Those symbolic gestures

http://www.hindustantimes.com/Those-symbolic-gestures/H1-Article1-472811.aspx

If history is the hunting ground of politicians, what makes one
political interpretation of history more doubtful than the other? The
question retains its topicality in India, where we witnessed another
politically driven attempt at manufacturing history last month. On
October 26, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi unveiled the logo
for the forthcoming International Conference on Classical Tamil,
which, apart from the image of the celebrated Tamil poet
Thiruvalluvar, includes seven icons from Indus Valley civilisation.

This 3rd millennium BCE culture was spread across north and west India
— far from either Tamil Nadu’s heartland or borders. Notwithstanding
this, the icons of the Indus, as the official communiqué accompanying
the logo release says, symbolise a Dravidian civilisation. Since Tamil
is a part of the bigger Dravidian language family, it seems the state
government has assumed that there exists a link between the language
and the civilisation.

Even in past, official logos in India have used historical symbols
without thinking about the era they belong to. A striking example of
this is the national emblem of India adopted in 1950 when the nation
became a republic — an adaptation of the Lion Capital of Asoka, the
Mauryan emperor who exhibited his Buddhist piety by erecting a pillar
at Sarnath in Uttar Pradesh. It’s the same spot where Gautama Buddha
attained enlightenment. But unlike the Asokan epigraph-monument, the
words inscribed on the national emblem are different and much older
than those inscribed on Asoka’s pillar. The emperor had used a
vernacular language to inscribe his edicts on the pillars; the
national symbol uses India’s classical language par excellence. It
quotes a short extract from the Mundaka Upanisad — ‘Satyameva Jayate’
— that’s much older than either Ashoka or the Buddha.

But what makes the symbols on the national emblem more acceptable than
what has been done by the Chennai government? The national emblem
represented, in a manner of speaking, the ambitions of a newly
independent India to act, as a harbinger of peace and goodwill, as had
the ancient emperor whose symbol it adopted. While the violence
accompanying the creation of India and Pakistan makes the use of such
a symbol slightly ironic, neither the non-violent intent of the
Ashoka, on whose orders the Sarnath symbol was carved, nor the meaning
of the more ancient Sanskrit words can be doubted.

In the case of the Indus civilisation, though, there’s still no
clarity on which language its people spoke or wrote in. In fact, the
linguistic identity of that civilisation, ever since it was discovered
in 1924, remains resistant to being deciphered. The script symbols
have been seen as encoding a range of linguistic entities, including
the Indo-Aryan and Dravidian language families. But it has yet to
yield its secrets.

That, though, is not evidently the concern of the Chennai government,
which seems to be convinced that the script characters are undoubtedly
Dravidian. If so, by implication, the Indus civilisation can be
showcased as the creation of the Dravidas. While deciphering the Indus
script to everybody’s satisfaction remains an academic concern, for
politicians misusing history, academic veracity hardly seems to be a
hurdle.

Nayanjot Lahiri teaches archaeology at the Department of History,
University of Delhi

The views expressed by the author are personal