What must one call the oldest civilisation of India? Should it be the Harappan Civilisation, Indus Civilisation, Indus Valley Civilisation, the Indus-Sarasvati or the Sindhu-Sarasvati Civilisation? As we observe the 100th year of the announcement made by John Marshall, an English archaeologist who headed the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) from 1902 to 1928, on the discovery of the Indus Civilisation, a recent development in the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) textbooks puts focus back on its name. As the Class 6 social science textbook introduced young readers to the terminology ‘Sindhu-Sarasvati Civilisation’, it re-opened an age-old controversy about the appropriateness of the nomenclature. A section of historians and academics say the name is reflective of hyper-nationalist jingoism. Michel Danino, chairperson of the Curricular Area Group (CAG) preparing the new social science NCERT textbooks, explained the use of three terms for this civilization — ‘Harappan’, ‘Indus’ or ‘Indus-Sarasvati’ (also ‘Sindhu-Sarasvati’) — the Class 6 textbook. First, he pointed out, the identification between the present-day seasonal Ghaggar-Hakra river and the Sarasvati river in Vedic texts goes back to the mid-19th century, starting with a French geographer in 1855, and has since been endorsed by generations of indologists, geographers, geologists and archaeologists. Of these, archaeologists — both Indian (such as B B Lal, S P Gupta and V N Misra) and foreign (such as R Allchin, B Allchin, J M Kenoyer, G L Possehl and J McIntosh) — have often published maps of the Harappan Civilization with the river marked as “Sarasvati”. Danino says, “Even present-day detractors, such as Romila Thapar or Shereen Ratnagar, earlier endorsed this identification.” Secondly, he argues, the nomenclature “Indus-Sarasvati” was endorsed by several Indian and at least two foreign archaeologists from the 1980s onward. “This seemed logical in view of the hundreds of Harappan sites that have been identified in the Sarasvati region from the 1950s onward,” he asserts. The debate over this nomenclature is representative of the larger ideological battle over Indian archaeology and history that academics have been trying to resolve for a long time. A key development in post-Partition years was the discovery of more and more sites of the Harappan kind on the Indian side of the border. These sites were found to be concentrated around the Ghaggar-Hakra river, which is an intermittent river system originating in the Shivaliks in Himachal Pradesh, flowing through Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan and going all the way up to the Pakistan border. The discovery of new sites was, in fact, proactively pushed by the political leaders of Independent India. In her book, Finding Forgotten Cities (2006), archaeologist Nayanjyot Lahiri cited a written conversation between then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and K M Panikker, who had just retired as the Dewan of Bikaner, in March 1948. Panikker, in a letter to Nehru, wrote, “With the separation of the Pakistan Provinces, the main sites of what was known as the Indus Valley Civilisation has gone to Pakistan. It is clearly of the utmost importance that archaeological work in connection with this early period of Indian history must be continued in India.” With Nehru’s prompt agreement, the finding of Harappan sites in India became a national project. With the Indus river basin in Pakistan no longer serving as the focal point of the civilisation, a section of historians and archaeologists were keen on broadening the name to include Ghaggar-Hakra or what they believed was the Vedic Sarasvati. The name ‘Indus-Sarasvati’ was first proposed by archaeologist S P Gupta sometime in the 1980s, when the settlement patterns of Indus sites on the Sarasvati river basin became clear. Those critical of the terminology would say that this is nothing more than appropriation of a bronze age civilization by giving it a Vedic overtone. “Why don’t we then call it the Indus-Ghaggar-Hakra as these rivers are called presently?” asks archaeologist Sudeshna Guha, arguing that the name ‘Sindhu-Sarasvati’ is not so innocent. There are others, like archaeologist Shereen Ratnagar, who believe that there is hardly any evidence to show that the Sarasvati is even a real river. She mentioned that when she, among other archaeologists, tried to find evidence of the river, they could not find one continuous, harmonious river line and they eventually gave up. Historian Upinder Singh agrees that the Sarasvati was a real river but does not support the nomenclature ‘Sindhu-Sarasvati’ to refer to the ancient civilisation. She mentioned that the term ‘Indus’ or ‘Indus Valley Civilisation’ also does not do justice to the large geographical territory in which these sites are now spread out. “Sites have been found in Afghanistan; in the Punjab, Sindh, Balochistan, and North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan; in the Jammu area, Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Gujarat and western Uttar Pradesh in India. There is an isolated site at Shortughai in Afghanistan,” she says. Singh goes on to argue that just like ‘Indus’ does not encapsulate this large region in which these sites have been found, the same can be said about the Ghaggar-Hakra or the Saraswati as well, since the civilisation goes way beyond the territory surrounding the river. The best name, in Singh’s opinion, is ‘Harappan’, based on the archaeological convention of naming a culture after a site where it was first discovered. Meanwhile, Guha is of the opinion that the best way to refer to this period of history is to call it the ‘Indus Civilisation’, the first name given to this archaeological phenomenon by John Marshall, the ASI director general who announced the discovery of this Bronze Age in 1924. Among the supporters of the nomenclature ‘Sindhu-Sarasvati’, California-based historian Nalini Rao asserts that the name does the job of conflating the Harappan Civilisation and the Vedic Age. “It is important to acknowledge that the oldest civilisation of India was advanced technologically, materially as well as spiritually,” she says. Danino, however, explains that although “Indus-Sarasvati” does a better job of conveying the geographical extent of the civilization and its two lifelines, it still falls short, since Harappan sites have been found in areas beyond the Sarasvati river basin, especially those in western Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat, including major sites such as Dholavira. He adds that personally he is against the use of the term ‘Sarasvati’ by itself: the Indus basin, with cities like Mohenjo-daro in Sindh and Harappa in Punjab, cannot be blanked out, he says. He concludes that while ‘Indus-Sarasvati’ may be more comprehensive, there is no perfectly satisfactory designation for this civilization, and therefore the new Class 6 textbook took the stand that all three designations have been in use and can be used interchangeably. The oldest civilisation of ancient India is well known for its many attributes — a sophisticated drainage system, well planned urban structures, elaborate trading networks and much more. What do we call it in modern India? We are yet to decide.
