 that the seal was "foreign to India". In 1902, viceroy Lord Curzon appointed Marshall as the new head of the ASI. Curzon preferred the 26-year-old archaeologist over Vincent Smith, an Irish Indologist and historian, who had suggested in his book, The Early History of India, that "the materials available for the study of early Dravidian institutions are not yet sufficiently explored, and the historian's attention necessarily must be directed chiefly to the Indo-Aryan institutions of the north, which are much more fully recorded than those of the south". Had it not been for Marshall, the historic announcement of 1924 might never have been made.