Search for a lost civilisation

In a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Jagmohan makes a request for the revival of the special project — A Search For Lost Cities, A Lost Civilisation and A Lost River — conceived and initiated during his term as Culture and Tourism Minister

The overall conceptual plan of the archaeological museum and documentation complex

Many sites in the basin of the now-submerged Saraswati, from Adi- Badri in Haryana to Dholavira in Gujarat, need to be excavated

THE project, I thought, would have enlarged the dimensions of tourism, provided new insight into the origin of our civilisation, created a worldwide interest in our antiquities and attracted a number of scholars and archaeologists to study the unexplored layers of our past. But, unfortunately, the project has since been given up. I am approaching you with the request to intervene and ensure that the project is viewed in the right perspective and revived.

The river involved in the project was Saraswati and the civilisation was the one which is known as Harappan, Indus-Saraswati and the cities were those that once existed in its basin.

Special significance

The significance of the project lay in the attempt to provide clear answers to some of the crucial questions concerning India’s history and her culture and civilisation. These questions were:

(i) Was there an Aryan invasion of or migration to India from Central Asia or Europe around 1500 BC?

(ii) What was the nature of the Harappan civilisation and how did it originate or disappear?

(iii) Were the Harappan people and Vedic people one and the same, and did they create a wholly indigenous civilisation?

(iv) Did river Saraswati exist? If it did, would it not be worthwhile to delineate its dried-up course, excavate settlements that once existed on its banks, explore their features and acquire deeper knowledge about the origin of Indian civilisation?

The hollowness of the invasion theory stands thoroughly exposed. Equally untenable is the theory of the migration with which some scholars have tried to replace the invasion theory, having found it impossible to stick to their earlier stand.

In fact, the proponents of this theory, driven by bias, have been abandoning old arguments and advancing new ones, whenever fresh evidence cropped up consequent to ongoing excavation and research.

The last nail in the coffin of invasion/migration theory has been hammered by the recent genetic studies. These studies have been conducted by the scientists in Calcutta in collaboration with the scientists of other countries.

Did Saraswati exist?

There is ample evidence that supports the view that the River Saraswati once existed. This evidence could be divided into four distinct categories — literary, archaeological, geological and hydrological. Each category needs to be looked into first separately and then in conjunction with one another. Subsequent explorations both in India and Pakistan, in the Indus and Saraswati basins, led to, as indicated above in the section dealing with nature of Harappan/Indus-Saraswati civilisation, the identification of over 2000 sites.

The number of sites identified in the Saraswati basin is about seven times more than the number identified in the Indus basin, thereby implying that Saraswati basin had a larger share in shaping this civilisation. The total area covered by it was about 2.5 million sq km. Roughly, it extended to Ropar in the north; Dainabad on river Godavari in the south, Alamgirpur on river Hindon, near Delhi in the east; and Sutkagendor and Mirikalat on the Arabian sea in the west.

In face of the above cited evidence, only a scholar with compulsive bias would say that Saraswati river is a figment of imagination or identify it with a small and locked river, Helmand in Afghanistan, where there is no question of any river flowing from mountain to sea.

Overall picture

The period, 6500 to 3100 BC, saw the growth of Pre-Harappan/Indus-Saraswati civilisation, corresponding broadly to the times when Rigveda was composed; that during the period, 3100 to 1900 BC, mature Harappan/Indus-Saraswati civilisation prevailed and these were the times when the hymns of four Vedas were composed; and that the period from 1900 to 1000 BC was the period of late Harappan/ Indus-Saraswati civilisation which saw the decline and ultimate disappearance of the surface water of the Saraswati, forcing the people to move eastward towards the water-fed Gangetic plain and work out new subsistence strategies and develop new modes of agricultural pursuits, giving rise to a new pattern of life which we find reflected in the Mahabharata and Puranic literature.

While the puzzles of archaeology and ancient Indian history cannot be resolved with certainty, particularly with regard to Harappa, wherein script has not so far been deciphered, it could be stated with a fair degree of accuracy that the Harappan/Indus-Saraswati civilisation was born and brought up on the soil of India and its people and Vedic people were one and the same.

This civilisation started disappearing when the rivers-system underwent a fundamental change consequent to sedimentation and neo-tectonic movements whose signatures are widespread in the geological formations of the sub-Himalayan and Shivalik regions of Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Uttaranchal and Haryana. The waters of Sutlej shifted to the Indus system and Yamuna changed its course to north-east. While Sarasvati practically dried up, Indus basin got additional water and saw frequent floods. Hundreds of sites in the basin of now submerged Saraswati, from Adi-Badri in Haryana to Dholavira in Gujarat, need to be excavated.

It was this paramount need which the special project intended, inter alia, to meet. In view of the considerations spelt out in this letter and also the huge benefits that would have accrued to the tourism sector, I would request that you may issue suitable instructions to all concerned to recommence the special project.

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