Nationalising the Harappan Past: India, Pakistan and Mortimer Wheeler in the Early Post- colonial South Asia

Abstract

The Harappan civilisation that was discovered in the early 1920s became a matter of intense debate in the decades following the partition of India in 1947. As the boundaries of the newly created nation-states, Pakistan and India were drawn, almost entire excavated area associated with the Harappan civilisation went to Pakistan. And it inaugurated an era of academic politics in which Pakistani scholars and politicians claimed a five thousand years old antiquity for their nation-state based on the Harappan civilisation. On the other hand, the Indian archaeologists began searching for the Harappan sites in the valley of the Ghaggar (identified with Rigvedic Sarasvati River) – now dry, to justify India's linkages with the same civilisation. In this academic politics, one British archaeologist, R. E. Mortimer Wheeler (the Director General of the Archaeological Survey of India; from 1944 to 1948, and Archaeological advisor to Pakistan ministry; from 1948 to 1950) played a central role. Both, colleagues and several erstwhile students of this Englishman in India and Pakistan, this paper argues that participated in this academic politics. As they formulated a new national historical framework, the Harappan civilisation was transformed into a first civilisational landmark in the history of their respective countries.