What's Been Knocked About By Shadow-Boxing Over Keeladi?

News18

13-07-2025

That was bound to fuel charges of manipulation, and lead to allegations of suppressing the 'truth". It would also make any professional—as superintending archaeologist Amarnath Ramakrishnan definitely is—double down on his work. After all, another Archaeological Survey of India stalwart KK Muhammed also refused to budge from his report on the Hindu pillars and terracotta figures found beneath the Babri Masjid though he was under intense pressure.
Even in Tamil Nadu, the case of Keeladi is not unique; T Satyamurthy, who led excavations at Adichanallur, also went through travails related to the submission of his findings. Not only did a century go by between the first dig and the next—1904 and 2003-4—over 15 years elapsed before the ASI came out with a report about what was found. And Tamil parties cited its findings as proof of a separate civilisation separate and superior to the Sindhu-Sarasvati one.
As the Adichanallur saga continued, ASI asked Ramakrishna for clarifications on what depth (and therefore what date) some artefacts were excavated in Keeladi too, particularly those attributed to the oldest period, saying they needed more analysis. Like Satyamurthy, Ramakrishna did not budge, asserting his findings were sound and based on established archaeological procedures—stratigraphic sequences, material culture and Accelerator Mass Spectrometry.
'Science" has long been used as a weapon to prop up hypotheses on antiquity and tear them apart. So it is not surprising that in Keeladi too, science is being posited as the neutral adjudicator in a bruising battle of competing political ideologies as state elections in Tamil Nadu loom menacingly. Setting up a museum in Keeladi even as excavations and discoveries are still happening point to the drumming up of popular support for discoveries yet to be peer-reviewed.
The southern extremity of Indian is the location of many ancient burial sites—in cists, cairns and urns—but no settlements had been found until the dig at Keeladi. Indeed, even the 178 urns unearthed at Adichanallur had human remains with a diverse racial range: 35% Caucasoid, 30% Mongoloid, 16% Negroid, 6% Australoid, 8% ethnic Dravidian, and 5% mixed trait. Thus, Adichanallur was not a strong candidate to assert a superior 'Dravidian' civilisation.
So Keeladi, 12 km southeast of Madurai—one of many ancient sites identified along the Vaigai river, is now the poster-place for Tamil pride. Thousands of artefacts were unearthed there by ASI's Ramakrishna, indicating a 2,100-year-old thriving urban centre of the Sangam era, the first discovery of this kind. Many theories have been expounded since then about Keeladi, including postulations that it was sophisticated and 'highly literate' and even 'secular'.
Assertions of 'secularism' in that pre-modern society even though the presence of ritual burials prove that the people of that time had certain beliefs indicates a distinct political agenda given the trajectory of current Dravidian politics; the politicisation of Keeladi is clear. That is why the Centre and ASI have to tread carefully, even when citing science as the reason for their scepticism about Keeladi's antiquity, or any other aspect of the findings there.
When Ramakrishna refused the Centre's order to revise his 982-page report on the two phases of excavations he carried out at Keeladi in 2014-2016, he gained huge support from segments in the state who claimed 'northern' bias. Transferring Ramakrishna to Assam—a very bureaucratic move—and delays in central funds for more excavations at Keeladi only exacerbated Tamil anger. Eventually excavations there by ASI restarted, but under PS Sriraman.
However, Sriraman concluded there was no continuity in the brick structures discovered earlier, so all the accusations of suppression of Tamil heritage surfaced again. The Madras High Court intervened, visited Keeladi and ordered ASI to continue digging and allow Tamil Nadu's department of archaeology to join in. The latter promptly published a report in 2019 saying Keeladi was an urban settlement dating from 6th century BCE to 1st century CE.
In January 2023 Ramakrishna, by then back in Tamil Nadu, submitted his report on the first two phases. But he was again transferred thrice more in quick succession. Meanwhile the third phase of excavation by the state's archaeology department has been accompanied by strong 'Tamil pride' narratives by a wide range of mostly non-experts in archaeology. The ASI, and by extension the Centre, maintain that scientific lacunae remain about Keeladi.
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The discovery of hundreds of ancient megalithic burials points to the probability of nearly as many as-yet unexcavated human settlements too, as hunter-gatherers gradually became agro-pastoralists. But centuries of disconnect with our ancient roots, then colonial exploitation followed by post-1947 decades of focus on increasing agricultural production and economic infrastructure has led to the destruction of evidence that could have given a clearer picture.
But instead of shadow-boxing, the Centre (and the ASI) must join hands with Tamil Nadu, and indeed all states, to formulate a policy on accessing excavation sites that are so crucial to our understanding of India's ancient heritage. Extensive digs in the north have led to the realisation that the Indus was not the fountainhead of subcontinental civilisation and that many more contemporary settlements flourished further east along a paleo-channel of the Sarasvati.