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Unfair to Wheeler?
Reader Raj Seshadri writes that I was “rather casual” in my reference to the then Director General of Archaeology, Sir Mortimer Wheeler, in connection with the Arikamedu excavations (Miscellany, January 21). To set the record straight, he
writes, Sir Mortimer had undertaken two or three diggings at the site, culminating in his discovery that Arikamedu was an ancient port of the Tamils. When he sought further funding, he was literally scoffed at for attempting to establish the Roman links of Arikamedu. Some Congress Councillors even ridiculed his discovery as being “far-fetched”. He was denied the funds and the diggings took place again only after two decades when funds were made available both by India and the U.S.
While he was being ridiculed, “serious attempts were made to dislodge Mortimer Wheeler for announcing such ‘dream sites’. The politicians gave Indianisation as the reason for dislodging him.” Wheeler was “given on a platter to Independent Pakistan” and as the new nation’s Director General of Archaeology he produced a magnificent coffee table book on the ancient archaeological sites of Pakistan. Around the 1950s, Wheeler wrote his autobiography, Still Digging, in which he devoted a page or two to “his encounter with India’s political class and its dogged refusal to acknowledge the ancient port in the Tamil country linked to the Romans.”
Reader Seshadri hopes that this will set the record straight as well as reveal the games politicians play.
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