Rakhigarhi to be developed as iconic site

Sushil Manav

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, February 1

Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s announcement during the presentation of today’s Union Budget that Rakhigarhi would be developed as an iconic site has been well received in Haryana.

“I thank PM Shri @narendramodi Ji & FM Smt. @nsitharaman Ji from the core of my heart for announcing special grants & status to Rakhi Garhi (Narnaund) Haryana as an iconic museum site in the #Budget2020. A dream come true for me in taking Rakhi Garhi as a landmark on the globe,” tweeted Captain Abhimanyu, former Finance Minister, Haryana, who represented Narnaund Assembly segment from 2014 to 2019, today.

Haryana Deputy CM Dushyant Chautala’s younger brother Digvijay Chautala posted videos of the former on social media where he, as Member of Parliament (from 2014 to 2019), is seen raising the issue of Rakhigarhi in the Lok Sabha.

Wazir Chand, a 60-year-old villager from Rakhigarhi, who is accredited with highlighting the importance of the site to the outer world by maintaining a museum of the artefacts he collected from the archaeological site during his childhood, said this was great news for the villagers.

Chand had handed over his collection to the state government for exhibiting them in the museum to be developed at Rakhigarhi.

Rakhigarhi in Hisar, one of the five archaeological sites to be developed as iconic sites and on-site museum, as announced in today’s Union Budget, is the biggest Harappan settlement spread over an area of 550 hectares.

A museum and interpretation centre is being constructed in Rakhigarhi village which will showcase the lifestyle of the people who lived in this largest habitation of the Harappan era.

The Haryana Government had issued a grant of Rs 24 crore for the museum on about 5.5 acres on the outskirts of the village.

Among Asia’s 10 most significant sites

• There are nine mounds at the site of which the mound numbers one to six are residential localities of pre-formation age early Harappan settlement while mound number 7 is a cemetery where four human skeletons were recovered by the excavators.
• Global Heritage Fund, an international organisation working for the protection of endangered sites in the developing world, had also included Rakhigarhi in Asia’s 10 most significant archaeological sites facing irreparable loss and destruction.
• Archaeologists have concluded that at the most flourished point of this city 5,000 years ago, no less than 50,000 was the population of Rakhigarhi and around 14 generations of Harappans had lived before they migrated from here when the land turned dry in the absence of water in the region.
• Archaeological findings and scientific data have indicated that Rakhigarhi had been the more important centre of the Indus Valley Civilisation than the townships of Harappa and Mohenjo Daro located in Pakistan.