Stalin slams Centre over Keeladi excavation data
On June 11, Union minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat alleged that the DMK government refused to cooperate with the Centre on Keeladi research and was instead politicising the findings
The Union government has continued its demand for more proof even after they were given carbon-dated artefacts and Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) reports from International Laboratories on the Keeladi excavations, said Tamil Nadu chief minister MK Stalin on Friday.
“When it comes to Keeladi and the enduring truth of Tamil heritage, the BJP-RSS ecosystem recoils — not because evidence is lacking, but because the truth does not serve their script,” Stalin said in a post on X. “We fought for centuries to unearth our history. They fight every day to erase it. The world is watching. So is time.”
But on the contrary, despite strong opposition from respected historians and archaeologists, the BJP continues to promote the “mythical Sarasvati Civilisation,” he said, adding that they do so without credible evidence, while dismissing the rigorously proven antiquity of Tamil culture.
Stalin’s comments come amid a controversy on Keeladi’s report. On June 11, Union minister of culture and tourism Gajendra Singh Shekhawat alleged that the DMK government was refusing to cooperate with the central government on Keeladi research and was instead politicising the findings.
In May, the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) challenged the dating and classification of key discoveries from Tamil Nadu’s Keeladi excavations, asking its officer K Amarnath Ramakrishna to carry out extensive revisions to a report that underpins the state government’s, and of rival Dravidian parties’, claims about ancient Tamil civilisation.
ASI asked Ramakrishna, who led the first two phases of excavations at the politically sensitive site, to rework his 982-page findings submitted in January 2023. The central agency said two experts had vetted the report and suggested five corrections to make it “more authentic.”
In his response, Ramakrishna on May 23, defended his report, stating that the chronological sequence of Keeladi was clearly explained in the voluminous report. He had relied on AMS dating of 23 artefacts, which established their age to be 300 CE to arrive at a chronological sequence of Keeladi to be between the 8th century BCE to 3rd century CE. Ramakrishna is currently the director of antiquities in the ASI. In response to his letter, the ASI said that they regularly send reports to various subject experts to vet for publication.
The chief minister has framed these archaeological pursuits as part of a broader ideological battle, arguing that “many used to argue that it was a figment of imagination that Aryan and Sanskrit were the origin of India,” while asserting that discoveries support claims that “the language spoken in the Indus Valley could be Dravidian.”
Till the time of writing, the BJP did not respond to Stalin’s criticism.
