NoGAP cracks-open a new window to Indian history.

PERHAPS it’s too early to wager. But its tantalizingly close. Agriculture possibly pre-existed the Indus Valley Civilization – IVC – in Gujarat by at least three millennia! A joint Indo-Spanish study, though still in the works, has come close to this thought, thus pushing Gujarat’s imprint on Indian civilizational history by 3,000 years.

North Gujarat – Anarta in archaeology – has been traditionally seen as the backwater of its more illustrious contemporary IVC. While IVC is historically represented as the refined, urban, and technologically advanced civilizational benchmark in the subcontinent, others like Anarta or Sorath are seen as inferior Chalcolithic settlements.

For example, as of this day, the existing model of agriculture is that food production started in the middle of Indus plains in the sixth millennium BC with Mehargadh – now in Pakistan – as its earliest manifestation and then it spread across the Indo-Gangetic plains towards south and east.

The Indus Valley Civilization

But latest ongoing excavation at Vaharvo Timbo near Ranod village in Patan district of north Gujarat has given clear indications that some form of farming and cattle herding was available to settlers here as far back as seventh millennium BC! This takes the history of Gujarat to nine thousand years from the present. Its significance lies in the fact that till date settlements have been dated only upto fourth millennia BC only.

All this is part of the North Gujarat Archaeology Project (NoGAP) – jointly being carried out by the M S University of Baroda and Spain’s National Research Council through their respective archaeology departments. While professor P Ajithprasad is leading from MSU, Marco Madella is the principal investigator on the Spanish side.

Now coming to the inferences. While most other sites excavated till date are typically multi-culture settlements, Vaharvo has consistently proven to be a single culture site, with no evidence on the surface of chalcolithic period, explains Ajithprasad.

What it means is that though hunting and gathering along with early farming is not new to that period, till now it was believed that it might not be more than 5000 years old in Gujarat. The latest discovery however takes it back to 9000 years from the present – seven millennia B.C. – putting it firmly ahead of the IVC.

While IVC goes back to 2500 BC, Anarta took Gujarat’s history to 3600 BC. Against this Vaharvo, if confirmed, would put north Gujarat’s farming and cattle rearing traditions to 7000 BC. No wonder the Dudhsagar dairy in Mehsana is the largest in Asia. Its all in the genes as they say.

“We have collected plant and animal remains and are analyzing their structures in our labs. Also, a plethora of grinding instruments has been found thus indicating that food processing was prevalent. We need to explore more in that direction,” says the professor.

The project would take at least one more year before the conclusions get concretized. Some preliminary analyses have already been published in professional archaeology publications like the Antiquity journal, but nothing as yet in the popular domain.

So what would be its political significance? Well, it would surely come as a candy for the ruling party and its top man in Gujarat. For one, if the project successfully proves that there was an indigenous attempt by hunters and gatherers of north Gujarat to become a farming community, without any incentive from Indus, its one more feather in the cap of Aapno Aagvo Vibrant Gujarat. Isn’t it?
Let’s watch!

Lokpal - Andhon Ka Haathi

THE pre-introduction debate on the Lokpal Bill in Parliament reminded me of a one act play I got opportunity to direct and perform long years back. Must have been the third year of graduation class, and the occasion the annual college fest. The play was called Andhon Ka Haathi, Hindi poet-writer late Sharad Joshi’s celebrated work, satirizing the prevailing political class of 1970’s. Joshi gave us the famous Vikram Aur Betal serial in our growing up years, and his works continue to get profiled on the small screen.

Briefly, the play revolved around a set of blind men and an elephant. The men try to comprehend the elephant with their understanding limited by only that part of the pachyderm’s body that they can lay their hands on. Anchored by a sutradhar – played by yours truly – the narrative revolves around juxtaposition of what the blind men feel to what the nation’s political class understands of the country’s ills.

Midway through the act, hoots and shout-downs made dialogue delivery impossible. If eggs and tomatoes did not come our way it was perhaps because the auditorium did not have a supply close by. The organizer of the show – an all size Gujarati-speaking Bongo – came to the blinds and frantically gestured to get our elephant off the stage ASAP.

But I digress.

As leader after leader from all shades of the political spectrum rose to speak in Parliament, it was clear what they were doing. Obfuscation. A right wing Sushma Swaraj could not but raise the issue of minority reservation and hence reject the Bill. The party is as yet to steady its view on CBI’s inclusion in the Ombudsman. A corrupt Lalu could not have but cautioned all MPs about how dangerous it would be if even ex-MPs were included as possible targets of Lokpal hounds. For the CPM, Basudev Achariya stuck to their stand that the elephant can’t but be shepherded only by the Parliament. Owaisi of the MIM of course could profusely thank the government for having brought in the Muslim reservation in an eight-member constitutional body.

All this while the treasury bench occupants watched with a certain contentment, even some glee. Manmohan could not have bargained for anything better than this to puncture Anna’ third leg of the Chameli revolution - our own version of Arab spring. Could someone smell Diggi’s hands in the till on this? We are yet to find out. Or perhaps, journalistic grapevine already knows it in Delhi.

Joshi wrote Andhon Ka Haathi in 1970’s. But as I watched the debate in Parliament unfold I thought it was being re-enacted again. Only that the shouts and hoots were kept out and one could not throw eggs and tomatoes on the television screens, even if one had supply at hand.