On September 20 1924, a British archaeologist announced the discovery of the Indus Valley Civilisation. A century later, we are fighting over who the Harappans were—Aryan or Dravidian? Vedic or not? In this final instalment of our series, we lay out the very political debate over ancient Indians—with Tamil Nadu making a recent and unexpected entrance.
Editor’s note: This is the second part of our series on the Indus Valley Civilisation. The first focused on its discovery and significance.
The timeline: Version #1
We all agree on what happened on the subcontinent until the Indus Valley Civilisation. The first Indians came out of Africa and can be traced back to the Andamans. They are known as either Andamanese Hunter Gatherers or Ancient Ancestral South Indians (AASI). But what happened next?
The birth of IVC: According to the most widely accepted version of events, these Ancient Ancestral South Indians moved north and mixed with settlers from Iran—who arrived 9,000 years ago. The result is referred to as the Indus Periphery People. They likely spoke an early Dravidian language. They also built the Indus Valley Civilisation.
What happened next: When the Harappan civilisation declined after 2000 BCE, many of its descendants moved south to mix with those ‘first Indians’—and formed the Ancestral South Indian (ASI) population. Most of them live in South India today.
About those Aryans: Most academic research—borne out by archaeological evidence—shows that Aryans were Bronze Age herders who migrated out of the steppes (or grasslands) of Central Asia some 4,000 years ago.
About those Vedas: One batch of these steppe herders moved toward Europe—and another ended up on the subcontinent—around the same time. These Aryans brought with them proto-Vedic rituals, symbols—including horses—and language. This explains, for example. why Sanskrit and German are similar.
These conclusions are borne out by an abundance of genome analysis—as geneticist David Reich notes:
In India, you can see, for example, that there is this profound population mixture event that happens between 2000 to 4000 years ago. It corresponds to the time of the composition of the Rigveda, the oldest Hindu religious text, one of the oldest pieces of literature in the world, which describes a mixed society...” In essence according to Reich, in broadly the same time frame, we see Indo-European language speakers spreading out both to Europe and to South Asia, causing major population upheavals.
Point to note: According to this timeline, the Indus Valley Civilisation had already fallen apart when the Aryans arrived. They mixed with the now scattered post-Harappan population—to form the Ancestral North Indian (ANI) population. This is the bit that sticks in the nationalist craw—but more on that in the next section.
The colonial twist: The burra sahib version also cast Aryans as outsiders—except they marched in from Europe—and conquered the dark-skinned Harappans—pushing them toward South India. The most ardent advocate of this theory was an archaeologist named Mortimer Wheeler—who based his conclusion on a single discovery of 37 skeletons in 1946: “It may be no conjecture... Aryans slaughtered aborigine men, women and children." You can see an image of the excavation below:
But, but, but: New analysis in the 60s—by an American archeologist—showed that those skeletons belonged to different periods—often separated by centuries. In other words: Sorry, no Dravidian genocide. Wheeler’s own protege BB Lal would later ask: "If the Aryans pushed the Harappans all the way to South India, how come there are no Harappan sites in South India?" FWIW, no one subscribes to the conquest theory these days.
The timeline: version #2
This is the nationalist version—which was first offered as an answer to colonial gloating by the likes of Swami Vivekananda. It has remained alive mainly due to Hindu ideologues who loathe the Aryan invasion/migration theory—because it suggests that the most hallowed Hindu traditions were “imported.”
About those Vedas: So where was Vedic culture born? The Indus Valley Civilisation, of course! The core premise: “Aryans” were the original inhabitants of the Indian subcontinent and not migrants from Central Asian Steppes. They took Vedic language to other parts of the world—hence the linguistic similarity between Europe and Indian languages.
Various Hindutva-leaning archaeologists have made the claims in various forms. But the person who first put forward “evidence” of Hinduism was John Marshall—the man who announced the discovery of the IVC back in 1924. He cited this particular Harappan seal:
The seal features a figure seated cross-legged, wearing a horned headdress and surrounded by several wild animals. Regarded as a “yogi” and “pasupati” (lord of animals), the figure was recognized by Marshall as being an early form of the Puranic deity, Shiva. Marshall strengthened his claim by identifying the finds of several conical objects as early representations of the Shiva linga.
As recently as 2016, Indian experts claimed the famous ‘Dancing Girl’ is, in fact, Parvati.
About those horses: Sceptical historians have long pointed to an inconvenient fact: “Aryans used horses. We do not have horses and wheeled chariots in the Indus civilization.” But in the 1990s, the Hindu nationalist-minded historians hit upon a novel solution:
On July 11, 1999, the United News of India reported "historians N S Rajaram and Natwar Jha had deciphered messages on more than 2,000 Harappan seals." After months of media hype, Rajaram and Jha's The Deciphered Indus Script made it to print in early 2000. They claimed the Indus civilization was awash with horses, horse keepers, and horse rustlers. To support his claims about horses, Rajaram pointed to a blurry image of a "horse seal" — the first pictorial evidence ever claimed of Harappan horses.
Sadly, the ‘horse’ turned out to be a broken unicorn bull—manipulated to look equine.
The Sindhu-Saraswati Civilisation: The rewriting of the IVC also includes changing its name. For this we return once again to the always handy Mr Lal:
BB Lal, in 2002 identified a dried up channel of the Ghaggar Hakra river system, feeding a number of Indus Valley sites, as river Saraswati, mentioned in the Rig Veda. Accordingly, it is argued that the civilisation be renamed to Saraswati Sindhu civilisation or simply Saraswati civilisation.
And that’s exactly what the government did this year—in Class 6 textbooks.
Reading the signs: A Dravidian civilisation?
The Indus Script is the most critical piece of evidence in the culture wars over origins. Multiple languages were spoken across the vast Indus empire—but all of them died with the IVC. All we have are 5,000 inscriptions from 50 sites—which no one can read. While some claim these are not “true writing”—most experts agree they represent a language:
In the third millennium BCE, it is quite likely that many dialects, and perhaps even languages were spoken in the Indus. But we may be sure that just one language was used in writing the Indus Script, because the sign sequences of its inscriptions are repeated throughout the Indus realm.
According to the latest estimate, there are 676 such signs. You can see what they look like here:
Reading the signs: Where BB Lal saw links to the Rig Veda, most other studies show evidence of Dravidian languages. For example:
[R]esearcher Bahata Ansumali Mukhopadhyay… finds that one particular word — “elephant” — traces quite clearly back to the Proto-Dravidian, the ancestor of all Dravidian languages in existence today, thus proving that it was at least one major language spoken in the Indus Valley Civilisation.
A Finnish researcher Asko Parpola even claims to have found the old Tamil names of all the planets in the Indus script.
Indus-Dravidian civilisation? The latest ideological push to claim IVC comes from Tamil Nadu. New archeological evidence points to an ancient Tamil civilisation—which could have overlapped with Harappa—and is most definitely not ‘Vedic’:
It is ‘Vaigai Civilisation’, an indigenous, well developed self-sustaining urban culture with an industry and script, indicating that the people of that era were highly literate. So far we have not come across a religious symbol or deity or anything to indicate to that effect.
The discoveries include 2,030 graffiti marks, including four with Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions—that could be similar to the Indus Script. The Tamil Nadu government is pumping money into the digs and comparative studies—to help “reshape” the history of India—from a Tamil lens.
Something to see: Iravatham Mahadevan—a respected expert on the Indus script—claims that one of the Indus seals depicts what is now the Tamil sport of jallikattu:
Point to note: John Marshall has been roped in once again—this time to commemorate the ‘Dravidic’ culture of the Harappans. Chief Minister MK Stalin has announced plans to erect a grand statue of John Marshall to commemorate the 100th anniversary of IVC’s discovery.
The bottomline: The hapless Harappans may well become yet another battle arena for the North-South wars—as DMK sells itself as the standard-bearer for Dravidian pride. But the question to ask ourselves: Why are we so obsessed with establishing our origins as ‘indigenous’? Surely, no one should spend this much time arguing about a bunch of herdsmen on horses.
Reading list
- Scroll offers a scathing take on the ‘Hindutva’ project to rebrand IVC. This 1998 India Today cover story offers a more sympathetic take on the theories.
- Down To Earth has a long and more entertaining version of the same.
- Tony Joseph in The Hindu has a very nerdy and detailed analysis of the genetic research on ancient Indian origins.
- For the best reporting on the recent archaeological finds in Tamil Nadu, read Hindustan Times and News18.
- Scroll has more on that ‘jallikattu’ seal.
- Rest of World looks at attempts to use AI to crack the Indus Script—while Discover Magazine explains why it has proved impossible to read.
- The Hindu has more on the latest research on the Dravidian links.
- Two Big Stories have lots more on the genetic analysis of IVC—and a significant find in Rakhigarhi, Haryana.
