Description
Oxford University Press Archaeology and the Public Purpose by M N Deshpande and Nayanjot Lahiri
This book interleaves the history of post-Independence archaeology in India with the life and times of Madhusudan Narhar Deshpande (1920–2008), a leading Indian archaeologist who went on to become the director general of the Archaeological Survey of India. Spanning nearly a century, this is a tale told through a main character—Deshpande himself—some of whose writings have been included in the volume. The volume explores the circumstances which brought men like Deshpande to this career path; what it was like to grow up in a family devoted to India’s freedom; the watershed moment that created a large cohort that was trained by Sir R.E. Mortimer Wheeler, the doyen of British archaeology; the unknown conservation stories around the Gol Gumbad in Bijapur and the Qutb Minar in Delhi; the forgotten story of how the fabric of a historic Hindu shrine, the Badrinath temple, was saved; the chemistry shared by the prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, and the archaeologist, Deshpande, at the Ajanta and Ellora cave shrines; and the political and administrative challenges faced by director generals of archaeology. The book is a must read for anyone interested in India’s past in general and the history of Indian archaeology in particular.