Dravidian

At Launch of His Autobiography, M.K. Stalin Reaffirms Plan to Fight for Deeper Federalism

The message is loud and clear: Stalin is probably preparing to play a greater national role.

Chennai: On February 28, the eve of his birthday, Tamil Nadu chief minister M.K. Stalin released the first part of his autobiography, Ungalil Oruvan (One Amongst You). Published by Poompuhar Pathippakam, the book is about Stalin’s life, from his birth in March 1953 to his arrest under the Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA) during the Emergency in February 1976.

While the book has its own significance in Tamil Nadu’s political landscape, the event itself delivered perhaps a more important message that Stalin has made no bones about expressing since he took over as Tamil Nadu’s chief minister – his focus on federalism. “The Dravidian model believes in equal rights to all ethnic groups. India is a union of states. The constitution says so. All the states should have higher powers and federal rights. The Indian government, which is a union of states, should act on the principles of federalism,” Stalin said.

Declaring that his ideological belief was the Dravidian model, Stalin said his aim was to propagate the Dravidian model across the country and hence national leaders were invited. The book release event was attended by, amongst others, leaders from across political spectrum including Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan, former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah and Bihar’s opposition leader Tejasvi Yadav.

Calling for constitutional amendments to bestow more rights on the states, Stalin appealed to the Congress, Left and regional parties to raise their voices in support of this demand.

That the event was more than a book release of a state’s chief minister was also evident from the speeches delivered by other leaders. Abdullah said he was not there as a “victim” but to “caution about what could happen to other states”.

But the message is loud and clear.

Tamil Nadu chief minister M.K. Stalin. Photo: PTI

Stalin is probably preparing to play a greater national role. After having delivered successive electoral victories in 2019 (Lok Sabha elections where the DMK-led front won 38 out of 39 seats), in 2021 (assembly elections where the front won 159 of 234 seats) and in the recently held urban local body elections, Stalin has been dropping hints about forming a larger anti-BJP front and not just for electoral reasons.

The All-India Federation for Social Justice floated by Stalin is aimed at “achieving principles of social justice and federalism at the national level”. The federation, Stalin declared, will bring together leaders, members of civil society, like-minded individuals and organisations on a common platform towards the goal. Stalin also wrote to 37 organisations inviting them to be part of the federation.

“The idea is to clearly regain the space for affirmative action. It has an historical context to it,” says senior journalist and author of Karunanidhi: A Life, A.S. Panneerselvan, pointing to the first amendment to the Constitution of India which empowered the states to take affirmative action. The amendment was the result of a Supreme Court judgement in 1951 which upheld the Madras high court judgment striking down the government order passed in 1927 providing caste-based reservation in government jobs and college seats.

Stalin hinted at the event that the fight continues. “In 1953 when I was born, we fought against kula kalvi (caste/hereditary form of education). Today we are fighting against NEET. When I was a student, the fight was against the imposition of Hindi. Today, we still continue to fight against Hindi hegemony. In 1971, when I held a function for Anna [Annadurai], three chief ministers took part and spoke out for federalism. Today we continue to do that.”

Chennai-based political commentator Aazhi Senthilnathan says Stalin wants to together steer the ideas of social justice and federalism. “They are of course DMK’s ideas, but Stalin is driving them together and that is very significant.”

While the idea could be to fight at all levels, the efforts could also have electoral repercussions. DMK spokesperson Constantine Ravindran says Stalin is already playing an aggressive role in promoting the ideas of federalism and social justice, but during elections in 2024 he could be a galvanising force among non-BJP parties with some differences.

Senthilnathan agrees: “Mamata Banerjee cannot work with the Left and the Congress. CPI(M) can work with Congress in states like Tamil Nadu but not in a major state like Kerala. The regional parties cannot work alone. Stalin can deal with each of them and bring them on a common platform. His is the formula to defeat the BJP at the national level.”

Panneerselvan echoes the thought. “He wants to bring a national alternative to the BJP. In 1977, the rallying point was restoring democracy. Today, the rallying point is restoring decentralised polity. There are differences among them, yes, but the differences are part of the process.”

The argument that Stalin is keener about forging a national alternative to the BJP effectively puts an end to the rumours about a third front, which also discounts the possibility of Stalin aiming to be a prime ministerial candidate. Senthilnathan points out that Stalin was the first leader in 2019 to propose Rahul Gandhi as the prime ministerial candidate.

“His formula of bringing together the Left, Congress and the regional parties has turned out to be successful in Tamil Nadu. Today, the Tamil Nadu model is seen as an alternative to the UP model. It is too early to say if he wants to be or will be the king. But he is certainly on his way to being the kingmaker.”

BJP’s Electoral Strategy for Tamil Nadu in 2021 is the De-Dravidisation of State Politics

With the Hindutva wave seemingly at its peak across India, the BJP has staged a few theatrics to cement its hold in the state.

As Tamil Nadu heads towards assembly elections this year, the Bharatiya Janata Party at the Centre and the AIADMK-led government in the state can sense the ascendance of the DMK and seem determined to base their strategy on issues such as OBC reservation and religion-related controversies.

Realising the political dynamics of caste in Tamil Nadu, the BJP was the first political party to appoint a Nadar woman (Sudra caste) Tamilisai Soundararajan as the governor of Telangana and appointed two Dalit workers, L. Murugan and V.P. Duraisamy, as president and vice-president of BJP’s state unit, respectively.

Tamil Nadu is a land of extremes. In the 1970s, one would find a temple and a rationalist forum on every street in the state in the 1970s. One group would worship Ram while another group would mock this worship. One group would sanctify the Manusmriti while the other would burn copies of the text.

L. Murugan, president of the BJP in Tamil Nadu, being felicitated by party workers. Photo: BJP Tamil Nadu Facebook page

To give a concrete example of how caste politics works in Tamil Nadu, E.V. Ramasamy Naicker – popularly known as Periyar, a learned and respectable person – had openly pledged his support and campaigned successfully in the 1962 Madras legislative assembly elections for the incumbent Kamaraj-led Congress government. Periyar’s support for Kamaraj was based solely on the fact that he belonged to the Sudra caste who was challenging Rajagopalachari (of the Brahmin caste).

Also read: Tamil Nadu: Does a Leadership Position in the BJP Really Help the Dalits?

It was the first major display of open caste conflict between a brahmin and a non-brahmin. Though Kamaraj’s victory marked the arrival of the first non-brahmin political leader as chief minister in Tamil Nadu in post-independence India, it was the Dravidian movement, that had started way back in 1925, which paved the way for a political space where non-brahmins could occupy the space they had dreamt of for ages.

Ever since Kamaraj, there has been no turning back for OBC politicians and their politics. From C.N. Annadurai to Edapadi Palanisamy (with the exception of J. Jayalalitha), there have always been OBC-led political alliances in Tamil Nadu. Needless to say, OBC politics is interestingly juxtaposed alongside linguistic issues, which remain burning questions till date.

Given the OBC-dominated political landscape of Tamil Nadu and its own vulnerability on the linguistic front, the BJP’s electoral strategy is one based on religious issues. Why? Because the Hindi-chauvinist BJP will not win a single assembly seat if it seeks votes by vowing to impose Hindi in school curricula, let alone other administrative affairs.

By appointing Dalits to the top two administrative positions in the BJP’s Tamil Nadu unit, the party is projecting them as pucca Hindus. It also reshuffled its leadership and appointed non-brahmin candidates, namely, Vanathi Srinivasan and Nainar Nagenthran as vice presidents, Karu Nagarajan and R. Srinivasan as general secretaries. It is crystal clear that the BJP is all out to woo OBCs (read non-brahmins) in the upcoming assembly elections with one of its three vice presidents making a strong pitch for the party to lead a victorious alliance in Tamil Nadu.

Is the De-dravidianisation of 95-year old Dravidian politics possible?

Of course, undoing the Dravidian tradition in politics would be a daunting task for the BJP. Most of Tamil speakers have not understood many of the sangh parivar’s Hindi terms and terminologies such as its most significant socio-ideological term ‘Hindutva’ and slogans like sab ka saath sab ka vikas, acche din anne wala hai, phir ek baar Modi sarkar.

Also read: Will BJP’s UP Model of Mobilising Scheduled Castes Work in Tamil Nadu?

However, with the Hindutva wave seemingly at its peak across India, I am of the opinion that the BJP and other Hindutva groups have propitiously and triumphantly staged a few theatrics namely (a) banning Perumal Murugan’s Mathorupagan (one part woman in English and Arthanareeswarar in Sanskrit) and giving death threats to him and his family; (b) forcing Vairamuthu to apologise for his controversial remarks on Andal (a goddess who is believed to have prayed to beget Krishna as her husband), (c) arresting Nellai Kannan for his “finish off” remark against PM Modi and Amit Shah; (d) planting a secret policing mechanism, to target all those who are involved or suspected to be involved in anti-Hindu activities across Tamil Nadu, “Friends of Police” (this Community Policing Initiative was barred over its alleged role in the Santhankulam custodial deaths); and (e) arresting Karuppar Koottam’s founder Surendran Natarajan and three of his associates for their videos on Kanda Sashti Kavasam, followed by the removal of over 500 videos from their YouTube channel.

Perumal Murugan. Photo: Wikimedia Commons/ Sreejithkoiloth CC BY-SA 4.0

Let us now unveil the BJP’s grand designs that we had just enumerated one by one, starting with the attack on Perumal Murugan’s novel on Arthanareeswarar. I am using the Sanskrit word for Mathorupagan for two reasons : (1) Arthanareeswarar is the name of the temple and it is also a well-known name, almost a household name, in Tamil and in Tamil Nadu and (2) the BJP’s main political agenda being the undoing of all that is Dravidianist – one such attempt is de-Tamilifying Mathorupagan.

The BJP and its affiliates went to the extent of compelling Perumal Murugan to give up writing after he came under sustained attacks from certain local, caste-based groups especially Gounders (a dominant caste group in the Tiruchengode area). The drama ended with his brilliant political statement – “Perumal Murugan the writer is dead. As he is no God, he is not going to resurrect himself”.

Well-established poet, writer and lyricist Vairamuthu’s controversial speech where he said Andal was herself a devadasi who lived and died in the Srirangam temple landed him in big trouble. He had to make a public statement after coming under attack not just from the BJP but also from AIADMK members for his remarks on Andal, one of the Vaishnavite minstrels. Vairamuthu said he had not intended to hurt anyone and had only quoted from a book published by Indiana University Press.

Vairamuthu is well acclaimed in literary circles and, above all, he is a known public intellectual. Attacking such a personality by scuttling his freedom to expression is not to be construed as an attack on Vairamuthu. It should be understood as a symbolic attack on anyone who dares to point fingers at the Sangh’s version of Hinduism.

Also read: Why Tamil Nadu Voted the Way It Did

Tamil orator and a longtime Congressman Nellai Kannan’s arrest was another technique that was well crafted and manoeuvred by Tamil Nadu’s BJP members. What was his crime? At a public meeting, organised in Muslim-dominated Melapalayam by the Social Democratic Party of India, Kannan made certain remarks which were seen to incite Muslims to “finish off” Amit Shah, whom he dubbed “the brain behind the Prime Minister”. The whole suspenseful story concluded with Nellai Kannan’s hospitalisation. Here too, the BJP strategy is to disseminate a strong message: do not meddle with the BJP, especially its leaders.

Nellai Kannan. Photo: Facebook/thamizhkadalnellaikannan

The FoP (Friends of Police) is a movement and a joint venture as well with the help of the government of Tamil Nadu. The FoP helps to promote crime awareness among the people and enables the prevention of crimes. Political analysts like Manushyaputhiran allege that it is the handiwork of the Sangh Parivar to initiate non-governmental or voluntary associations like the FoP in order to penetrate and spread its wings in the administrative affairs of the state, including the ones that maintain law and order like the police department.

Last but not least is the Karuppar Koottam squabble. This issue has turned out to resemble a brawl that one gets to see on the roadside between two drunkards in Tamil Nadu. It all started with the obscene interpretation of a devotional song.

“All Dravidian parties such as DK, DMK, MDMK, AIADMK, etc condemned the obscenity vehemently. One group, however, stood out from the rest of the crowd in its denunciation. While every other group decried the video as offensive to Tamil religious sentiments, the Bharatiya Janata Party denounced it as offensive to Hindus,” reported the Tamil Guardian on August 20, 2020.

This is a crucial distinction. Semantically speaking, the BJP has made its stand clear that its manner (the modus operandi) is to announce (read: warn) that anyone found guilty of hurting Hindus and Hinduism will be severely dealt with. Politically as well, the BJP has made its position absolutely clear – that it would stand up only for the party’s major project, the Hindutva ideology.

Also read: Why Tamil Nadu Says #GoBackModi Every Time He Visits

With strong support from the ruling party in Tamil Nadu, the BJP especially after the untimely demise of J. Jayalalithaa, AIADMK’s supremo, has implemented GST and demonetisation, introduced and imposed NEET exams which were outrightly opposed by Amma (Jayalalithaa). AIADMK’s two-headed Janus claims that the present government is run as per Amma’s wishes and guidance whereas, in reality, little did the Janus realise that it was BJP’s ploy to get rid of all that was in place in the political landscape of Dravida Nadu. Hence, it is left to anyone’s guess what the BJP is all out to do in Tamil Nadu.

Ajith Kanna is a Professor at the Centre for French and Francophone Studies, School of Language, Literature & Culture Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.

Khushbu Sundar Joins BJP, Hours After Quitting the Congress

The BJP has long been a marginal force in Tamil Nadu where two Dravidian parties – the AIADMK and the DMK – are main contenders for power, and Sundar’s induction will give a boost to the party.

New Delhi: Actor-turned-politician Khushbu Sundar joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in New Delhi on Monday, hours after she quit the Congress.

Speaking to reporters at the joining ceremony, the actor from Tamil Nadu said she had come to the understanding over a period of time that if the nation has to move forward, then someone like Prime Minister Narendra Modi is needed to take the country “in the right direction and to its glory”.

Congress party’s national spokesperson Sundar resigned from the party protesting against what she called some leaders’ “dictating terms” and “suppressing” her.

She was with the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) before joining the Congress in 2014.

Assembly polls are due in Tamil Nadu in the first half of the next year, and the BJP hopes her induction will be a boost to it.

The BJP has long been a marginal force in the southern state where two Dravidian parties, the AIADMK and the DMK, have been the main contenders for power.

To Counter Hindi Push, G.N. Devy to Launch Cultural Front to Promote Other Languages

A delegation led by the writer met DMK chief M.K. Stalin to support the party’s demand of equal rights for all scheduled languages.

New Delhi: Amidst the Centre’s sporadic attempts to push for Hindi as the national language, public intellectual, linguist and Padma Shri awardee G.N. Devy met DMK leaders M.K. Stalin and A. Raja to discuss the creation of a united pan-Dravidian, Prakrit and Pali Language and Cultural Front, according to a report in The News Minute.

A delegation, which included Kapil Patil, MLC from Maharashtra, Atul Deshmukh, general secretary Rashtra Seva Dal, and professor Surekha Devy, led by G.N. Devy met the DMK leaders in Chennai. Devy, who is the chairman of the Peoples’ Linguistic Survey of India, discussed the possibility of establishing a united cultural front to promote ancient Indian languages other than Hindi and Sanskrit.

The delegation welcomed the resolution by the DMK demanding equal rights for all scheduled languages and expressed strong opposition to the ‘one nation one language’ idea propounded by the Amit Shah.

According to a press release from Devy, the Front would “include most of the scheduled languages and several hundred non-Scheduled languages from the North-East, states like Bengal, Orissa, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra, etc., the Central Tribal Belt, and all the southern States” and that the group would “truly represent the idea of India as enshrined in the Constitution in terms of diversity and pluralism”.

Also read: What History Tells Us About Discussions Around Hindi as ‘Rashtra Bhasha’

The press release also said that the front would likely be launched in Chennai next year, in a mega event led by Stalin. “Dr. Devy discussed the possibility of unfolding this inclusive socio-cultural initiative with a mega event to be held in Chennai early next year to be led by Mr. Stalin. Mr. Stalin welcomed the idea,” the release said.

Speaking to The News Minute, Devy said that, “Out of 121 crore population as per 2011 census, 33 crore speak Hindi, which means out of every four Indians, one speaks Hindi. It is a great thing, I respect that language. But three persons do not speak Hindi. It means that three-fourth of India has (linguistic) legacy from Prakrit, Pali and Tamil”.

Devy also said that there was a need to understand “the mosaic of Indian culture in terms of a diversity, which cannot think of one nation, one language formula anytime — now or in the future”. Devy also added that the Front would conduct meetings in every state and in every language and would not be limited to any party.

Outlining the reasons as to why he had met the DMK, Devy said, “I thought of the DMK for role to play in this because soon after independence, when we were talking about linguistic groups, the language movement in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, among others, played a constructive role in making the state reorganisation realistic”.

Devy also specified that the front would not participate in agitations or protests to further its goals and would instead work to educate people through campaigning, publications, discussions and meetings.

Also Read: India Doesn’t Need Hindi to Unify the Masses

On September 14, observed as Hindi Diwas, Union home minister Amit Shah had renewed a controversy by saying that the Hindi language could be a unifying factor for the country.

Shah’s remark came months after the Centre withdrew its “three-language formula” – which was perceived as a move to impose Hindi on the non-Hindi speaking states – in the draft New Education Policy 2019.

Shah’s comments prompted widespread criticism from several political leaders including Stalin, H.D. Kumaraswamy and Lok Sabha MP Asaduddin Owaisi, following which he attempted to clarify that he had not called for the imposition of Hindi over other regional languages and had merely “requested” for learning Hindi as the second language after one’s mother tongue.

How ‘Amma’ Became the Master of the Politics of Branding

All political parties in Tamil Nadu can claim a direct appeal to the people as mediated through commodities and welfare schemes. It was this politics of branding that Jayalalithaa became the master of.

All political parties in Tamil Nadu can claim a direct appeal to the people as mediated through commodities and welfare schemes. It was this politics of branding that Jayalalithaa became the master of.

J. Jayalalithaa. Credit: PTI

All who did and most who did not support the chief minister are in mourning, in some form or another. J. Jayalalithaa is no more. A cinema star-turned-leader, whose determination in the face of massive adversity had won her the titles of ‘Iron Butterfly’ and ‘Revolutionary Leader’, Jayalalithaa captured the imagination as a woman not necessarily of the people, but certainly with the people as a ubiquitous presence and force in political and popular life.

It’s hard to fathom the Tamil landscape with the knowledge that all of those portraits of the leader no longer point back to a living, sentient being. The outpouring of emotion she commanded in life and now in death never cease to amaze those do not have a feel for how the political and popular affect have been collapsed into one another, for better and for worse. Without getting into the task of proving the sincerity of sentiment leading some to go so far as to take their own lives in acts of political devotion, or the opposite and equally misguided one of showing that those who participate in public displays of mourning are doing so because of some culture of political ‘sycophancy’ as it is often dubbed, we must shift the terms of debate on the nature of her power while appreciating the massive loss Tamil Nadu has sustained with her passing.

Has a political impasse sustained by the binary opposition, nearly devoid of ideological content, collapsed? The state of Tamil Nadu will now be forced to face what it was unwilling or unable to in the assembly elections held in May: a political world no longer sustained by this structural deadlock between two of the greatest leaders in Indian politics that has become ever hollower over the decades. Not completely hollow, of course. The gender politics underpinning an opposition between Jayalalithaa’s appeal to women as well as a certain technocratic middle class, and Karunanidhi’s bearing the legacy of the radical but oftentimes masculinist Dravidian movement could not be starker.

In many respects, the gender dynamics animating both cinema and politics made Jayalalithaa who she was. But the competitive populism that has come to define the political field in Tamil Nadu has ensured the increasing emptiness of the signifiers of political difference at the level of explicit ideology. There are minor differences in policy between parties, but all can claim a direct appeal to the people as mediated through commodities and welfare schemes. In the end, it mattered little whether it was televisions, mixies, grinders, goats or hard cash. The image attached reigns supreme.

This is a politics of branding, that intangible asset underpinning the political image in our age. And Amma was its master. Having come up under MGR’s tutelage in a world of ‘cine-politics’, to borrow a phrase from M. Madhav Prasad, Jayalalithaa’s whole life from adolescence was tied to the commodity image, well before she became ‘Amma’. It was not only the image of the movie star she lived with, it was also that of a woman who defied compulsory gender roles to such a degree as to provoke an attack in many forms, physical and symbolic. Jayalalithaa inherited MGR’s support and fan base among the newly christened and recognised thaaykulam, or ‘community of mothers’. But in eventually coming to embody the figure of a mother whose children and siblings were none other than the people themselves – for she had no conventional family of her own – Amma had outdone MGR, not to mention her bitter rival Karunanidhi.

To call this a politics of branding is not trivial, nor is it to dismiss it. While everyone knows about the Amma canteens, drinking water, cement and pharmacies that proliferated in recent years, this phenomenon is a symptom of a much deeper structure animating politics. Jayalalithaa’s mastery of the political image is in many respects the result of the DMK’s early embrace of the commodity image as a means of mobilising the youth in 1950’s Tamil Nadu. Under Anna’s leadership and by means of Karunanidhi’s pen film became such an important vehicle for politics that it could be severed from the sphere of political ideology. Through a strange dialectics in which the once-vehicle image replaced conventional politics in importance, MGR’s body and personal charisma had a life that outlived even the films in which he acted or the political office he came to monopolise, as M.S.S. Pandian argued in his book, The Image Trap.

Jayalalithaa followed suit, but not without bitter struggle, within the party against a faction led by R.M. Veerappan and MGR’s wife V.N. Janaki, and without though ignominious attacks on her person both from DMK MLAs in the Tamil Nadu State Assembly and in the DMK-supporting media. Jayalalithaa vowed to return to the assembly only as the chief minister and she did.

It is in her capacity to craft and control her image as chief minister that Jayalalithaa, in her shift to ‘Amma’, outdid her predecessors. She was a tragic figure who had taken on the Herculean task of building her own symbolic order, made of the materials she had inherited from the politics of the Dravidian movement and the dreamscape of the film. Ruthless against a press that had encouraged and oftentimes led the attack on her, the chief minister filed 180 criminal defamation cases between 1991 and 1993. She withdrew all the cases on December 30, 1993, in a dramatic act of sovereignty premised on the exhibition value of official pardon. This was also a period of more physical forms of violence against those perceived to be inimical to a person, Jayalalithaa, who was blurring her image more and more with that of the state itself.

The use of law to control the contours of what could be said in public about the leader culminated in the midnight arrest of Karunanidhi in 2001 and the subsequent mass arrest of reporters working for Sun TV and other media outlets. But if we remember these as attacks on freedom of the press, we must also bear in mind the media world that has made its living through depictions of Jayalalithaa and her companion Sasikala that are grounded in aggression against women occupying, indeed shaping the public sphere. Jayalalithaa and her critics have produced each other in a substantial fashion, and the now generalised fear in reporting that has resulted has produced a peculiar world in which public secrets rule political discourse.

Consider the lack of information available to the public since Jayalalithaa first entered Apollo Hospital in September. Chennai has been rife with rumours of the chief minister’s ill health before, but the last year had witnessed a normalisation of official public silence, now extended to nearly all big media, and endless speculation in the parallel public sphere that finds its oxygen in the very lack of information or debate in big media.

Many will find in Jayalalithaa’s story much that is exceptional. Her abilities to inspire such a range of emotions and reactions, all strong, was remarkable. It was her self-diagnosed vulnerability and sensitivity to the often hostile eyes of others that appear to have sat at the core of her iron image; just as it was the adoration of her supporters that forced her to continue a political career that was so filled with pain, in addition to victory. But it is also worth bearing in mind elements of these politics that are not exceptional.

Jayalalithaa’s friendship with Prime Minister Narendra Modi was not only one of personal affection or political convenience. The image machine that the chief minister had mastered as an art of politics appears to have meaning and use beyond the state of its birth. When claiming that Amma was a master of the art of political branding, we must also place her within a wider field of image politics that extends even beyond the shores of India. The struggle to forge a new symbolic order, exemplified even in her funeral rites that unfolded as I wrote this, is one will be taken up by others. Jayalalithaa’s artistry in the field of popular politics will remain an important reference point, however, one filled with pathos for all who have been captured by her iron image.

This article originally appeared in Kafila. Read the original article.

The Chauvinism in Indian Archaeology is Very Evident: Shereen Ratnagar

The noted archaeologist spoke to The Wire about the controversies surrounding the Indus Valley civilisation that have come into the limelight since the release of Ashutosh Gowariker’s Mohenjo Daro.

The noted archaeologist spoke to The Wire about controversies surrounding the Indus Valley civilisation that have come into the limelight since the release of Ashutosh Gowariker’s Mohenjo Daro.

Excavated ruins of Mohenjo-daro. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Ever since the teaser of Ashutosh Gowariker’s Mohenjo Daro released, the film has been subjected to scrutiny, amplified by the persistent attempts of Sangh parivar’s ideologues to give the Indus Valley civilisation a saffron tinge. The historically inaccurate and politically controversial flashing of horses and the use of heavily Sanskritised dialogues in the film have left a bad taste in mouth of the discerning audience.

However, the film has revived the age-old debate around the Harappan civilisation. While majority of historians find most of these aspects of the civilisation already resolved in the the discipline of history, the energised right-wing has found yet another opportunity to drive home their points of view, which have, time and again, been methodologically refuted.

In this context, The Wire interviewed noted archaeologist Shereen Ratnagar about her views on the controversial issues surrounding the civilisation. Ratnagar, a former professor of archaeology at Jawaharlal Nehru University, is considered an authority on the Harappan civilisation.

Educated at Pune’s Deccan College and the University College London’s Institute of Archaeology, her books include Understanding Harappa: Civilisation in the Greater Indus Valley (Tulika, 2006), The End of the Great Harappan Tradition (Manohar, 2002), Encounter: The Westerly Trade of the Harappa civilisation (OUP,1981), Enquiries into the Political organisation of Harappan Society (Ravish Publishers, 1991), Trading Encounters: From the Euphrates to the Indus in the Bronze Age, (OUP, 2004). She has also written several research papers on the subject. She is currently working as an independent scholar investigating various aspects of the Bronze Age civilisation. Excerpts from the interview:

With the release of the film Mohenjo Daro and its depiction of the controversial Mackay 453 seal, the seal is back in news. The film shows the seal to introduce horses in the film, as Hindutva ideologue N.S. Rajaram and palaeographer Natwar Jha had first tried to propound. Indologist Michael Witzel and the comparative historian Steve Framer completely debunked the theory. Could you please tell us whether the archaeological findings until now establish the presence of the horse during those times?

There is no zoological proof [and] no securely identified set of bones at any Mature Harappan site to indicate the presence of the horse. There are no horse harness pieces either, as we find in the later Iron Age burials in peninsular India.

The Harappan script and the language question is shrouded in mystery. Hindutva ideologues have tried to draw links between Sanskrit and the Indus Valley script.

This is not the case. It appears from things like certain signs occurring often at the ends of inscriptions, which indicate grammatical suffixes, which could mean that the language encoded by the script was a Dravidian one.

Can this be proven scientifically? How have historians resolved the language question?

Much of archaeological reasoning remains inferential. Inference is different from speculation and most people do not realise this.

There is a renewed interest among a large section of the Sangh parivar to draw similarities between the Rgvedic Age and the Indus Valley civilisation, both in terms of chronology and culture. Most professional historians believe that the two civilisations did not coincide and culturally they did not resemble much. What is your opinion?

These are tiresome old questions – scholars should, by now, have moved on. In the Bronze Age we have an urban civilisation organised at the level of the state. The Rgveda is a collection of hymns to be recited at the time of ritual conducted by priests for individuals. What we can cull out from the Rgveda text – which is hard to understand, it being in Vedic and not classical Sanskrit – is a society organised on kinship. One wonders how many proponents of the ‘Harappan civilisation is equal to Rgvedic culture’ theory know the language of the Rgveda.

In your book Understanding Harappa, you have suggested that calling it Harappan civilisation is more appropriate than ‘Sarasvati civilisation.’ However, with the excavation of Rakhigarhi and the Haryana government’s efforts to brand the Ghaggar river as Sarasvati, are you willing to reconsider your viewpoint?

Rakhigarhi was known even when I wrote that book. It is not the only site on the alleged ancient Sarasvati. I do not say that one site, however large, will make a difference.

In your book you have also explored a range of possibilities as reasons for the decline of the civilisation – from natural calamities to the end of overseas trade. However, the film definitively shows a devastating flood as the reason, following which some survivors migrated to the Indo-Gangetic plains, from where the Vedic age emerged.

For reasons of visual narrative, I suppose floods would be easier to show. While no civilisation can cease because of a single flood, we cannot for our part become orthodox and say not this, not that.

We know that the Indus Valley civilisation was an evolved urban economy as opposed to a largely rural, pastoral Vedic Age. The knowledge of iron in the Rgvedic Age also marks a departure point from the Bronze Age civilisations prior to that. You have researched about the Mehrgarh site to establish continuities between pre-Harappan and Harappan periods. With the continuity aspect between the Vedic Age and Harappan period making a political comeback, could you tell us a little about how historians themselves have dealt with the change or continuity question during this long period?

Some insist that weights, for instance, show a continuity, but cubical weights are not known in the early historic period, just the system of counting or measuring – and it is evident centuries after the end of the Harappan period. What happened in the interim? Deep freeze? Cold storage? Again, the iconic long carnelian beads were not made any more. The system of writing vanished – one or two resemblances to Harappan signs is not tantamount to a writing system. People did not use long chert blades for agricultural and household work after 1800 BC or so. Most importantly, there is a large scale desertion of Harappan towns and villages instead of continued occupation until the Iron Age. There is no slow and gradual cultural transformation at sites and in any case there are different regions of occupation, different crops too in some place.

Any conversation about the Harappan civilisation brings about the politically controversial topic of Aryans – whether they migrated, invaded or were autochthonous. The film clearly veers towards them being indigenous. This question has become so important that DNA samples of excavated dead bodies have been sent to test.

Which dead bodies? Do any skeletons have surviving DNA? And how big a sample would we need?

Today, various excavations and its findings in Harappan sites are turned and twisted according to different political interests. As an archaeologist, what do you think are the most important or relevant questions about the Indus Valley civilisation that need to be the focus, something that will help us understand the period better.

We need to reinstate warfare as an aspect of Harappan life. For this, we need to reinvestigate the ballista or stone/terracotta missiles used in the defence of citadels and walled sites. They are there at Mohenjo-daro, at Surkotada and at other sites – and can no longer be brushed under the carpet. We can also investigate the forms of the characteristic Harappan pottery – which of these were used for cooking, which for feasts and social occasions such as serving food or gifts, which for storage.

The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda has excavated small sites on the coast of the Gulf of Kutch that though small, have substantial material for craft production. How did the rural economy sustain such production of shell and stone ornaments and for whom or where were these made?

The flash flood harvesting system at Dholavira merits further study as well. We need the help of geologists to estimate the depths of the aquifer at the site.

We could do some cross-cultural study to compare and contrast this civilisation with those in Mesopotamia and Egypt: the sizes of towns, the bronze technology, the storage buildings and the presence or absence of temples. This is something most Indian archaeologists refuse to do – either because it requires a lot of reading or out of some misplaced sense of superiority saying our that civilisation is unique, or because of such a literal mindset that any comparison is understood as deriving our civilisation from somewhere else. The chauvinism in Indian archaeology is very evident.