Sarasvati Civilization

[ramana]

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Is Ghaggar Sarasvati? It depends whom you ask
Monday, September 24, 2007  09:28 IST

Mayank Tewari

ASI camouflaged the search for Sarasvati to make it palatable to the new political dispensation. <!--emo&--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/sad.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='sad.gif' /><!--endemo-->

NEW DELHI: <b>Despite strong disapproval from the UPA government, the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) decided to go ahead with its controversial search for the mythical river Sarasvati. </b>

Enquiries by DNA based on a detailed perusal of official documents and extensive interviews with a cross-section of ASI officials show that the ASI has effectively camouflaged the search for Sarasvati.

"The project has been kept going by renaming it to make it palatable to the new political dispensation at the centre, and by breaking it into several smaller projects across Haryana, Gujarat and Rajasthan," said a senior official of the ASI, who declined to be identified. <b>Bisht confirms this. “It was suggested by many people that to counter Leftist propaganda we should call the Sarasvati (project) as Ghaggar in future proposals." </b>

<b>Like Ram Setu, there are deep divisions among historians and archaeologists over the existence of the river Sarasvati. While Left and mainstream historians point out that there is no evidence to show that the river ever existed, right-wing scholars argue that Harappan civilisation's lost river was indeed the Sarasvati. </b>

“Ghaggar is Sarasvati," asserts S Kalyanaraman, director of the privately-funded Sarasvati Research Centre, Chennai. <b>Outside the Sangh Parivar, the consensus is that there is indeed a lost river from the Harappan civilisation, but it has been identified as the original and bigger version of today's Ghaggar.</b> <i>{Psy-ops!}</i>

"The underlying historical assumption made by a section of ASI officials is that the mythical Sarasvati and the real Ghaggar are one and the same. No scientific evidence to prove this has ever been found," says Dr RS Fonia, director, exploration and excavation, ASI.

The ASI admitted before a standing committee of the Parliament that "no academic body or university has recommended the project." <b>The Parliamentary standing committee asked the ASI not to pursue such projects, yet excavations continued.</b> <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

Bascially the DNA is against the pursuit of study of Saraswati/Ghaggar links. It will snowball into another Ram Setu fiasco.