Mainstream WeeklyKeeladi! Rarely has any archaeological find generated as much emotion as Keeladi did since the discovery, during the British Raj, of the civilizational ruins at Harappa, now in Pakistan.
Historians had always believed that large-scale urban life in India first emerged in the north, in the greater Magadha region of the Gangetic basin, from around 600 BCE. South India, by contrast, was thought to have urbanized much later, only around 300 BCE.
The discovery of Keeladi shattered all that, generating unparalleled emotions in Tamil Nadu and triggering a political earthquake that also stunned India’s archaeological community.
Why not? Keeladi (Keezhadi) did not become Tamil Nadu’s most loved archaeological site and a virtual pilgrimage for its people just like that. It was the first time an archaeological spot in the state uncovered such an expanse of brick walls and ring wells – ceramic rings placed on top of each other and used as drains.
It was said that Keeladi, located in Sivaganga district and just 12 km from Madurai, saw human activity from a long, long time ago. The retrieval of fine varieties of pottery, iron implements and Neolithic tools indicated this. Over time it evolved into an urban settlement. Nearly 6,000 artefacts were unearthed in Keeladi.
Tamil scholars proudly declared that it was proof of a vibrant urban settlement vividly described in the iconic Sangam poems – a unique form of literature that had no Vedic influence. Keeladi was proof of the rich lives led by the Sangam people in 300 BCE – or even earlier. In other words, Tamil civilization was traced back to 3,200 years ago. This was nothing short of an archaeological and heritage revolution.
Chennai-based journalist Sowmiya Ashok – “I have always been a proud Tamil” – plunged into the world of Keeladi-laced archaeology to come up with a gripping book, The Dig: Keeladi and the Politics of India’s Past (John Murray/Hachette India). Sowmiya is a talented reporter and a gifted writer; there is not one page which bores you as she unveils all that followed the 2015 findings and even while x-raying scholarly archaeological research.
Keeladi hit the headlines just as a Hindu nationalist government had taken control of India. It revealed no religious artefacts or objects of worship that could link it to the Vedic culture and the north Indian riverine plains, considered the wellspring of Hindusim. Instead, it displayed similarities to the Harappan sites.
Digging in Keeladi – amid the tall trees of a lush coconut grove — led to graffiti marks scratched onto pots, comparable urban planning features, bangles made of conch shells, and more. It appeared to echo what Dravidians had long claimed – the Harappans were proto-Dravidian speakers who migrated south after the decline of the Indus Valley Civilization or Harappan Civilization. Keeladi was also described as a once thriving industrial site.
It helped that Keelaid’s discovery was made by a passionate archaeologist, K. Amarnath Ramakrishna. He too, like author Sowmiya, was a proud Tamil. As careful digging continued, fascinating discoveries were made. And Amarnath made it all public by giving plenty of media interviews. Unfortunately, a premature comparison of Keeladi with the Harappan Civilization, which was 1,500 km away and 1,300 years apart, sparked a terrible storm.
Other archaeologists contested some of the claims accruing from Keeladi. Amarnath was transferred to distant Assam. This led to protests in Tamil Nadu but Sowmiya says the archaeologist had himself sought a transfer. As emotions surged, then opposition leader M. Karunanidhi sought a site museum at Keeladi. A bureaucratic move to transfer the Keeladi findings to Karnataka ran a wall of emotional objections. Keeladi became a picnic site as people from all over Tamil Nadu and beyond travelled there to know how their ancestors had lived thousands of years ago.
By the time Amarnath had a reunion with Keeladi after five years, he had mellowed. He now described Keeladi as a “good site” to study the second urbanization in south India. There was no more mention of Harappa. Still, most people in Tamil Nadu felt that the Central government was deliberately burying a unique Tamil civilization as it challenged the idea of a homogenous Indian identity.
At one stage, the Tamil Nadu government took over further archaeological discoveries surrounding Keeladi (Alagankulam, Korkai, Adichanallur and Sivagalai). By 2024, Tamil Nadu was conducting excavations across multiple sites to establish a clearer timeline of Tamil antiquity. In 2025, it was announced that India’s, and the world’s, oldest Iron Age site had been located in Tamil Nadu. This meant that those living in southern India were smelting iron as early as the Harappans were smelting copper.
Not everyone in south India, however, agreed with the political message emitting from Keeladi. Tamil scholar Stalin Rajangam questioned the very notion of ‘Tami’ identity that Keedali fed into. “The people of Keeladi may not even have identified themselves as ‘Tamil’,” he told Sowmiya. In his view, archaeological findings were being retrofitted to modern concepts of nation-states. He felt the museum project at Keeladi was an attempt to cement a preferred Tamil identity, one imagined as free of caste and religion, in brick and mortar. But as far as Tamil politicians were concerned, Keeladi was useful to carve a new narrative to counter Hindutva politics.
Tamil Nadu’s drive to find an ancient civilization took a radical turn after Keeladi. As Sowmiya says, it was like a search on steroids to find the oldest civilization within modern Tamil Nadu’s borders. At Mayiladumparai (Krishnagiri district), carbon samples of broken pieces of an axe and two small chisels found on a hill were dated to 4,200 years ago. The date would be revised further with later finds, to 5,300 years ago.
South India’s largest Iron Age burial site at Adichanallur (Thoothukudi district) yielded the largest collection of antiquities from a single place in Tamil Nadu, indicating a complex and advanced culture. Also found at Adichanallur was a Mother Goddess figurine, making a link to Harappa. Other findings, like at Sivagalai, suggested that the Copper Age of North India and the Iron Age of South India were probably contemporary.
The highly respected K. Rajan, the academic advisor to the Tamil Nadu State Department of Archaeology, told the author that history in Tamil Nadu began 1.5 million years ago when early humans appeared in Attirampakkam, a small village in Tiruvallur district. According to him, the early dates of the Tamil-Brahmi script were also used as a proxy to suggest that the ancient Tamil region urbanized earlier than or at least on par with the Gangetic plains. Bureaucrat-turned-epigraphist Mahadevan felt the Indus Valley Civilization’s language was an early form of Dravidian.
After spending years on her favourite subject, and with complete dedication, Sowmiya was more than sure that cultural exchanges have been at the core of India’s past and present. This was evident in the materials discovered by archaeologists across the country. Unfortunately, Indians fight over parochial definitions of who they are. The divisions, she says, are more a creation of our present than our past.
Sowmiya concludes: “I’ve always been a proud Tamil, but until I worked on this book, I did not fully understand what that meant. Today, I am even prouder to be Tamil, and yet I know that we are just one important part of a wonderfully diverse country. The India I have come to know through this journey has been shaped by waves of migrants, many of whom make this beautiful land their home. We merged to form new languages, create vibrant textiles, recipes, and songs, and even produce new genetic strains. It is all these remarkable threads that make us the diverse, noisy and extraordinary people we are today.”
Truly, The Dig is an outstanding book