Keeladi and the Politics of India’s Past: How ‘The Dig’ Uncovers Tamil Pride and Archaeological Controversy

Ashok begins in the vibrant temple town of Madurai, where archaeologist K. Amarnath Ramakrishna arrived in November 2013 to begin an expedition aimed at uncovering evidence of an early urban settlement in South India. Ramakrishna was keen to excavate Madurai itself to decipher its true age and historicity. Although historians have speculated Madurai’s birth to be around the 3rd century BCE, and stories of its grandeur feature prominently in classical Tamil poetry, this ancient town’s actual age remains uncertain. The city, however, was ill-suited to archaeological inquiry: its densely inhabited landscape left little undisturbed earth to examine.

Consequently, Ramakrishna decided to follow the course of the Vaigai river that cut through Madurai, and had also been mentioned gloriously in the Sangam poems. Six months into the expedition, a serendipitous meeting with a lorry driver at a small hamlet called Keeladi, turned out to be a game changer. A coconut grove littered with all kinds of potsherds ranging from coarse black-and-red ware, black ware, red-slipped ware and coarse red ware with decorative and incised patterns, convinced Ramakrishna and his team that Keeladi was “one in a hundred”.

Over the following decade, Keeladi emerged as the site of intense public and political interest. Excavation sites anywhere in the world rarely capture the imagination of the general public, but Keeladi was an exception. It was first covered extensively by Tamil dailies and, from 2016 onwards, began to feature prominently in national English-language newspapers as well. Over time, the site and the nearby museum housing its findings started drawing hundreds of visitors each day.

The unprecedented public interest in the site soon became a topic of political contestation. Early claims of the findings being akin to those from Harappa and Mohenjodaro unsettled many in Delhi. The excavations giving credence to Sangam literature fed a renewed sense of Tamil pride. Ramakrishna’s subsequent transfers over the next few years fuelled suspicions that the findings were being drawn into a wider North–South political and cultural debate.

Part journalistic investigation and part travelogue, The Dig carefully traces these developments from 2013 onwards. In the process, Ashok joins dots with important archaeological enquiries that had preceded Keeladi both in South India, and elsewhere, and those that followed. In her chapter, ‘Goodbye Mohenjo-daro’, for instance, she travels to the Harappan site Rakhigarhi in Haryana, to understand the connections between Keeladi and the Indus Valley Civilisation. These linkages might well be overstated or even spurious. Through her reporting, she poses a pointed question: is it necessary to view every phase of Indian history after Harappa as either its outcome or continuation?

In yet another chapter, ‘Capturing Tamil minds’, Ashok ventures into examining the idea of cultural pride that Keeladi has come to symbolise. Ashok strategically begins the chapter with a description of her experience of Jallikattu– a traditional Tamil harvest festival in which participants attempt to control a charging bull. The Supreme Court had ordered a ban on the festival in 2014, citing animal cruelty concerns, and thereafter inciting widespread protests across Tamil Nadu. Ashok writes with sensitivity about both the allure and the violence of Jallikattu before drawing parallels with the emotions invested in Keeladi. She cites from a conversation with Tamil scholar Stalin Rajangam who tells her, “The people of Keeladi may not even have identified themselves as Tamil.” “Archaeological findings were being retrofitted to modern concepts of nation-states,” observes Ashok.

A journalist by training, Ashok brings a clear-eyed objectivity to her subject. This perspective is what ultimately strengthens The Dig, offering readers a panoramic view of archaeology in India without losing sight of its human and political stakes. Despite engaging with a technically dense field, the book remains accessible, its arguments carried by lucid prose, interviews and reportage rather than specialist jargon.

Keeladi’s most consequential finding is revealing the antiquity of Tamil civilisation to be far older than previously believed. Ashok closes The Dig by reflecting on how the process of writing the book deepened her pride in her Tamil roots. At the same time, she turns outward, urging readers to look closely at their own ancestries and to recognise that all identities are shaped by centuries of migration, linguistic exchange, and intertwined genetic lineages.