Rethinking Indian origins

KIREN Thathiah’s column “From whence we came, where is ‘home’ really?” (POST, August 22-26), writes: “The fact is that what was once known as the Indus civilisation, with its advanced cities of Mohenjo Daro and Harrapa having water-borne sewage and double-storey dwellings dating back some 4 500 years, is now in Pakistan.”

It does not matter that Mohenjo Daro and Harrapa are in what is now called Pakistan. The artefacts that had been found there and which are in the Delhi Museum are part of the civilisation heritage of India. The Arabic graffiti scribbled on parts of the ruins reveal that Pakistan is not particularly happy with having the ancient sites located in that country.

Furthermore, new study funded by an IIT Kharagpur grant, which brought together a geologist, a palaeoscientist and physicists from four scientific institutions to work on the excavations of a now deceased ASI archaeologist, has found that the Indus Valley Civilisation was at least 8 000 years old,

They have also found evidence of a pre-Harappan civilisation that existed for at least 1 000 years before this.

Their claim pushes back the mature phase of the Indus Valley Civilisation (with significant remains in Harappa and Mohenjo Daro in modern day Pakistan and Dholavira in Gujarat) from its current dating of 2 600-1 700BC to 8 000-2 000BC and the pre-Harappan phase to 9 000-8 000BC.

“This demands a fundamental rethink of old assumptions about Indian civilisation’s antiquity.

“There is also new evidence like the discovery of a Harappa-like ancient site in Tamil Nadu’s Shivganga, by ASI,” writes Nalin Mehta. SANU SINGH Reservoir Hills