Bureaucratic Archaeology is a scholarly investigation of the history and hierarchical structure of the ASI

A close study of Marshall’s work between 1902 and 1928 can show how he negotiated the challenging dichotomy between office administration and archaeological practice, and maintained a scholarly institutional image of the ASI, over and above juggling between conservation and archaeology and against disruptive attacks.

In 1939, Sir Leonard Woolley, an international expert in archaeology, invited by the government for an appraisal, descended upon the ASI and scathingly chided Marshall and his progeny for their ‘incompetence’. Woolley, however, prophesied, “India will, in a short space of time, be in possession of a first-class archaeological service. The material for such a service is ready to hand and it only requires to be trained and organised to be of the utmost value” (Current Science, September 1939) This paved the way for the legendary Sir Mortimer Wheeler to become the (eighth) director-general of ASI in 1944. Wheeler converted ASI into an archaeological service, with each part blindly following its role.

He imposed a strict hierarchy of administrative ranks and made the whole system work like a disciplined machine. His stratigraphic documentation, mapping, drawing and noting, were the hallmark of his organisation, so were the meticulous handling, processing and classification of portable artefacts, and their aesthetic display through picturesque representation of excavated sites and dramatic photography. The bureaucratic body continues somewhat in this fashion but with Wheeler’s departure in 1948, that ruthless yet philosophical ’mind’ working as the spine of the ASI was lost.

The most original part of the book is Avikunthak’s narration of his ethnographic investigation of archaeologists in six chapters out of nine. He spent almost two years at an archaeological camp, in what he calls the entire “ethnographic field”, staying with the workers, with dugout sites as the laboratories, and even participated in their work, being an archaeologist himself. His informants candidly tell him how they are often mechanically following the regimes set by senior archaeologists, who, in turn, learned from Wheeler, and how they are bound by administrative work, which affects their individual research.

The book also mentions the story behind the Saraswati Heritage Project of 2012-13 (where Avikunthak did his research), which upholds the primacy of the Vedic civilisation and challenged the Aryan invasion theory. It also discusses the Ayodhya Ram Janmabhoomi excavation project, launched in 2002, meant to authenticate the existence of a Ram temple. Avikunthak, finally, argues that ASI legacy has dwindled to a “scientific-craft” rather than being a science or even a philosophy. As a result, it remains a servant of ideologies while seeming to serve the writing of history. The narrative is an easy read, with undertones of irony and tongue-in-cheek humour.

It seems, his expectation to build up a powerful counter-theoretical discourse from the periphery of the Euro-American centre is defeated. To him, this is part of a larger crisis – the intellectual crisis of the discipline of archaeology itself. But, in the process, in the book, we have a remarkable piece of academic work. We get a sense of his disenchantment with that world — he is happy to dedicate the book to the Dalit labourers on the site, who are hardly likely to read it.

Rajat Ray is professor of architecture, Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University, Delhi