Mirror mirror on the wall, who is oldest of us all
It is unusual for a political leader to proclaim an archaeological discovery, but it is hardly surprising in today's India. In another time, significant findings would be reported first in reputed academic journals, published after extensive peer review. For instance, the 1995 excavations of iron artefacts, furnaces and other materials dating to 1800 and 1000 BC in Uttar Pradesh were first reported in several Indian and foreign archaeology journals. It is a tedious process and may take years.
But in the rich political pickings at the intersection of history and identity, time is short between elections and archaeology can no longer be left to archaeologists.
Recall former Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar driving the excavations in Rakhigarhi, one of the two biggest Harappan sites in India, and his government's push to find the mythical Saraswati river.
Even Prime Minister Narendra Modi's priestly participation in the inauguration of the Ram temple at Ayodhya was the culmination of decades of BJP's involvement in the efforts to prove, including through archaeology, that the Babri Masjid was built at the site of a temple razed by Mughal emperor Babar.
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin was only hewing to the national trend when, on January 24, he announced "with immense pride and unmatched satisfaction" that he was telling the world that "the Iron Age began on Tamil soil." Stalin backed his announcement with the results of two carbon dating tests and a third "luminescence" test. The tests, carried out by two reputed Indian institutes and a lab in the US, have established the antiquity of iron objects excavated from Mayiladumparai, Kilnamandi, Sivagalai and Adichanallur to the third and fourth millennia.
At the moment, the state's Archaeology Department has self-published the findings in a 73-page monograph. It has congratulatory endorsements by 10 high-profile archaeologists, including Rakesh Tiwari, former Director General of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), who found important UP Iron Age sites.
If established conclusively through other independent assessments, including of methodologies, the Tamil Nadu findings would be a breakthrough development, one that challenges the neat categories of pre-history as we know them. As yet, no other known Iron Age site is dated earlier than 2000 BCE. The Tamil Nadu sites have been dated between 2953 BCE and 3345 BCE. The latest findings push the Iron Age to an antiquity of over 5,300 years and the use of smelting to about 4,000 years.
With the establishment of the antiquity of the "Tamil landscape", as Stalin described it, it is inevitable that the DMK will claim bragging rights in matters of identity, pride and politics.
The findings come at the end of a decade of hyper-active archaeological work in Tamil Nadu, beginning with the excavations at Keezhadi in 2014. The period coincided with the start of Modi's prime-ministership, when Rakhigarhi and the hunt for Saraswati were high on the agenda of the BJP in its anxiety to link the Vedic age with the Harappan civilisation to establish the "Indic" origins of the first Hindus.
The competitive archaeology meant that Keezhadi became embroiled right at the start in the conspiracy theory that the Centre was trying to stifle the discovery of a "Dravidian civilisation", especially after the ASI transferred the official in charge. The ASI, too, gave life to such theories by sitting on the Keezhadi report written by the official. The reasons are not known, but in Tamil Nadu, it is common knowledge that the report pushes the start of the Sangam Age back to 600 BCE instead of the widely accepted 300 BCE.
Public interest petitions have been filed in the court to get the ASI to publish the report. The high court intervened to get the ASI to hand over the site to the Tamil Nadu State Archaeology Department. The state government then conducted more excavations in Keezhadi and also set up a museum at the site.
On the face of it, the Iron Age findings hold far more significance than Keezhadi. While the implications of the new findings are still sinking in, what it does for now is to add grist to the mill of claims that the Indus Valley Civilisation had a Dravidian link. Tamil Nadu Education Minister Thangam Thenarasu has said as much in an interview to the Frontline magazine.
The work of eminent scholars Iravatham Mahadevan and Asko Parpola also buttresses the claim of such pre-Aryan links with the theory that the Indus script is similar to proto-Dravidian. To cut a long story short, it means Tamil came before Sanskrit, the Dravidians were here before or contemporary with the Harappans, and certainly before the Aryans.
Days before the big Iron Age announcement, the Tamil Nadu government held an Indus Valley Conference in Chennai to mark the centenary of the discovery of Harappa and Mohenjodaro in 1924. Before a galaxy of Indian and international Indus experts, the Chief Minister announced a $1-million prize for deciphering the Indus Valley script.
The Tamil Nadu government has also begun installing a life-sized statue of Sir John Marshall, the first director-general of the ASI, to mark the Indus Valley century. Clearly, Stalin is dead serious when he says that "the history of the subcontinent can no longer ignore Tamil Nadu. In fact, it must begin here."
Prime Minister Modi, Governor RN Ravi and Tamil Nadu BJP president K Annamalai have maintained radio silence about the Iron Age revelations. On social media, Tamil pride is trolling perceived political opponents with accusations of "northern bias", demanding to know why the nation is finding it so hard to come to terms with Tamil Nadu's antiquity.
It is a fair question. Had such a find been made in a BJP-ruled state, it is possible to imagine the PM and other ruling party members congratulating themselves and India over the findings in identical posts on X.
The irony is that from the Iron Age to the Sangam era, Tamil pride's search for a glorious past mirrors Hindutva's search for glory in antiquity. But in both cases, the reasons for the obsession with the past are not far to seek. The challenges of the present are more complex, especially when elections loom.