Rakhi Garhi

 Have you heard of this sleepy hamlet near Hussar in Haryana? No, no, it does not have anything to do with the shooting of 'Sholay', or of any other film for that matter. Not exactly very far away from the national capital it is. Currently it is getting to be internationally famous. Want to know why?

Well, here are found a few more proofs of the Harappan civilization. These fragments cursorily started getting noticed circa 1960's. It was in and after 2014 that first, seven mounds, and later, overall nine mounds were located by the ASI, that is, the Archaeological Survey of India. 

The ASI excavations show that seven of these mounds belong to one group of settlement,  the eighth one could be the funerary place, and the ninth one could be from a later or a slightly different (era of) human settlement. 

The one human skeleton, or surely part of the head, found by the ASI archeologists, shows that it could not have come from the Steppes. This possibility matters a lot in the heavily charged ideological battle today which maintains that the Aryans are non-Indians. They invaded the Northern plains after the weakening of the Harappan civilization.

In the caste-ised battleground that India unfortunately is today, the Aryan invasion gets equated with the Bramhin assertion. As a result, there is this not so subtle insistence that Brahmins do not belong here. There are almost Holocaust like overtones of ethnic hatred that are unmistakable in such assertions.

 The Rakhigarhi or Rakhi Garhi, both titles are accepted in the scholarly circles, excavations, and especially the skeleton/head, show that there is not any archaeological proof that Aryans are alien invaders from the Steppes, from the Iranian regions, et al.  

Of course, post 2014, nothing in this part of the world is non-politicised! Critics, hence,  have chosen to maintain, despite modern most techniques such as carbon dating, that these ASI excavations are part of the agenda to assert the existence of a unified Hindu nation, et al!

Well, in scholarly, especially (quasi-)scientific studies, paradigms sure shift. Yet it is indeed sad to assign motives to discoveries because it defeats, nay beats, the very purpose of research which thus gets guillotined to prejudices!

Pratima@ Rakhi Garhi from the recent past, the research about the core of the earth and the resultant tectonic shifts are as exciting as (the entire process of) Sunita Williams returning to earth a few minutes later from now. What giant steps of human intelligence and creativity these are both in the past and in the future !

If the blog posted today deals with the public most sphere, the blog tomorrow would talk about why March 18 and 19 matter the most to me. Well, the two dates occupy a truly intense part of my private space. So read the blog today and tomorrow to notice the difference!