Mumbai, BBC News
AlamyOne of the greatest historical discoveries made by an American scientist, whose occupation was marked by genius and controversy. He is still largely forgotten now, though.
In modern-day Pakistan, Rakhaldas Banerjee ( also known as Banerji ) unearthed Mohenjo-daro, which means “mound of the dead men” in the Sindhi language. During the Bronze Age, the largest city was located in the prosperous Indus Valley ( Harappan ) Civilization, which stretched from north-east Afghanistan to north-west India.
When India was governed by British colonial rule, Banerjee worked for the Archaeological Survey of India ( ASI). He spent months looking for historical objects, ruins, and scripts while traveling to remote regions of the continent.
However, Banerjee’s tradition is stifled by disagreements despite his groundbreaking revelation of Mohenjo-daro. His disregard for colonial laws and his separate demeanor frequently caused him to lose popularity and, possibly, erase some of his significance from the world’s memory.
Getty ImagesIronically, the ASI never made Banerjee’s information on Mohenjo-daro public. Eventually, scientist Torres Mishra charged next ASI boss John Marshall with disseminating Banerjee’s findings and claiming funds for the finding.
” Marshall is a professor of the civilization’s ruin, and the universe is aware of it.” According to Prof. Mishra,” Banerjee is a meaningless footnote.”
According to scholar Nayanjot Lahiri in her reserve Finding Forgotten Cities: How the Indus Civilization Was Discovered, Banerjee “lacks diplomacy and tact and displayed a high-handedness that curled feathers.” Additionally, her reserve makes illumination of the disagreements he was involved in while working at the ASI.
She recalls a time when he attempted to get texts and images from a museum in northwest India without his boss’s information.
Banerjee once attempted to move some stone carvings from a Bengal gallery to the location where he was stationed without getting the necessary rights.
In another instance, he paid a total for an ancient painting without consulting his bosses, who believed the sum was too much.
” Banerjee’s many qualities appeared to contain being generally able to wash people the wrong way,” writes Lahiri.
Getty ImagesHowever, Banerjee is still a well-known figure among Bengali scientists and earth historians because of his association with Mohenjo-daro.
He was born in Bengal in 1885 to a rich home.
The town he grew up in, Baharampur, was a city where the feudal statues dotted the metropolis. He developed an interest in history, and he pursued the area in school. But he was always a risk taker.
He previously traveled to a gallery in a nearby state to examine first-hand sculptures and scripts from that time when he was given the task of writing an essay about the Ancient period of American history.
Yama Pande, the author of The Life and Works of Rakhaldas Banerji, describes how Banerjee joined the ASI as an excavation helper in 1910 and immediately rose up the ranks to become a principal scientist in northern India in 1917.
In this post, he initially saw Mohenjo-daro in Sindh in 1919. In the years that followed, he conducted a number of digging at the site that turned up some of the most intriguing sees: old Buddhist pagodas, coins, seals, pots, and microliths.
He discovered many pieces of wreckage between 1922 and 1923, which provided information on various urban settlements that had come into the area, but most important, the most recent, which dates back about 5,300 years, called the Indus Valley Civilisation.
The entire scale of the Indus Civilization, which is now known, covered an area of roughly 386, 000 square miles (999, 735 square kilometers ) along the Indus creek valley, was not yet fully understood by researchers at the time.
Images and codes akin to those found in Harappa in the Punjab province of modern-day Pakistan were found in three dolphins from Banerjee’s construction. This helped to form a connection between the two locations and help illuminate the extensive approach of the Indus Valley civilization.
Getty ImagesHowever, Banerjee’s funds for the project had run out by the year 1924, and he had even been moved to eastern India. According to Pande in her guide, he neither continued to communicate with the site nor engaged in any excavations it.
Nayanjot Lahiri points out that Banerjee was hired at his own plea after being questioned about his spending habits. He had not taken into account some job-related costs.
Additionally, it was revealed that Banerjee had used digging grants to purchase office equipment and that his travel expenses were exaggerated.
His justifications failed to persuade his leaders, and administrative action was suggested. Banerjee was granted his plea after some bargaining and moved to a different area.
Banerjee continued to work for the ASI in southeast India. He oversaw the restoration of numerous significant monuments and spent most of his time in Calcutta ( now Kolkata ).
In 1927, he left the ASI, but there were some controversy surrounding his exit. He served as the main suspect in a situation of legend fraud in the years due to his exit.
It all began in October 1925 when Banerjee made a visit to a respected Hindu temple in the state of Madhya Pradesh that housed a marble hero of a Buddhist goddess. According to Lahiri in her reserve, Banerjee was accompanied by two low-ranking helpers and two laborers.
However, the hero vanished after their visit, and Banerjee was found guilty of being responsible for its extortion. He denied having any role in the departure, and an investigation was launched.
The hero was afterwards found in Calcutta. Marshall insisted on resigning despite the dismissal of the case against Banerjee and the findings that the allegations were unsupported.
Banerjee worked as a doctor after leaving the ASI, but he had financial problems as a result of his beautiful life.
Tapati Guha-Thakurta, a scholar, reported to the Telegraph paper that Banerjee spent money on good food, horseback rides, and friends. He became a professor at Banaras Hindu University ( BHU) in 1928. He was 45 years old when he passed away only two years later.
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