The Keezhadi row and the Tamil identity

IN the fraught 21st-century relations between Tamil Nadu and the Centre, a Sangam-era question looms large. How old is Keezhadi/Keeladi, an ancient site where archaeological excavations since the last decade have given wings to theories of a link between the Dravidians and the Indus Valley Civilisation (IVC)? That question received a new lease of life a few days ago when the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) finally broke its long silence on the excavation report to question its authenticity, casting doubts on the work of its own official.

On the large canvas of Centre-state relations that the DMK and the BJP are jostling to dominate, Keezhadi is not just one of several themes in the political and ideological tug of war between the two parties in this age of hyper-centralisation; it could frame the meta-narrative of this battle. The latest episode in the Keezhadi saga coincided not just with Chief Minister MK Stalin swallowing some Tamil pride to attend a meeting of the NITI Aayog’s governing council, only his second time since the DMK took office in 2021.

There was also the Madras High Court’s order staying Tamil Nadu’s amendments to the Universities Bill shifting the power to appoint vice-chancellors from the Governor to the government (last month, the Supreme Court had deemed these as having received the Governor’s assent).

And the apex court’s blistering knuckle-rap of the Enforcement Directorate for “crossing all limits” for launching an opportunistic probe into TASMAC, the TN liquor distribution monopoly, may be only a temporary reprieve. But Keezhadi, which brings together ideological concerns about origin, identity and language, is the theme that resonates most.

Submitted in January 2023 and written by ASI official K Amarnath Ramakrishna, who led the excavation from 2014 to 2016, the report is said to push back the origins of the Sangam age to a time frame between the fifth and eighth century BC. So far, the Sangam age is accepted as starting around 300 BCE and lasting until 300 CE. Tamil literature, which flourished during this period, speaks of thriving urban centres and cosmopolitanism under Pandya, Chera and Chola rulers.

The material evidence at Keezhadi, located on the banks of the Vaigai river between the districts of Madurai and Sivaganga, is said to have pointed to the existence of an urban settlement from about at least two centuries earlier than accepted for urbanism in the region that is now southern India. Findings of tools and implements at the site lower down in the excavation pits are said to push the date of the settlement back another three centuries, into the Iron Age.

The ASI has now asked Ramakrishna to “improve the authenticity” of his report, with particular reference to the time periods. Two eminent independent experts whom the ASI has not named have contributed to the feedback. In his reply to his superiors, Ramakrishna has defended his findings, methodology and interpretation, making it clear that he will do no substantive rewriting.

Keezhadi’s time period is crucial. In a 2021 essay in the online weekly Fifty Two, Sowmiya Ashok, journalist and author of a forthcoming book on Keeladi, explains why.

“Urban settlements are typically considered to be markers of how advanced a society is… Until Keeladi was discovered, archaeologists by and large believed that the Gangetic plains in the north urbanised significantly earlier than [in present day] Tamil Nadu,” Ashok wrote.

Estimating Keezhadi to be at least 2,500 years old makes southern urbanism as old, if not older, than the urban centres of the northern plains. Not just that, the graffiti found at Keezhadi with apparent similarities to Indus Valley symbols, puts the site at the centre stage in projections of a Dravidian link to the Harappan civilisation, despite the geographical distance, and a millennium-long time lag.

No objects of worship have been found in Keezhadi, adding to the interpretation that it was, like the IVC, a pre-Vedic settlement. The discovery of potsherds with a variant of the Brahmi script was seen as evidence of literacy and an early version of Tamil.

It is unclear how the ASI will resolve its in-house stand-off, but for Tamil Nadu, this is familiar ground. The ASI published the report on Adichanallur, an Iron Age site in Tirunelveli, where archaeological excavations took place in 2004-05, only in 2018, but few are aware of the delay. But Keezhadi is different. Unlike earlier archaeological sites, Keezhadi has seen a massive buy-in by Tamils. Aided by social media and political rhetoric about Tamil identity, the public ownership of Keezhadi is unprecedented.

The ASI may have its concerns, and experts may be sceptical of some of the findings and interpretation, especially of the projected links to the IVC. But the impression on the ground is that Hindutva, averse to any origin story that differs from its own narrative of an “indic” civilisation (despite the lack of evidence), is undermining Keezhadi, and thus Tamil pride.

After the ASI’s response to the Keezhadi report became public, CPI(M) MP from Madurai, Su Venkatesan, also a well-known Tamil writer, declared that the “BJP remains an adversary to Tamil Nadu’s antiquity and the truth of Keezhadi.” For the state government, whose own archaeological department took over the excavation in 2018 through a court intervention, Keezhadi, just as with the Iron Age discoveries announced a few months ago, is a fait accompli. The 11th season of the dig is due to begin in July.

The Keezhadi controversy erupted as Stalin arrived in Delhi to attend the NITI Aayog meeting after a three-year “boycott” of this annual event. He left Chennai with Opposition taunts burning his ears. AIADMK leader Edappadi Palaniswami wanted to know what had prompted the change of heart. Seeman of the Naam Tamilar Katchi declared that Stalin’s U-turn was linked to the ED investigation into TASMAC.

Has Stalin really gone soft on the BJP? This and other political questions will continue to be asked as the elections approach. But the narrative of the Centre’s reluctance to accommodate Keezhadi could end up powering the ideological battles on which there is little difference between the Dravidian parties.

Nirupama Subramanian is an independent journalist.

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