Opinion | Why a 4,500-year-old skull is key to the politics of India’s Hindu-Muslim divide
Archaeological and historical theories surrounding an ancient civilisation in the Indus valley have been hijacked by political agendas
It is a measure of the mood in today’s India that archaeology, genetics and racial purity have now been co-opted in a debate about current politics. Not since the middle of the 20th Century has racial purity been as important in the politics of a major nation. And yes, the term ‘Aryan’ is being bandied about with a worryingly familiar ease.
The debate is centred on a genuine historical puzzle. In the early 20th Century, archaeologists discovered two ancient urban centres in the Indus Valley region (now part of Pakistan). These discoveries led to a rewriting of Indian history. They suggested that long before the dawn of recorded history (as far back as 3500BC perhaps, or even before), there was a highly developed urban civilisation in India.
Later, archaeologists found more sites leading them to conclude that the civilisation was not focused only around the Indus river but stretched all the way south to the Indian state of Gujarat. New sites keep being discovered and it is now clear that the cities of the so-called Indus Valley Civilization extended all over North and Western India.
The British archaeologists and historians who made the initial discoveries tried to reconcile them with their traditional view of ancient India. Their theory was that a race called the Aryans lived in Central Asia and then migrated around the world taking their advanced civilisation with them.
One group went to Europe. Another went to Iran. Some came to India and so on. In this version, the Aryans vanquished the original inhabitants of the countries they went to and imposed their ‘civilised’ values. Adolf Hitler seized on this theory, appropriated the Hindu Swastika Symbol and based his politics on the racial purity of Aryan-Germans, treating non-Aryans (such as the Jews) as inferior beings. In Iran, the Shah called himself Aryamehr (or Light of The Aryans) and believed that Aryan-Iranians were more advanced than the Semitic Arabs of neighbouring countries.
