Calling Harappan Civilisation ‘Vedic Saraswati’ is extreme—learn to hold a trowel first

In a recent article, author David Frawley claimed that the term Harappan is the product of Western thought pushed by proponents of the Aryan invasion theory.

Representational image | Archaeological Site of Harappa | Commons

Just as we were moving into a new year, I stumbled across an article where the author, David Frawley, held strong opinions about the term Harappan. According to Frawley, the term Harappan is not just deceptive but is artificial and incidental. He claimed that this term is the product of Western thought pushed by proponents of the Aryan invasion theory, thus negating the ‘continuity and change’ of India’s civilisation. The article lacked verified information and archaeological perspective, and read like a biased point of view being fed to the public.

The trend of misappropriating archaeology is not new to the country. Similar to other nationalist claims, Frawley asserts that the alternative term denoting the civilisation should be the ‘Vedic-Saraswati Civilisation’. The narrative was projected in such a way that a general resentment for the term ‘Harappan’ could be created, forgetting all the while that Harappa, a village in Pakistan was part of undivided India or Akhand Bharat. The author also forgot that a 6000-year-old civilisation does not conform to modern-day political boundaries or political disputes. History should remain untouched.

Such strong views also do injustice to the work archaeologists (particularly Indian archaeologists) have put in over a century. As Frawley, who has never held a trowel, continues to offer advice to archaeologists, I would like to take the opportunity –particularly as we commemorate the 103rd year of the excavation of Harappa this month – to clarify the true archaeological significance of the term ‘Harappan Civilisation,’ and how it is neither misleading nor incidental.

Why the term ‘Harappan’?

To answer this, we will have to go back to 1931, when Sir John Marshall published the findings from excavations at Harappa and Mohenjodaro. He used the term ‘Indus Valley Civilisation’ to denote the newly found ancient culture, as most of the discovered and investigated sites were on the banks of the River Indus and its tributaries. It was assumed, in the absence of adequate evidence, that the epicentre of the culture is the Indus Valley, thus justifying the term.

But all this changed radically in the years that followed the Partition of India and Pakistan. The celebrated sites – Harappa and Mohenjodaro – remained within the modern-day political boundaries of Pakistan, which left India with no evidence of the first urbanisation. On top of this, Western constantly pushed westward migration of culture, people and thought into the subcontinent, which led to the conception of the infamous Aryan invasion theory. It was believed that since urbanisation was only limited to the Indus Valley, only an external force–by invasion – led to the emergence of culture in the rest of the country.

In 1952, the director general of the Archaeological Survey of India, Amalananda Ghosh, and many eminent Indian archaeologists undertook a major exploration project on the dried banks of Ghaggar-Hakra (of the Saraswati river system). This survey aimed to find contemporaries of Harappa and Mohenjodaro in India. Over 50 sites were mapped during this survey and sites like Sothi in Rajasthan were excavated, thus showcasing the pre-urban and urban phases of this culture in the region.

Eventually, hundreds of sites were reported and investigated, suggesting that the civilisation was not only limited to the Indus Valley or the Ghaggar-Hakra basin but extended up to Afghanistan (Shortughai) and parts of Iran in the west, Yamuna River in the east, Jammu in the north and Maharashtra’s Diamabad in the south. This suggested that the sites were not limited to river valleys like the Indus or the Saraswati, but were spread over a vast region and over diverse geographical units, making it the biggest civilisation.

Archaeologists, mostly Indian archaeologists like Ghosh, felt that the term ‘Indus Valley Civilisation’ did not do justice to this reality. IVC still pushed an archaic view and suggested the Indus as the epicentre of the civilisation, although in the decades since its discovery, research has proved otherwise.  This meant that archaeologists needed a new common name to refer to the culture and the civilisation.

Since cultural material showed regional imprints, naming it after a pottery type (like in the case of Painted Grey Ware or Ochre Coloured Pottery) was out of the question. Archaeologists decided to go with a commonly followed archaeological contention – to name a culture after the ‘type-site’, or the first site where the unique features that define a culture are identified. The Jodhpura-Ganeshwar culture, for instance, is a chalcolithic culture in Rajasthan that is named after the type-site. Similarly, since Harappa, an archaeological site on the Indus, is the ‘type-site’ of this culture (that together make up a civilisation), archaeologists – including Indian archaeologists like Ghosh and BB Lal – baptised the civilisation and culture as ‘the Harappan Civilisation’ and ‘Harappan Culture’, respectively.

Nowhere is it suggested that the term ‘Harappa’ is incidental or artificial. In fact, it was a thought-out term used to give a common identity to an ancient civilisation not limited by a river system or political borders. Frawley’s claim that “Western archaeologists arbitrarily chose it to designate an entire urban civilisation going back to 3500 BCE” is unsubstantiated. The term Western archaeologists arbitrarily chose was ‘Indus Valley Civilisation’ and not Harappan Civilisation.

Along with misrepresenting the time period of the urban phase, which is 2600 BCE and not 3500 BCE, the author has confused the term civilisation with archaeological culture, all the while considering present-day political boundaries. The ‘India’ he mentions is present-day India and not undivided India, thus dividing a history that is connected.

Is Harappa not a symbol of Indian civilisation?

“It would be more accurate to associate this ancient Indian civilisation with Rakhigarhi rather than Harappa,” Frawley stated in the article, highlighting the importance of Rakhigarhi as the biggest and oldest site in the Kurukshetra region. This made Rakhigarhi a symbol of the continuity of culture all the way to Vedic times.

Here the concepts of archaeology, archaeological culture, and archaeological thought are given no due credit. No doubt that Rakhigarhi is an important site and is probably the biggest, but on what grounds should we not associate the ancient civilisation with Harappa? Just because it’s in Pakistan? This makes one wonder if Harappa was still in India, would Frawley have no qualms accepting its importance and association with the ancient civilisation of India? Maybe for him, India is just the present-day India. But how can an event that occurred about 75 years ago change a past that is 6000 years old? BB Lal once said that Harappans and Rig Vedic cultures are but two sides of the same coin – an assertion in which he included Harappa too.

Interestingly, Frawley goes on to suggest that “it is better to reveal the geographical connections of these sites to later India and its prime historical regions,” which only proves me right.

If only present-day India matters, what about ancient Bharat?

The concept of cultural assemblage is totally ignored in this assumption and regard for the geographical spread of an ancient civilisation is completely absent. Harappa and Mohenjodaro, just like Rakhigarhi, Dholavira and many other sites, are associated with the ancient civilisation. The excavations (conducted by Indian archaeologists) at these two sites, yielded unknown facets of the past, which helped in reconstructing the nuances of an age gone by. Harappa and Rakhigarhi both imply the change and continuity of the cultures in a similar manner. In fact, Harappa has a Late Harappan phase, which is missing at Rakhigarhi. So, how fair is it to discard it completely?

A suitable name

The Bronze Age Civilisation is treated like a nameless child baptised by many – scholars and propagandists alike. Indus Age, Indus Culture, Indus Valley Civilisation, Harappan Civilisation, Harappan Culture, Proto-Indian culture, and Indus-Saraswati Civilisation are a few synonyms. The challenge here is not to find the correct one but to find a suitable one that is common for archaeologists across the globe.

The Harappan Civilisation, in the view of archaeologist Dilip K Chakrabarti “follows the standard archaeological practice of naming a culture or civilisation after the name of the site where it was first discovered”. The Indus-Sarawati Civilisation is also technically sound. But the extreme notions of discarding the term Indus and calling it either ‘Saraswati’ or ‘Vedic-Saraswati’ civilisation is still not a viable option.

In the end, you may call the civilisation whatever you like, but you cannot discredit archaeological data without evidence. For archaeologists, till the Harappan folks don’t wake up from their graves and tell us their true identity, we will continue to call it the Harappan Civilisation.

Disha Ahluwalia is an archaeologist and junior research fellow at the Indian Council Of Historical Research. She tweets @ahluwaliadisha. Views are personal.

(Edited by Zoya Bhatti)