HARKING BACK: Silent threat to Lahore’s past from ‘suspect’ research

Over the years this column has been advocating increased archaeological digs around Lahore, mostly inside the walled city, as well as at higher mounds along the River Ravi. This is critical for a better understanding of our past, more so as we see bizarre research propagating warped philosophies.

Of recent a lot of mileage is being given in the Indian and western media about a new ‘wonder ancient’ site called Rakhigarhi in Indian Haryana. This was once part of old Punjab which was further partitioned in 1969 when the Indian rulers wished to reduce Indian Punjab to less than a third of its 1947 size. Haryana was created out of Punjab’s districts of Ambala, Rohtak, Jind, Hisar, Gurgaon, Karnal and Kanod, which had been renamed Mahendragarh after the Maharaja of Patiala who helped the East India Company crush the 1857 Uprising. The village of Rakhigarhi is in Hisar district.

The flow of the movement of people over thousands of years is tied up with the Indo-Aryan people of the Indus Valley, of which Harappa is a prime example near Lahore. This is tied up with other important sites like Mehrgarh, surely the world’s oldest planned agricultural site dated at 12,500 BC, not to forget Taxila and Mohenjo-daro, what to speak of other places. We might well be the oldest ‘planned city’ civilisation on earth. They all represent a flow of people slowly moving northwards, and then eastwards. Excavations at Rakhigarhi makes research in and around Lahore all the more important to determine just how people moved about thousands of years ago, and what sort of people existed on our land. More importantly, it is critical to understand the origin of our people.

A well-known Indian archaeologist Dr Vasant Shinde, the vice chancellor of Pune’s Deccan College, is leading the Rakhigarhi research and is not making public his findings since 2015 on the DNA of skulls he has found there. He publicly promised to release his detailed research results in September 2017, which allowed him a whole year for his results to be verified by two acknowledged scholars. Then again in September 2018 he further postponed his paper on Rakhigarhi. He claims that his ‘alleged’ DNA findings of the ‘petrous bone’ section of a skull points to a strange finding, and that being that the population of Northern Indians was Dravidian in origin nearer South Indian Dravidians and not the Indo-Aryan origin found in nearby Harappa and Taxila and all other northern Indian sites.

Article continues after ad

He makes the startling claim that Harappa and Indus Valley civilisation is not the origin of Indian culture. He further claims, so newspaper reports now say, that the Aryan migration theory is a myth. He also claims the Sanskrit language did not originate in the Indus Valley Civilisation, or present-day Pakistan, but at Ayodhya. He even questions the genetic origin of the great linguist Daksiputra Panini, the father of linguistics and the writer of ‘Astadhyayi’, whose masterpiece on the principles of grammar are still taught all over the world. Panini was born in Shalatula in Swabi district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. He spent his days in Taxila and in a village named Lahor. He, not surprisingly, places him at Ayodhya.

The list of claims all seem to point to a new and absolutely bizarre theory that the Indus Valley Civilisation in reality has its foundation in the Hindu Belt of South India. He places their DNA as being South Indian and uses his still not seen gene analysis as proof to this effect. The problem is he is not releasing his findings. What Dr Shinde refuses to discuss is the complete absence of the genetic marker R1a in the sample examined. This is significant for this is called the Aryan gene, and is what determines the people of this Indo-Aryan race, which we are part of as are all North Indians, as well as most Central India. Just to clarify that the gene R1a is derived from the male Y chromosome.

To wrap up this new theory the claim now being made is that the original source of Sanskrit, as is the Vedic Hinduism culture, is not sourced from the people of the Harappa civilisation. The absolutely bizarre claim now is that the gene component of Pakistanis and North Indians is not the same. An Indian archaeological research publication quotes him as saying: “This is too politically sensitive an issue to be released.”

It seems like a denial of the fact that Hinduism itself was founded in the land that is now Pakistan. All Hindu religious books were written between Lahore and Taxila. The word ‘Hindu’ itself comes from a linguistic corruption of the word ‘Sindhu’ as used for the river, which led to the land being called ‘Hind’. The word ‘India’ is derived from the river ‘Indus’. For that matter the word ‘Bharat’ from the Bharata tribe that ruled Lahore as given in the epic ‘Mahabharata’. I do not wish to sound like a rabid Pakistani nationalist, but it seems Dr Shinde is pushing the Hindutva agenda of the present rulers a bit too far. Proof to the contrary one would love to see.

Just to add to current knowledge on the subject, a UN study of world genetic compositions map traces the composition of the people of Haryana as being 17.5 per cent of the Central Asian people of the Steppe. This is what some of the great studies by world authorities also point to. It is accepted theory that Punjabis are part Western Eurasian in their genetic composition. An interesting example is that all Jats are essentially of R1a Steppe ancestry.

No disrespect is meant towards Dr Shinde, but all one has to do is open the blog ‘Eurogenes’ and see the remarks by the world’s leading geneticist, Dr David J. Wesolowski, who calls this new theory: “Utter xxxx. You’re going to need psychiatric help when the results are out”. I went over to the Department of Archaeology of Cambridge University, whose library I frequently use, and scholars refuse to discuss what they, politely, term as ‘fiction’.

But for Lahore, the Punjab and Pakistan there is a need to concentrate more on rapidly expanding archaeological digs. Most western experts would love to come over. My own narrow interest is to bring the finest archaeologists to my city to dig at five important places within the walled city. Already in the Lahore Fort pottery samples have been dated as being 4,500 years old, and that was a dig at only 51 feet, or 30 feet above the walled city ground level at the moment.

Another sample from Mohallah Maullian has been carbon-dated at 3,250 years old. My considered theory is that Lahore was a late Harappan city, which I described in a paper presented to a conference in Cambridge. That paper has been reproduced by American, French and German journals. But the clinching factor will be serious archaeological findings. Till then it is a theory based of known ‘facts’, if claims is not a better word.

On the lighter side of this matter, an Indian astrologer, not surprisingly from Pune where Dr Shinde is based, has calculated the date of birth of Rama as being the 10th of January, 5115 BC. Now Lahore was named after his son Lav, or Loh, who was born here. So Lahore might well be about 7,000 years old, a small hamlet that it surely was then. But I will not accept that till it is archaeologically proven. Mehrgarh is proven at 12,500 years old and Mohenjo-daro is proven at 7,500 years old. Lahore has yet to be dated.