Archaeology at Large:

Hindu Nationalism and the Primordial Drive

Scott Carney

University of Wisconsin-Madison—Fall, 2002

ABSTRACT: This paper proposes to examine popular conceptions of two key South Asian archaeological arguments in terms of neo-colonial agendas: a primordial national identity, and the primacy of the nation-state. By examining popular and academic interpretations of the Aryan invasion and the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, this paper explores the ways in which the archaeological record is used, and sometimes altered, to further nationalist agendas.

Primordialism and the Nation-State

The nation-state exists as both a physical reality that alters the landscape and as a representation of shared reality. Common philosophy, economic systems, infrastructure, trade networks, language, armed forces and legal structures define the boarders of the state, but public identity often relies on the codification and acceptance of a shared mythology. A successful nation-state instills a sense of history and ethnic identity among its citizenry that bind them concretely to the land. These ethnic identities defines in opposition to other identities, lead to the exclusion of other groups, and, to use Anderson’s terminology, other “Imagined Communities”. Communal mythology begins with the desire for a common bond, and finishes with the monumentalization and physical alteration of the landscape to cement perceived ethnic primordiality. In South Asia, rooting Aryans to Indian soil legitimates the geography of its seemingly arbitrary boarders and asserts Indian antiquity over the recently vanquished colonial state; as a response to colonialism the primordial viewpoint is necessary to counteract hundreds of years of imposed “foreign” history (Bryant, 2001: Chapter 1, & Trautmann, 1997).

In his discussion of “culturalism” Arjun Appadurai states:

Throughout the world, faced with the activities of states that are concerned with encompassing their ethnic diversities into fixed and closed sets of cultural categories to which individuals are often assigned forcibly, many groups are consciously mobilizing themselves according to identitarian criteria. Culturalism, put simply, is identity politics mobilized at the level of then nation-state (Appadurai, 1996: 15).

Given the drive to legitimate ethnic criteria we should expect to find nation-states engaged in the politics of identity formation by justifying primordial ties through the archaeological record. The boarders of nation-states are especially tenuous in South Asia. Before 1947, India and Pakistan were part a region known as “British India”, or “Hindustan”. During partition Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Parses and Christians divided themselves along to religious lines—but linguistic and ethnic compositions did not necessarily correlate with religious affiliation. The mission of nationalists in India is to crystallize new ethnic formations based on religious criteria. At a national level, it is important to pursue questions of antiquity in present day politics to solidify sovereignty over the land.

The question of the origins of Aryan culture is so contentious in recent years that writers and academics who assert their belief in a South Asian homeland are often dubbed “Hindu Nationalists” and believers in foreign origins as “Marxists” or, at times, “traitors” (Bryant, 2001: Chapter 1). Current archaeological and linguistic evidence on the Aryan question is contentious and lacks academic unity, yet stigmas continue to exist for largely political reasons. Perhaps it is time that we reevaluate the question “Where did the Aryans originate?” and instead ask “What interests are best served by asking this question?” My primary concern here is not the actual archaeological evidence is, but how it is interpreted and used. While there are good reasons to believe that Aryans were indigenous to South Asia and that the Babri Masjid was built on top of an existing Hindu temple, the historical events are not as relevant to the present day political climate as how conceptions of history alter the ways in which we view our world.

The goal of this paper is to briefly examine arguments supporting and disputing theories of the Aryan invasion and to illustrate how political and governmental interests manipulate, and in some cases fabricate, evidence to further their own aims. In addition, I intend to explore the a key monument of the historic period, the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, in terms of supporting a nationalistic agenda and its symbolic power for formulating Hindutva identity. Finally, I will compare the use of archaeological evidence in India to the ways it was employed in 19^th century France and in modern day Israel. For my analysis I rely heavily upon Arjun Appadurai’s conception of the modern nation-state, Edwin Bryant’s discussion of the Aryan debate in his work The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture, Stanley Tambia’s analysis of communal violence Leveling Crowds, and Nadia Abu El-Haj critical work on the archaeology of Israel. Read together they present a frightening picture of the violent potential of nationalistic discourse and warn of the potential misuses of academic research.

Evidence of Misuse:

In July of 1999 the Indian press was swarmed with reports of that a team of academics, Jha and Rajaram, had finally deciphered the Indus Script and discovered it to be Vedic Sanskrit. It would have been the most impressive linguistic achievement since the decoding of Linear B as an ancient form of Greek. For nearly a year the Internet swarmed with messages of almost 2000 seal translations that resounded with references to the Rigveda. Almost a hundred attempts to decipher the script had been tried, but this translation alone could claim that the entire corpus of the script could be read (Witzel, 2000).

Though this was his most high-profile claim to date, many people were skeptical. Rajaram was no stranger to the world of nationalistic archaeology, having penned at least four books on the fallacy of the Aryan invasion theory and the importance of revising Indian history.[1] Another work of his glorified the destruction of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya in 1992.[2] In Rajaram’s world all of Indian history was viewed as a struggle between righteous nationalistic forces and their oppressive imperialistic counterparts.

In his analysis of the Indus script Rajaram a priori rejects all western historical and linguistic efforts as influenced by colonial agendas.

They are the result of cultural, nationalistic and emotional influences of a political milieu that disappeared with the end of European colonialism, and the subsequent loss of vigor of the Christian missionary movement. As far as history is concerned, the point to note is that these theories were the creation of scholars who were often in the service of the same ruling interests. It would be a serious error to accept their conclusions as the result of objective research, ignoring the political and social forces that gave rise to their work (Rajaram, 2000: 8).

This examination of colonial influences seems to fit with the contemporary post-modernist critiques, but differs in its solution to the problem. Instead of evaluating scholarly efforts in light of their préterrain, Rajaram rejects the entire body of research. Thus freed of the constraints of contradictory evidence, Rajaram reverts to what he calls “primary sources of Vedic knowledge” and Indus seal documentation.

His goal, as stated Witzel and Farmer, is to locate the Indus Valley Civilization as the cradle of all western knowledge, from astronomy to mathematics and high-energy physics—confirming the “Hindutva propagandist’s wildest nationalistic dreams.”

Before he can successfully ignore the accumulation of evidence dating the codification of the Rigveda between 2000-1200 BC, and placing it at least a thousand years earlier, he needs to contend with two important contradictions. The Rigveda makes numerous references to the use of horses and chariots, which were presumably quite commonplace at the time of its composition. While a there is evidence of horses existing in India before 2000 BC (Bryant, 2001: 169-175), there is no evidence of widespread use in South Asia until after 1700 BC (Witzel, 2000). Although wheeled vehicles have existed in the area since 3000 BC, they often weighed in excess of 500 kg. Evidence of light weight spoke-wheeled chariots exists in the rich burials of a Sintasha in Syria that date between 2000 and 1800 BC (Bryant, 2001: 176) (Witzel, 2000). Equally important is the absence of the horse motif anywhere in the archaeological record of the Indus Valley Civilization. Assuming that the horse was an important animal to the people of the Indus, the absence of even a single horse seal is striking, if not conclusive.

To deal with this lacunae in the record, Rajaram circumvents the issue and fabricates his own evidence. He argues the Aryans were both a maritime society with intense trade networks in Mesopotamia (Rajaram, 2000: 14) and were established horse trainers with a variety of horse related industries. To support his claim he produces a distorted image of a “horse seal”. Within weeks of publishing his book a team of researchers from Harvard and Stanford proved that the so-called horse seal was in fact a computer distortion of a broken unicorn seal from Mohenjo-daro. With the hoax revealed Rajaram eventually admitted to some “computer enhancements”, but never backed down from his position that it was an image of a horse. He claimed that the translation that accompanied it, “Sun indeed like a horse” (Rajaram, 2000: 162) was still correct (Witzel, 2000).

It is important to realize that even though his work holds little value in academic circles, he, and writers like him, are clearly influential with popular audiences. He holds a prominent position among Hindutva academics and is treated as a legitimate authority by mainstream news outlets from the liberal minded The Hindu, to more conservative papers like The Times of India, and Indian Express. Internet message boards focusing on the Indus Valley Civilization[3] buzz with references to Rajaram’s works and are heavily weighted with the same sorts of biases inherent in an ultra-nationalist agenda (personal observation).

To equate the indigenous Aryan school of thought with Hindu nationalism is not a fair assessment—but ways in which the evidence is derived determines its viability.

Legitimate academics like Bryant, Kenoyer and Shaffer have all made convincing arguments to support a link between the Aryans and the Indus Valley Civilization that point to indigenous Aryan development in South Asia. Their work draws on different sets of assumptions that are less frequently co-opted and transmitted through Hindutva platforms.

Concluding his critique on Rajaram’s work, Witzel states, “Hindutva propagandists like Rajaram do not belong to the realm of legitimate historical discourse. They perpetuate, in twisted half-modern ways, medieval tendencies to use every means possible to support the authority of religious texts. In the political sphere, they falsify history to bolster national pride. In the ethnical realm, they glorify one sector of India to the detriment of others,” (Witzel 2000). Witzel then states that the responsibility of researchers to oppose nationalistic tendencies and to expose instances of propaganda as fraudulent to the public. Indeed, by publishing his essay in Frontline and on the Internet, he has started to combat nationalism in its chosen realm of the mass media.

It must be said that Hindutva revision of history is in part a response to colonial agendas during the time of the Raj. Early linguists were shocked to discover a link between Sanskrit and Latin that could not be explained except to assume descent from a common ancestor (Trauttman, 1997: chapter 1; & Shaffer, 1984: 77). The initial concept held specifically in Max Müller’s work that the Indo-Aryan language family was proof that “the same blood was running through the veins [of the English Soldier] as in the veins of the dark Bengalise” (Müller, 1854: 29-30 [quoted from Bryant p.24]). Language and race were immediately conflated, and would remain so among most academics and in the popular literature until the present day. British administrators, historians and linguists used the combined notion of race and language to legitimate their claim on Indian soil.[4] The British racial theorists promoted the idea that the Indo-Aryan language family, and the corresponding Aryans, originated somewhere in Central Asia and spread east and west—invading indigenous populations and replacing them with their own culture. Colonial agencies could then “present themselves as a second wave of Aryans, once again bringing a superior language and civilization to the racial descendents of the same natives their forefathers had attempted to elevate so many centuries earlier” (Bryant, 2001: 26). The British story was based on the best facts available, but was

stated forcefully, on inconclusive evidence to reinforce the political agenda of the time. The British version of history further emphasized the existence of distinctly non-indigenous communities in India who through a series of invasions took turns ruling various portions of the sub-continent. Most notably were the repeated waves of Islamic invaders, British, French and Portuguese conquers and the foreign influence of Parsis, Jews and Christians. Although the “racial” makeup of these groups were almost identical, the British used notions of religion, language and race as tools for a “divide and rule” strategy. This had drastic implications which eventually led to the partition of the subcontinent into India and Pakistan along religious lines.[5]

When nationalist organizations started to appear in India advocating independence from colonial rule, their writers were rightfully suspicious of the agendas present in British history, and were motivated to write their own accounts based on the primacy of indigenous sources. In 1923, V.D. Savarkar defined Hindutva in terms of a Hindu nation-state while he was interned in a British prison. Literally “Hinduness”, Hindutva became an extremely important concept for Hindi self-identity (Bryant, 1997: 270). The term was later taken up by Rastriya Svayamsevak Samaj (RSS), a right wing nationalist political organization.

Savarkar based his argument on the currently accepted paradigm that the Aryans were invaders from outside India, and therefore not born of Indian soil. He emphasized that the beliefs of Hinduism were indigenous to India, as were Jainism, Buddhism and the Sikh faith—all of which originated in South Asia—and thus all indigenous faiths could be considered Hindu. Muslims and Christians, however, were conceived of as more problematic, for while they “inherited a common culture—language, law, customs, folklore and history—[they] are not and cannot be recognized as Hindus. For though Hindusthan to them is fatherland as to any other Hindu yet is not to them a Holyland too” (Savarkar 118 [quoted from Bryant 2001: 272]). Since his term “’Hindu’ coincided with rashtriya, ‘nationality’, it was argued, Hindus were automatically true nationals of India. Members of other religions, if they denied they were Hindus were also denying they were Indians” (Tambiah, 1996: 245).

It was not long until other members of the RSS began to question the theory of Aryan invasion itself in order to reinforce Hindu identity. In the minds of nationalists, the stronger the tie is to the soil, the stronger the claim is to justify the existence of a communally divided nation-state. M.S. Golwarkar, who inherited the leadership of the RSS from its founder K.B. Hedgewar, realized that supporting the Aryan invasion theory was analogous to making the Vedic peoples the same as the Mughals and other invaders. He proposed a rather absurd theory that the Aryans originated in India, but, in order to corroborate astrological evidence put forth by Tilak, that In ancient times India existed at the North Pole (Bryant, 2001: 273) .[6]

More recently, and further afield, P.N. Oak has proposed even more radical ideas of Hindu primacy. In his book World Vedic Heritage: A History of Histories he proposes all world history is descended from Vedic (Aryan) thought. His famous statements include “Allah was a Hindu god.” (Oak, 1984: 310) and that “The Mahabaratta contains elaborate descriptions how the 100 Kauravas were born as test tube babies prior to 3138 BC Indicating that in the remote past the earth had highly advanced civilizations” (1984, 362). Oak need not be taken seriously by many readers, but he clearly represents an important facet of nationalist literature, if only because more mainstream writers like Bryant (2001: 273, 282, 304), Talageri (1993: chapter 18), feel the need to discuss his theories and discredit them, rather than ignore them altogether.

Writers like Rajaram, Savarkar and Oak, are just a small sample of a growing body of writers who fabricate and misuse historical and archaeological evidence to advance political and nationalistic agendas. They should be understood as reactions to colonial paradigms that push certain theories over others, not on the basis of sound evidence, but for supporting colonial practices. The danger of any sort of politically motivated science is that they enter the mainstream much more easily and are disseminated through a wide demographic who takes these writings as fact.

Even more interesting, and perhaps frightening, is that present day academics have begun to realize that there might be a good case to situate South Asia as the starting point for Aryan populations, and perhaps the Indo-Aryan language family as well. In the next section I will discuss how academic research may play into nationalistic constructions. I posit the question: What happens when the nationalist paradigm, with its agendas and falsified evidence, is in part ratified by respected independent academics who in their search end up with similar conclusions? How is this evidence represented and reinterpreted to advance nationalist causes?

Misuse of Evidence

Edwin Bryant recently published a book which aims to open and examine the debate of the indigenous origin for Aryan culture. He draws no conclusions, but favors the view of a South Asian homeland. That said, he feels it necessary to twice preface his fears about the public reception of his work.

There have been many moments when I have regretted undertaking this research for fear that it might be misconstructed and adapted to suit ideological agendas . This very much remains a dark cloud hovering over what has otherwise been an intriguing and intellectually very fulfilling research project (Bryant, 2001: 7).

In his conclusion he once again states “I especially hope that [my work] will not be co-opted to bolster the often encountered quote that ‘even Western scholars have disproved the theory of Aryan invasions’”(2001: 309). The fear is a real one when revisionist historians seek acceptance of their ideas beyond the boarders of their own small group. That they will use Bryant’s research for their own purposes is almost beyond doubt.

Mortimer Wheeler asserted that thirty-seven skeletons found around Mohenjo-daro were the evidence of a violent incursion that led to the fall of the Harappan Civilization. In 1953 he said, “Indra stands accused,” as a light-hearted reference to the Rigvedic character known as the “fort-destroyer”.

Upon reexamination of the skeletal remains in 1964, George Dales noted that there were no smashed bodies, armor, arrow points or swords that would be indicative of large-scale warfare. Dales responded to Wheeler, saying, “Indra stands completely exonerated!”, (2001: 159 et.al). Researchers Kenoyer, Bryant, Shaffer and Erdosy agree that there is little or no evidence of an Aryan invasion. On both a linguistic basis and a lack of findings in the archaeological record, they lend support to the idea that Aryans were probably an indigenous population in the Indus Valley and were coeval with Harappan times.

Jim Shaffer, one of the most outspoken critics of the Aryan Invasion theory states:

Current archaeological data do not support the existence of an Indo-Aryan or European invasion into South Asia at any time in the pre- or protohistoric periods. Instead it is possible to document archaeologically a series of cultural changes reflecting indigenous cultural development from prehistoric to historic periods…linguistic data were used [in the 18^th and 19^th centuries] to validate the concept that in turn was used to interpret archaeological and anthropological data. What theory became unquestioned fact was used to interpret and organize all subsequent data. It is time to end the “linguistic tyranny” that has prescribed interpretive frameworks of pre- and proto-historic cultural development. (Shaffer, 1984: 88, emphasis mine).

Later nationalistic writers like Rajaram use Shaffer’s argument that linguistic data is unfairly biased and reinterpret it and to mean that all linguistic research is inherently flawed. Illustrating the “Frawley Paradox”, Rajaram questions why the Indus Valley Civilization left archaeological remains, but no literature, and why the Aryans left a literature without archaeology (Rajaram, 2000: 24).[7] Rajaram uses Shaffer’s reasoning to his own ends:

The best way of resolving this paradox is to throw off this “linguistic tyranny”—as Jim Shaffer calls it—and equate the two. That is to say, the people who created the greatest literature in antiquity must have been the same people who left behind the most extensive archaeological remains. This brings us to the dates of the various ages of ancient India as recorded in her literature and tradition (Rajaram, 2000: 25).

Rajaram’s resolution is probably not what Shaffer had in mind with his term “linguistic tyranny”, and he would most likely be quite uncomfortable knowing his denial of an Aryan invasion necessarily equated with Aryans as part and parcel of the Indus Valley Civilization. Especially when the end of so-called “linguistic tyranny” is replaced by Hindutva ideology.

The evidence of Aryan origins is recycled into the Indian public education system in ways that reinforce nationalistic agendas. State sponsored textbooks allude the moral superiority of Indian culture to other world cultures. The ICSE History and Civics, a government issued textbook states:

In Sanskrit, the world ‘Aryan’ means a noble man. Aryans were the most illustrious race in history. They were tall, fair complexioned, good-looking and cultured people. Groups of Aryans are said to have settled in different countries and developed some of the most remarkable civilizations in the world. People take pride in calling themselves descendents of the Aryans (Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust, 2001: 68).

The ICSE textbook uses the Sanskrit definition of Aryan as “noble man” and immediately conflates it with racial characteristics. Not only are the Aryan more honorable than the rest of the world, but Indians are the inheritors of their legacy. Non-Aryans are perceived as inferior to the so-called “Aryan Race”. After the fall of fascism language like this became unpopular in the West, but is still common among Indian nationalists. Combined with the assertion that Aryans are indigenous to Indian soil this statement, and one’s like it, have a strong propaganda value. The reinterpretation and systematic packaging of Hindutva ideology in the national mainstream is a problem in the communally divided India. This leads to conditions that foster further divisions between ethnic and religious groups that resonate in the culture for generations.

All Evidence Aside: The Babri Masjid

The Babri Masjid is the clearest example of how popular conceptions of archaeology fuel the flames of communal violence. The conflict in Ayodhya resonates with the larger political agendas of nationalist agencies that aim to generate groundswell support for Hindutva politics. The Babri Masjid was said to have been built in 1528 by Babur, a Mughal ruler. He allegedly demolished a temple dedicated to Ram that had been built by King Vikramaditiya in the fourth century A.D. Popular folklore locates the temple site as the birth place of Ram, the main character of the Ramayana and incarnation of Vishnu. Babur’s strategy of destroying Hindu places of worship and replacing them with Mosques was a common practice for hegemonic dominance in historic times and was equally practiced by Hindu rulers as Muslims. The archaeological evidence is slight, and consists primarily of some carved pillars used in the mosque’s construction that lend credence to a pre-existing temple structure. It is not known for certain if the pillars came from this site or were brought in from elsewhere (Tambiah, 1996: 256-257 etal).[8]

After partition, in 1947 the mosque was closed to both Hindus and Muslims on grounds it would be a site of civil strife and insurrection. As the need for cultural unity within the boarders of India enlarged, the issue of Hindu identity against foreign influences gained power in the government. Ayodhya proved to be fertile soil to sow the seeds of national identity. Internationally, land disputes between Pakistan and India over territory in Kashmir castigated Muslims as distinctly non-Indian and Muslims in India were viewed with suspicion of allegiance to the foreign nation-state. The Babri Masjid represented this struggle domestically.

It only took two years, when, in December of 1949 an image of Ram “appeared” inside the mosque and the Ramjanmabhumi Seva Committee received permission to worship on the anniversary (1996: 247). Ayodhya was used as a “condensed symbol signifying the whole” (1996: 257) and unified the Hindutva under one banner. The mosque stood for all Hindu-Muslim conflict and was both axis and locus for the movement. Processions of chariots (rath yatras) carrying sacred bricks to build a new temple radiated towards Ayodhya from rural areas, while soil was taken from the site of the mosque and sent to the four corners of India to found new tributary temples (1996: 257).

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) used the controversy as political leverage in the electoral polls. In 1984 they had only two seats in the Lok Sabha (lower parliamentary house) by focusing on the Babri Masjid issue the gained influence and won 85 seats by 1989. Two years later they became the main opposition to the Congress party with 120 seats (1996: 247) . By 1991 the BJP was campaigning primarily on the Ayodhya issue. As national tensions mounted something had to give. On December 6^th, 1992 a riot broke out near the Masjid where thousands of Hindu nationalists tore apart the structure with their bare hands. Many of the leaders of the BJP were present and they further extended their political influence. Today the Prime Minister Vajpayee can claim his participation in the demolition.

The BJP was able to use existing sentiments of Ayodhya’s landscape to further its political aims. Due to a collective imagination of the history of the Babri Masjid site as the birthplace of Ram and a medieval insult delivered by conquering Muslim invaders, it transformed into a national issue that has determined the political destiny of India. After major events in Ayodhya, such as the laying of temple foundations, demolition of the mosque and especially poignant gatherings, riots tend to erupt all over India—sometimes leaving hundreds dead.

The popular belief that underneath the Mosque was the site Rajmabhumi—Ram’s historical birthplace—makes this a crucial issue for Hindu fundamentalists. Not only has temple been replaced with a Mosque, but the lead character of the Mahabarata was symbolically dethroned. But determining the historical location of Ram’s birthplace is an exceedingly difficult thing to do. The Ramayana, the story of his life, was composed between the 2^nd century BC and the 1^st century AD by a poet identified as Valamiki. Four main sites near Ayodhya are names in the text, they are: Bharadvaja Asrama, Ayodhya, Srinagaverapura and Nandigrama. While the last three sites probably existed at the time, Bharadvaja Asrama had not yet been founded, making B. B. Lal believe that the Ramayana may have been composed by multiple poets over several hundred years. Consequently, “descriptions of persons and places are highly exaggerated and unacceptable from a strictly historical point of view. One must remember that these texts were not meant to be history: these were prabandhakavyas, and as such the poet enjoyed the fullest freedom of his imagination” (Lal, 1984: 32). The historic moment of Ram’s birth cannot be adequately uncovered in the archaeological record or from the texts of the great Hindu poets. What is important is that the story of Ram’s birth places him directly under the most hotly contested single plot of land in South Asia.

Ayodhya as a national symbol helped define Hindutva identity in contrast to essential Islam. Configuration of Hindu identity as intrinsically linked with the soil of South Asia gives power not only to radical conservative parties, but to the nation-state as a whole. If we accept Anderson’s conception of nation-states as imagined communities, then India would begin to wall apart at the seems without identifying crucial common features (be the religion, language, economic systems or architectural practices) to all Indians. Organizing all Hindus under one umbrella identity is central to securing the place for Hinduized national boarders on a global landscape. In the next section I will discuss how this process has occurred in both France and Israel in the last two hundred years.

Soil and Citizenship[9]

The nationality is not a primordial concept— it is intertwined with modernity. At the local level people define themselves along lines of kinship, town, ethnicity, religions and linguistic groupings, not on the basis of seemingly arbitrary boarders on the landscape. The mission of the nation-state is to justify its existence on the land through infrastructure, national defense, legal structures, and, most importantly, the imagination of its citizenry. Throughout history different nations have approached this problem in different ways, but they generally hold one thing in common—they attempt to create the idea of a primordial national identity which extends into the indefinite past. State sponsored archaeology and monumentalization are fundamental to this process. Ethnicities are not a concept rooted in the biology of humanity, but, to quote Hodder, “ethnicity is the mechanism by which interest groups use culture to symbolize their within-group [sic] affiliation in opposition to and in competition with other interest groups”(Hodder 1979: 452 [cited from Erdosy, 1995: 93]. In the last section I examined how the Babri Masjid served as a specific location in the national geography of India that symbolized internal ethno-political struggles. In this section I examine archaeological trends in France and Israel where the archaeological record has been reinterpreted according to the political whims of the state to support the project of nationhood and a national ethnicity.

In 18^th century France, three archaeological sites of the Roman conquest of Gaul between 58 and 50 BC by Julius Caesar were resurrected for their “cultural capital”. They were used to rally support for the nation-state against foreign opposition (Dietler, 1998: 72). Dietler argues that in the wake of revolution three sites, Alésia, Gerovia and Bibracte, were chosen from among many other possibilities to anchored a “national mythology of identity”. Philosophical principles “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity”, while powerful for uniting the nation against the pre-existing monarchy, were not enough to overcome varied regional identities and linguistic traditions now contained within its boarders. The state became concerned with creating a national culture and set about converting its citizens with a “quasi-religious fervor” (1998: 73).

The campaign to create national archaeology focused on the military exploits and eventual defeat of the Gaul Vercingetorix who unified the tribes together against Roman incursion. After Roman times, Vercingetorix’s name fell into obscurity, but the Celtic writings of Martin, Guizot and Thierry (1998: 74) elevated his tale so that he became the preeminent hero and seminal patriot of the French nation. The French project was to define the boarders of present day France as the ancestral homeland of Gaul tribes, and thus impose a Celtic ethnic identity onto present day inhabitants. Using primary education as one of its battle grounds, the state attempted to convert its citizenry from regional ties to national identification.

Napoleon III financed the first excavations of Alésia, the site of Vercingetorix’s ultimate defeat by the Romans, in 1860 from his personal treasury. To commemorate the location he commissioned a gigantic 6.6 meter tall Bronze statue of Vercingetorix and included a bronze plaque that read: “A united Gaul forming a single nation animated by the same spirit can defy the universe.” The quote was attributed to Vercingetorix by Roman historians. After statue was shown in Paris in 1865, it was transported upright in an open wagon for gathering crowds of people to see before it proceeded on its way to the battlefield (1998: 75). As no likeness of the historical general survived, the statue’s face was modeled after Napoleon III—a concrete link between ancient Gaul and present day France.

The fact that Alésia, the site of the final defeat of the Gauls, was chosen to represent French identity seems at first paradoxical. The Gauls fought many battles against Roman forces, many were victories, yet this site was believed to generate the most “cultural capital” for a French state. Perhaps it is true then that “Where national memories are concerned, griefs are of more value than triumphs, for they impose duties and require a common effort” (Renan 11 [cited from Dietler, 1998: 76]). In the same way, Custer’s last stand, Pearl Harbor, and the Alamo generate national sentiment in American archaeology. Gauls, the perceived ancestors of French culture, were defeated, but their symbolic struggle was given voice once again through the historical trajectory of a now victorious French state.

Citing Halbwach’s historic work On Collective Memory, Dietler concludes “Collective memory of groups, societies, or nations are not preserved essences, but rather are ‘reconstructed on the basis of the present’. Collective memory involves the use of certain instruments ‘to reconstruct’ and image of the past which is in accord, in each epoch, with the predominant thoughts of the society” (1998: 84). Archaeology—the unearthing of the ancient past was key to mobilizing public sentiment. Yet it was not the archaeological record that was ultimately the determining factor, but the way in which the record was portrayed and perceived by the nation as a whole. In the case of Alésia a monument to Vercingetorix was perhaps more important than items recovered during the digs—the fact that the digs occurred, however, linked the legend to the soil and affirmed the French project. Archaeology, in effect, was a tool of scientific verification for national sentiment.

In the case of Israel, Archaeology is the battlefield on which the identity of Jews and Palestinians rest. As in India, archaeology in Palestine began as a colonial project to affirm the origins of civilization—in this case with an emphasis on Judeo-Christian ideology. Given to the Jews after World War II, the Jewish state needed to uncover and interpret the archaeological record in a way that justified their presence on the land over the claims of the Palestinians they were supplanting.

European archaeologists in colonial times viewed Palestine as “the land of the bible” and British proceeded with their analysis and confirm a history they already knew through religious tradition (El-Haj, 2001: 24-25). The motivations were laid clear in 1865, by the Palestine Exploration Fund whose board members decided “So long as a square mile in Palestine remains unsurveyed, so long as a mound of ruins in any part, especially in any part consecrated by Biblical history, remains unexcavated, the call of scientific investigation, and we may add, the grand curiosity of Christendom remains unsatisfied.” (2001: 22). The conflation of science and religion motivated early excavations, and, as El-Haj argues, continued to influence archaeology through the present day. After Israel was founded as the homeland of Jews, Jews and Jews alone were able to maintain a primordial hold on the land.

Colonialism’s objective was to efface Zionism’s colonial objective and secure a place of Israel in a way that did not appear political. Archaeology, which maintains an air of objectivity, was the best tool. Its effect was “to erase the question of ‘Palestine’ from the history of Israeli state and society, which had become, quite simply, the nation-state of and for Jewish people. Its own cultural and political struggles would henceforth be analyzed and understood, by and large, through a colonial lens” (2001: 5).

El-Haj invokes numerous sites in her analysis, the most striking of which is the preservation of Jerusalem’s Old City. The Jerusalem Committee was given the job of recreating the historic Jewish center of Jerusalem after the 1967 war demolished most of the area. In 1969, in the planning phases they released a statement which said “There is a certain desire on our part to re-create, for sentimental reasons, an atmosphere which will recall the quarter when it was the only center of Jewish life” (2001: 170), this was not a reference to the recently destroyed pre-1948 quarter, but to an idealized view of an “original” counterpart of the ancient city (ibid). The Old City became to represent and emphasize aspects of Jewish history, but neglected the very real input of Islam in the region. The old city was conceived of as a “museum without objects” that emphasized medieval life, but political agency focused the reconstruction to constitute only aspects which reinforced national (Jewish) identity.

The Palestinian reaction to Israeli archaeology often assumes violent forms, and targets state sponsored archaeological sites. Invariably the news stories appear about protests and conflict outside the temple mount in Jerusalem. On October 8, 2000, Joseph’s Tomb on the West Bank of Nablus was destroyed. “In destroying the tomb...demonstrators eradicated one ‘fact on the ground’”(2001: 281). The Palestinian response is in direct opposition to archaeological manipulations that seek to wipe their ethnic history off the face of the archaeological record—and leave them with no legitimate claim on land they have inhabited for generations.

In both France and Israel we can see how state level archaeology has been used to ratify and support national ethnic identity on the land. The analogy to the situation in South Asia is that in order to define national boundaries and instate a significantly Hindu presence on the landscape, conceptions of eternal presence must be demonstrated in the archaeological record. Or—to look at it in another way—the archaeological record must at all costs demonstrate or be interpreted by political powers to further their own ends.

Conclusion: Archaeology and Identity

I began this paper with a reference to Arjun Appadurai and it seems appropriate to invoke his words once again on the subject of nationalism and modernity.

The creation of primordial sentiments is close to the center of the project of the modern nation-state. Thus, many racial, religious, and cultural fundamentalisms are deliberately fostered by various nation-states, or parties within them, in their efforts to suppress internal descent, to construct homogeneous subjects of the state, and to maximize the surveillance and control of the diverse populations under their control (Appadurai, 1996: 146).

Nationalistic interested in India have attempted to construct a primordial Hinduism which dates back to the most ancient Vedic texts and is situated within the boarders of South Asia. Populations in India remain constrained into this homogeneous ethnic population, or deny their very rights of citizenship.

The nationalist cause manifests itself in waves of ethnic violence which occasionally rupture the fabric of society and leave scars on landscape architecture, like the destruction of the Babri Masjid. Political bodies like the BJP, RSS and Shiv Sena have systematically gained political power by reworking old frameworks of history and interpreting them for their own ends. Manipulations of the archaeological record bear stark witness to nationalist influences.

Whether nationalist writers like Rajaram, Savarkar and Oak fake evidence or reinterpret the record for their own political or academic reasons, they have a clear influence on South Asian political agendas. I focused centrally on Rajaram because he has recently appeared as a credible academic, and been portrayed favorably by mass-media outlets with his alleged decipherment of the Indus script. His findings, which hauntingly concur with recent academic interpretations, even if for different reasons, place the Aryans as the original inhabitants of the Indus Valley Civilization. Aryans are now the indigenous sons of the soil. These findings then fuel the communal flames which made the Babri Masjid a central issue to the Indian political spectrum—widening the gap between perceived primordial and foreign populations.

Primordialization is not unique to South Asia, but is an affliction common to nation-states in the process of justifying their national boarders. As we have seen in France and Israel, archaeology has played an important role in securing space for a homeland by situating ethnic populations living there to remote times in history. Creation of a national mythology is necessary for modern states that seek to unify groups of people who, more often than not have, diverse ethnic, political and religious backgrounds.

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