When politicians, civil servants and even the judiciary leap into an archaeological debate, matters are bound to get more complicated. Archaeological departments at the centre and state levels are headed by bureaucrats, politicians are always on the lookout for opportunities to score brownie points; and the judiciary has to resolve any resultant deadlock. The controversy over the excavations at Keeladi (also spelt as Keezhadi) in Tamil Nadu underscores this truism.

Tamil Nadu politicians posit the Centre’s stand on the findings at Keeladi as an attempt to suppress evidence of an independent civilisation that flourished in southern India. The Centre, instead of leaving it to the very vigilant international peer group of archaeologists to determine the strength of Tamil Nadu’s claims of greater antiquity, had decided to do the bureaucratic thing and transfer the superintending archaeologist of the dig out of Tamil Nadu.

That was bound to fuel charges of manipulation, and lead to allegations of suppressing the “truth". It would also make any professional—as superintending archaeologist Amarnath Ramakrishnan definitely is—double down on his work. After all, another Archaeological Survey of India stalwart KK Muhammed also refused to budge from his report on the Hindu pillars and terracotta figures found beneath the Babri Masjid though he was under intense pressure.

Even in Tamil Nadu, the case of Keeladi is not unique; T Satyamurthy, who led excavations at Adichanallur, also went through travails related to the submission of his findings. Not only did a century go by between the first dig and the next—1904 and 2003-4—over 15 years elapsed before the ASI came out with a report about what was found. And Tamil parties cited its findings as proof of a separate........

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