Keezhadi is a village
located 10 km south east of Madurai city, Tamil Nadu. In 2013, a team from the Archeological
Survey of India (ASI) led by Superintending Archeologist Mr. Amarnath Ramakrishnan
has started excavating this village for potential sites of settlement. In March
2016, they found a site of ancient settlement of around 110 acres underneath
coconut groves. By excavating just one acre of the site, they found rich
evidences of an urban civilization which used burnt brick structures, brick
walls of length 10-15 metres, open and closed drainage network, etc. The
carbon-dating of the artefacts indicate that the settlement existed around 2200
years ago. The presence of furnaces here indicates the possibility of an
industrial site as well. Thousands of potsherds (many with Tamil-Brahmi
inscriptions) and artefacts such as pearl micro-beads, precious and
semi-precious stones, ivory dices, terracotta human figurines, a copper rod for
painting eyelashes, bangles made of conch shells, and shining white-painted
black pottery were found in the Keezhadi site.
Above all, this site
establishes the existence of an advanced urban civilization in South India
during the era of Sangam literature. The existence of well-developed
civilizations in the Indian subcontinent, before the advent of Aryans was well
established archeologically by the Indus Valley Civilization and linguistically
by Robert Caldwell’s work on Dravidian languages. Now, the Keezhadi site has
given a proof for the Vaigai River Civilization in Sangam era, thereby having
both literary and archeological evidence of the Sangam era civilization.
When the artefacts from
Keezhadi and its potential implications to history became a public discussion, the
ASI has tried to delay the third phase of excavation by transferring Mr. Amarnath,
who was heading the excavation, to Assam. The central government rejected the
recommendation of the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) to reconsider
Amarnath’s transfer. People opposed this move by the central government which
forced the central Culture minister Mahesh Sharma and central minister Nirmala Sitaraman
to visit the site. The culture minister assured that the ASI will be continuing
the excavation for another three years. But the newly appointed site director
closed down the project in six months. Now, the Centre says that the state
government can continue the excavation.
It is to be noted that
for the excavation at Keezhadi, the central government has allocated 40 lakhs
while for constructing Ram museum it has allocated 150 crores. Among the 20
samples provided for carbon-dating by Amarnath’s team, only two were allowed by
the ASI. Similarly, in Haryana, the BJP government is planning to spend 50 crore
rupees to “revive” the non-existent Saraswati river and has already set up a
separate Saraswati Development Board. The RSS-BJP is trying to create false
evidences to paint the Indus Valley Civilization as Vedic despite lack of
actual evidences. The Hindutva forces in India have always tried to shun the
scientific studying of people’s history, imposing mythology as history and
religion as science. These forces try to either appropriate or destroy the
people’s traditions in the country to retain the two-thousand years old brahmanical hegemony in the Indian society.
But contrary to what
they say, India has always been a land of distinct philosophies, cultures, languages,
peoples and traditions. Now the Hindu-Hindi-Hindustan agenda of the brahmanical
forces has allied with the big corporate money to become the ‘One Culture, One
Nation, One Market, One Tax’. Thus, the struggle of the people to protect their
cultures including food, languages and traditions has now become intertwined
with the political struggle of the masses to save their livelihood from the
corporate capitalism. In such situation, the Keezhadi excavation becomes very important
in uncovering the true history of the people.
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