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The Dig: Keeladi and the Politics of India’s Past
Since its discovery in 2014, the Keeladi excavation has become one of India's most contested digs - hailed by some as proof of an urban civilization in South India and dismissed by others as political mythmaking.
Journalist Sowmiya Ashok traces the serendipitous discovery of this ancient settlement and the political storm it set off.
Her journey takes her from the earliest Iron Age sites in Tamil Nadu to the Harappan site of Rakhigarhi in Haryana and the lost port of Muziris in Kerala. Along the way, she chats with archaeologists while sweating under the scorching sun, clings to rickety platforms at a roaring jallikattu arena, and even tastes ancient pottery at an excavation site.
Blending sharp insight with humour, The Dig reveals how political battles over science and history continue to shape our understanding of India's past.
Journalist Sowmiya Ashok traces the serendipitous discovery of this ancient settlement and the political storm it set off.
Her journey takes her from the earliest Iron Age sites in Tamil Nadu to the Harappan site of Rakhigarhi in Haryana and the lost port of Muziris in Kerala. Along the way, she chats with archaeologists while sweating under the scorching sun, clings to rickety platforms at a roaring jallikattu arena, and even tastes ancient pottery at an excavation site.
Blending sharp insight with humour, The Dig reveals how political battles over science and history continue to shape our understanding of India's past.
355 pages, Kindle Edition
Published December 23, 2025
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101 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
February 4, 2026
A compelling account of the Keeladi excavations from a journalist’s perspective. It chronicles the discovery of Keeladi, the key individuals involved and the political dynamics surrounding the archaeological findings.
The narrative unfolds like a travelogue as Sowmiya recounts her journey across the state, meeting various people, acquiring scientific knowledge, discovering Tamil Sangam poetry, learning about scripts and other relevant texts to delve deeply into the discoveries.
It is evident that Sowmiya is a proud Tamil, but there is no regional/political bias in her writing. She takes no sides.
I don’t know if it was intentional on the author’s part to highlight this, but it gave me great joy to read about the significant role women have played at every stage, from excavation teams to DNA research, legal representation and Tamil script studies. So refreshing.
I visited the Keeladi excavation site and the museum and to be honest, my first impression had been that there wasn’t much to showcase. Reading this book was like a breath of fresh air as it gave me a fresh perspective. Super informative.
The narrative unfolds like a travelogue as Sowmiya recounts her journey across the state, meeting various people, acquiring scientific knowledge, discovering Tamil Sangam poetry, learning about scripts and other relevant texts to delve deeply into the discoveries.
It is evident that Sowmiya is a proud Tamil, but there is no regional/political bias in her writing. She takes no sides.
I don’t know if it was intentional on the author’s part to highlight this, but it gave me great joy to read about the significant role women have played at every stage, from excavation teams to DNA research, legal representation and Tamil script studies. So refreshing.
I visited the Keeladi excavation site and the museum and to be honest, my first impression had been that there wasn’t much to showcase. Reading this book was like a breath of fresh air as it gave me a fresh perspective. Super informative.
December 31, 2025
A lovely journey that’s a mix of personal and collective history, the author peppers the pages with easy humour much like the potsherds scattered across sites. With a writing style that’s easy to read, this book travels physical, temporal, and political landscapes in a way that focuses on the history itself, the discovering of our shared pasts.
The primary site in the book, Keeladi, is prominent in news media and citizen circles, in parliaments and the Tamil diaspora. It has been regularly politicised, with various manipulative narratives in the last few years by regional and central political parties. The hallmark of this book is how deftly and objectively the author presents this politicisation, leaving you wondering about what the actual truth is, what narratives are being fed when and by whom. For instance, we might miss connections or fail to detect patterns because we may be quick to associate Tamil pride with anything we discover. The author reminds us with the book that these discoveries are also about a history that is more than Tamil, beyond the Tamil pride narrative.. the history of human beings, of Indians and our origins.
I like the use of sketches instead of pictures, but I would have liked a map somewhere in the copy, to help locate the reader along the journey.
The primary site in the book, Keeladi, is prominent in news media and citizen circles, in parliaments and the Tamil diaspora. It has been regularly politicised, with various manipulative narratives in the last few years by regional and central political parties. The hallmark of this book is how deftly and objectively the author presents this politicisation, leaving you wondering about what the actual truth is, what narratives are being fed when and by whom. For instance, we might miss connections or fail to detect patterns because we may be quick to associate Tamil pride with anything we discover. The author reminds us with the book that these discoveries are also about a history that is more than Tamil, beyond the Tamil pride narrative.. the history of human beings, of Indians and our origins.
I like the use of sketches instead of pictures, but I would have liked a map somewhere in the copy, to help locate the reader along the journey.
January 4, 2026
Good book, but should have been 30-40 pg shorter.
January 25, 2026
“We call it the dark age of the period of the BJP for the last 11 years. It is the dark age of the Archaeological Survey of India.” -- K K Mohammad
When the famed archaeologist KKM said this, it was bound to erupt into controversy, and the largest sitting troll army in the world left no ballistic unfired with the fusillade of misdirected, illinformed and politically bigoted hate. That politics and archaeology share a concomitant relation in complicitous ideological behaviour cannot be skipped over, and Sowmiya Ashok's 'The Dig - Keeladi and the Politics of India's Past' is an apt empirical evidence that rhymes with how the battle to secure past has grown rhetorically in the political circles that have swallowed up the cultures of diversity into an unifying model of monotonic crucible. As Sowmiya puts it in her epilogue, which I personally regards as the tour de force of her thoroughly investigated book,
"... It was hard to pin people's words down as efficiently as a potsherd unearthed from a trench could nail down a culture."
The Dig is a story of Keezhadi (Keeladi), a village near Madurai (Tamil Nadu) that sprang up the nation's consciousness over the last one decade after excavations pointed to South India's first urban settlement. This fact was unsettling for a significant majority who were then forced to compare the Indus-Saraswati-Gangetic civilization with the one lying down South, this questioning the very basis of the Vedic beginnings that the North was so enamored with. What was not intended to be a North - South debate, unfortunately took the turn and in the process sucked in some of the brightest hotshots in the field, whose ideological shifts hurt the discipline more than anything else. It's a little far-fetched to say that the fabric of archaeology in India has been torn asunder, but the direction of its movement is compelling enough to think that way.
While archaeological findings can be slow turners to motivated conscience, the case of Keeladi was (and has been) steroidic, in so far it collectively accelerated the ante against the generally accepted narrative (whether nominal or real is for others to judge) of the Gangetic plains as housing the second phase of urbanization in the subcontinent, especially after the collapse of the Indus and Saraswati Valley Civilizations. But, even more important is the fact that the excavations in Keeladi, Sivagalai and Pattanam (the last being in Kerala near the Periyar River) are dated contemporaneously with the peaking of the Sangam Literature, this lending credibility to the physicality of geographies that were hitherto liminal on mythological premises. Deep down in the South, it had always been known that the Romans, Greeks, Chinese and the Arabs had well established trade lines. But the precise locations of many of the port towns was elusive. Not just the international connections, the digs in Keeladi found punch-marked solver and copper coins, the earliest form of Indian coinage, dating back to the 6th century BCE, proving conclusively that trade did exist between the North and the South. Amarnath Ramakrishna, with an ancestry in Gujarat's Saurashtra region and now a homegrown Tamilian! (Pun Intended) was the chief excavator in Keeladi. He has been unceremoniously transferred over the years beginning 2015 to put a stop to any further excavations. As he maintains that Delhi was deliberately trying to suppress a unique Tamilian civilization because it challenged the idea of a homogeneous Indian identity. While, this might not be openly spoken about, the Tamilian consciousness is anything but far from accepting it. The politicians have conveniently played the spin doctors to give an aggressive edge to the North-South narrative of the Great Indian Epics, depending on which side of the spectrum they belonged to. This last point is corroborated with the findings at Sivagalai, where 13 Accelerator Mass Spectrometry C14 dates and 7 Optically Stimulated Luminescent dates proved that forged metal in the form of iron was a compelling evidence to declare that Sivagalai was the oldest iron age site in the world, including those in Anatolia Turkey, China, and even closer to home in Telangana and Uttar Pradesh. This statement by the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, Stalin with immense pride and satisfaction that iron age began on Tamil soil was an attack on those who mocked that literature could never become history.
The dubiousness of archaeological practitioners that were sticklers of the interpretation that Vedic literature could not have come from Central Asia, has harmed the discipline of archaeology by not considering outliers. Those who advocated outliers were shuffled around across various archaeological circles, Amarnath included. This has been intellectually frustrating, and the case in point is Vasant Shinde from Pune's games Deccan College. This top-notch excavator has shown enough strands of Right-Wing affinity to dub the field more bureaucratic than is healthy. While still hazy, there is a growing consensus that the Harappans must have spoken some flavour of Dravidian language, the theory that the Indo-European languages must have encountered a Out of India migration father's stream as a result of this conjectures, and filled the Aryan Invasion Theory somewhat. Whether the people who built Keeladi are descendants of the people who may have migrated South when their civilization went into terminal decline in the second millennium BCE or whether they had been here already remains unclear. Either ways, it deepens the divide between the discursive North and South.
Sowmiya Ashok's book is a daring dig in the field getting controversial by the day, and is only the prologue for spate of literature likely to invade is in the near future. There is humor spiced throughout the text, but on the whole, it is a severely serious work pointing to a sense of things to come. As a journalist, Sowmiya humbly accepts her lack of training in archaeology, but her travels nevertheless paint a vivid picture and the travails she must have undertaken to research her treatise, which are adventurous underline the sincerity of the work. I did expect some gastropolitics along the way, thanks to her teasing delicacies on her sojourns, but, they seldom converted the decent start. Anyhow, the book is accessible in prose and a real page turner.
When the famed archaeologist KKM said this, it was bound to erupt into controversy, and the largest sitting troll army in the world left no ballistic unfired with the fusillade of misdirected, illinformed and politically bigoted hate. That politics and archaeology share a concomitant relation in complicitous ideological behaviour cannot be skipped over, and Sowmiya Ashok's 'The Dig - Keeladi and the Politics of India's Past' is an apt empirical evidence that rhymes with how the battle to secure past has grown rhetorically in the political circles that have swallowed up the cultures of diversity into an unifying model of monotonic crucible. As Sowmiya puts it in her epilogue, which I personally regards as the tour de force of her thoroughly investigated book,
"... It was hard to pin people's words down as efficiently as a potsherd unearthed from a trench could nail down a culture."
The Dig is a story of Keezhadi (Keeladi), a village near Madurai (Tamil Nadu) that sprang up the nation's consciousness over the last one decade after excavations pointed to South India's first urban settlement. This fact was unsettling for a significant majority who were then forced to compare the Indus-Saraswati-Gangetic civilization with the one lying down South, this questioning the very basis of the Vedic beginnings that the North was so enamored with. What was not intended to be a North - South debate, unfortunately took the turn and in the process sucked in some of the brightest hotshots in the field, whose ideological shifts hurt the discipline more than anything else. It's a little far-fetched to say that the fabric of archaeology in India has been torn asunder, but the direction of its movement is compelling enough to think that way.
While archaeological findings can be slow turners to motivated conscience, the case of Keeladi was (and has been) steroidic, in so far it collectively accelerated the ante against the generally accepted narrative (whether nominal or real is for others to judge) of the Gangetic plains as housing the second phase of urbanization in the subcontinent, especially after the collapse of the Indus and Saraswati Valley Civilizations. But, even more important is the fact that the excavations in Keeladi, Sivagalai and Pattanam (the last being in Kerala near the Periyar River) are dated contemporaneously with the peaking of the Sangam Literature, this lending credibility to the physicality of geographies that were hitherto liminal on mythological premises. Deep down in the South, it had always been known that the Romans, Greeks, Chinese and the Arabs had well established trade lines. But the precise locations of many of the port towns was elusive. Not just the international connections, the digs in Keeladi found punch-marked solver and copper coins, the earliest form of Indian coinage, dating back to the 6th century BCE, proving conclusively that trade did exist between the North and the South. Amarnath Ramakrishna, with an ancestry in Gujarat's Saurashtra region and now a homegrown Tamilian! (Pun Intended) was the chief excavator in Keeladi. He has been unceremoniously transferred over the years beginning 2015 to put a stop to any further excavations. As he maintains that Delhi was deliberately trying to suppress a unique Tamilian civilization because it challenged the idea of a homogeneous Indian identity. While, this might not be openly spoken about, the Tamilian consciousness is anything but far from accepting it. The politicians have conveniently played the spin doctors to give an aggressive edge to the North-South narrative of the Great Indian Epics, depending on which side of the spectrum they belonged to. This last point is corroborated with the findings at Sivagalai, where 13 Accelerator Mass Spectrometry C14 dates and 7 Optically Stimulated Luminescent dates proved that forged metal in the form of iron was a compelling evidence to declare that Sivagalai was the oldest iron age site in the world, including those in Anatolia Turkey, China, and even closer to home in Telangana and Uttar Pradesh. This statement by the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, Stalin with immense pride and satisfaction that iron age began on Tamil soil was an attack on those who mocked that literature could never become history.
The dubiousness of archaeological practitioners that were sticklers of the interpretation that Vedic literature could not have come from Central Asia, has harmed the discipline of archaeology by not considering outliers. Those who advocated outliers were shuffled around across various archaeological circles, Amarnath included. This has been intellectually frustrating, and the case in point is Vasant Shinde from Pune's games Deccan College. This top-notch excavator has shown enough strands of Right-Wing affinity to dub the field more bureaucratic than is healthy. While still hazy, there is a growing consensus that the Harappans must have spoken some flavour of Dravidian language, the theory that the Indo-European languages must have encountered a Out of India migration father's stream as a result of this conjectures, and filled the Aryan Invasion Theory somewhat. Whether the people who built Keeladi are descendants of the people who may have migrated South when their civilization went into terminal decline in the second millennium BCE or whether they had been here already remains unclear. Either ways, it deepens the divide between the discursive North and South.
Sowmiya Ashok's book is a daring dig in the field getting controversial by the day, and is only the prologue for spate of literature likely to invade is in the near future. There is humor spiced throughout the text, but on the whole, it is a severely serious work pointing to a sense of things to come. As a journalist, Sowmiya humbly accepts her lack of training in archaeology, but her travels nevertheless paint a vivid picture and the travails she must have undertaken to research her treatise, which are adventurous underline the sincerity of the work. I did expect some gastropolitics along the way, thanks to her teasing delicacies on her sojourns, but, they seldom converted the decent start. Anyhow, the book is accessible in prose and a real page turner.
February 1, 2026
Keeladi - A small village near Madurai becomes a point of controversy when structural remains, artefacts, pottery etc. are unearthed by the ASI in 2014.
The findings of the excavation (and the things that were not found during it - something to relate them with religion or Vedic culture) put a big question mark on the "Aryan Roots" theory Indians have. I mean why is it so important a belief, that any discussion related to us being an indigenous civilization is discarded instantly?
The author made this book seem like a journey which the reader is compelled to take along with her. She tried to show us how a country where the narratives are set so hard, struggles to accept something that doesn't align with those narratives however important the new discoveries may be.
It really hurt me to see history being manipulated and archaeological findings being caught up in political and cultural debates.
We should be able to know "where did we come from" without having to succumb to these "North vs South", "Aryan vs Dravidian origins" narratives!
What I really liked about this book is that when trying to highlight the Sangam literature or the importance of Jallikattu to Tamils, she gave parallel attention to the north as well as the ancient port of Muziris in Kerala. A whole chapter is dedicated to Rakhigarhi (a crucial Harappan site in Haryana).
Despite being a Non - Fiction book, it didn't feel cumbersome. I was hooked through the entire length of the book. The author's ironic remarks and sarcasm are not to be missed!
It was a highly informative read for me and that could not be summed up in a review. So if you loved reading about Indus Valley Civilization in school, then this book is something you'd definitely find fascinating.
The findings of the excavation (and the things that were not found during it - something to relate them with religion or Vedic culture) put a big question mark on the "Aryan Roots" theory Indians have. I mean why is it so important a belief, that any discussion related to us being an indigenous civilization is discarded instantly?
The author made this book seem like a journey which the reader is compelled to take along with her. She tried to show us how a country where the narratives are set so hard, struggles to accept something that doesn't align with those narratives however important the new discoveries may be.
It really hurt me to see history being manipulated and archaeological findings being caught up in political and cultural debates.
We should be able to know "where did we come from" without having to succumb to these "North vs South", "Aryan vs Dravidian origins" narratives!
What I really liked about this book is that when trying to highlight the Sangam literature or the importance of Jallikattu to Tamils, she gave parallel attention to the north as well as the ancient port of Muziris in Kerala. A whole chapter is dedicated to Rakhigarhi (a crucial Harappan site in Haryana).
Despite being a Non - Fiction book, it didn't feel cumbersome. I was hooked through the entire length of the book. The author's ironic remarks and sarcasm are not to be missed!
It was a highly informative read for me and that could not be summed up in a review. So if you loved reading about Indus Valley Civilization in school, then this book is something you'd definitely find fascinating.
January 5, 2026
The Dig – Sowmiya Ashok
“A land where the very breath, song and sacrifice of its people have bound to the Tamil Language”.
Everywhere, it’s about Keeladi. The identity of ancient roots just found in the southern region of India. A decade back, this happened. A team was sent to trace the origin of our history from the Stone Age, under the leadership of Amarnath. He was the sole reason for the excavation. And suddenly, they transferred him to somewhere in the northern part of India. You lay the foundation for it, and the Centre can’t digest it anymore. That’s the result for Amarnath. Definitely, it’s political in many ways.
Every detail the author has researched, and the travel over the years, has been beautifully put into the book. More than the political aspect, it’s about ancient history in the soil being covered, and it should be known to everyone. What I loved was her sarcasm along with the story flow. That’s where the book stood out for me. I never felt bored throughout the whole journey along with her travel. She has split the journey into two parts. The first part is about how it started, and the second part is more about archaeological work. It has a beginning, and there is no end — it’s even more about what’s to come.
I even happened to know more than what school books preached to me. One chapter I was completely obsessed with was about DNA; it was purely new to me. Lastly, I watched her interview — it was so good, and I wish it had extended some more. To simply say: a rare book that delivers the important history behind the ancient world underneath. I have shortened myself so that you can read and know Keeladi. Definitely a must -must read from my side.
“A land where the very breath, song and sacrifice of its people have bound to the Tamil Language”.
Everywhere, it’s about Keeladi. The identity of ancient roots just found in the southern region of India. A decade back, this happened. A team was sent to trace the origin of our history from the Stone Age, under the leadership of Amarnath. He was the sole reason for the excavation. And suddenly, they transferred him to somewhere in the northern part of India. You lay the foundation for it, and the Centre can’t digest it anymore. That’s the result for Amarnath. Definitely, it’s political in many ways.
Every detail the author has researched, and the travel over the years, has been beautifully put into the book. More than the political aspect, it’s about ancient history in the soil being covered, and it should be known to everyone. What I loved was her sarcasm along with the story flow. That’s where the book stood out for me. I never felt bored throughout the whole journey along with her travel. She has split the journey into two parts. The first part is about how it started, and the second part is more about archaeological work. It has a beginning, and there is no end — it’s even more about what’s to come.
I even happened to know more than what school books preached to me. One chapter I was completely obsessed with was about DNA; it was purely new to me. Lastly, I watched her interview — it was so good, and I wish it had extended some more. To simply say: a rare book that delivers the important history behind the ancient world underneath. I have shortened myself so that you can read and know Keeladi. Definitely a must -must read from my side.
January 11, 2026
I picked up this book hoping to read more about Keeladi—but it turned out to be much more expansive. Keeladi final report is not yet published by ASI (as mentioned in the book). In that sense unfinished book. May be scope for a sequel:) Or I wonder the rush to publish the book was to put a voice that may counter with what is coming or a sponsored propaganda.
The book explores a range of archaeological digs across India, weaving them into a broader narrative.
The author also takes a few subtle “digs” at the current state of the ASI, which added a layer of quiet critique to the storytelling.
I enjoyed the book and especially Madurai section mutton scene.
The book explores a range of archaeological digs across India, weaving them into a broader narrative.
The author also takes a few subtle “digs” at the current state of the ASI, which added a layer of quiet critique to the storytelling.
I enjoyed the book and especially Madurai section mutton scene.
January 11, 2026
I really enjoyed this book! It was exactly what I needed to dive into the Keeladi excavations and other recent Southern Indian finds. The book does a great job balancing facts with different perspectives, handling the politics of it all without getting preachy. Plus, the humor sprinkled throughout makes it an easy, satisfying read!
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews