B.B Lal’s role in transforming the ASI from a sedate government organisation excavating diverse pasts of this ancient nation to something that has been trying to prove the archaeological veracity of the ancient Hindu epic tradition is indelible.

It’s because of his ‘Archaeology of the Mahabharata Sites’ project in 1950-52 that the earliest link between the Hindutva ideology and archaeology could be dated. Unlike the 19th century excavations of sites mentioned in Chinese travel literature by Alexander Cunningham, which had unambiguous historical origins, Lal explicitly attempted to correlate events and sites mentioned in the Mahabharata to archaeological excavations at Hastinapura and explorations of Mathura, Kurukshetra, Banawa, Panipat, Ahichchhatra, and other sites.

This led him to the controversial assertion that the pre-Buddhist Painted Grey Ware (PGW) found at these sites was associated with the Mahabharata.1

Lal’s project was driven by the faulty logic of correlating material culture of the PGW with ethnicity – Aryan. Lal’s effort was mimetic of British archaeologist Mortimer Wheeler’s equally problematic correlation between the material culture of Cemetery ‘H’ at Harappa and the notion of the invading hordes of Aryans. And now more than 70 years after his claim, there has been no evidence to suggest any relationship of PGW with the Aryans.

Again, in the 1970s, a joint project of the ASI and the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies, Shimla, on the ‘Archaeology of the Ramayana Sites’ headed by Lal, who was motivated by the same concerns, led to excavations at Ayodhya, Sringaverapur, and Nandigrama. Importantly, Lal’s team undertook three seasons of excavations (1975–76, 1976–77, and 1979–80) in Ayodhya. But no detailed report of the site was ever published.

Only two minuscule reportages were published in the ASI’s Indian Archaeology: A Review (IAR). This excavation confirmed that Ayodhya was first occupied in the 7th century BCE.2

However, it was in 1990 when the Ram Janmabhoomi movement was jolting the political climate in India, and more than 10 years after he had excavated Ayodhya, Lal, in an influential article in a Hindu propaganda journal, Manthan, announced that he had recovered Hindu temple pillar-bases during the excavation.

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• 1. PGW was identified in Ahichchhatra in 1946. During the Hastinapur excavation, it was culturally interpreted. B.B. Lal emphatically correlated PGW with Period II in Hastinapur, thereby controversially pushing the date of the events in the Mahabharata to 1000 BCE. However, in his conclusion to the excavation report of the Hastinapur excavation published in Ancient India (1954), he noted with caution that “the evidence is entirely circumstantial, and until and unless positive ethnographic and epigraphic proofs are obtained to substantiate the conclusions, they cannot but be considered provisional.”
• 2. Lal’s most significant discovery was that of the earliest Jain terracotta figurine (4th century BCE) and Roman Rouletted Ware (1st-2nd century CE). This evidence showed that Ayodhya was not just part of the brisk ancient trade route, but it was a multicultural site. There was no mention of a Hindu temple at the site. The short excavation reportage in IAR ironically stated that the entire period after the 11th century “was devoid of special interest”.