(a) Critically describe evidences from Rakhi Garhi and its linkages to Harappan civilization. 20 (b) Compare and contrast the…

(a) Rakhigarhi and its linkages to the Harappan civilisation

Rakhigarhi (Hisar district, Haryana) lies in the Ghaggar–Chautang (ancient Drishadvati) plain. With about eleven mounds spread over a reported 300–350 hectares, it is among the largest Harappan settlements, comparable to Harappa, Mohenjo-daro, Ganweriwala and Dholavira.

Excavations

• Amarendra Nath of the Archaeological Survey of India dug there in 1997–2000.
• Vasant Shinde of Deccan College, Pune, led work in 2011–16.
• The ASI resumed excavation from 2021, and the site was named one of five "iconic" archaeological sites in 2020.

Evidence

• Sequence: early levels of the Hakra and Early Harappan (Sothi-Siswal) phases, followed by the Mature Harappan phase (c. 2600–1900 BCE).
• Planning: grid-like streets, lanes and covered drains, houses of standard-sized mud and baked bricks, and platforms, some interpreted as fire altars.
• Crafts and trade: workshops for carnelian, agate, steatite and faience beads; shell and copper working; cubical chert weights; terracotta figurines, toy carts and cakes; and inscribed seals and sealings in the Indus script. A jewellery-making unit was reported in 2022.
• Cemetery: more than 60 graves with extended burials, grave pots and ornaments. They include a double burial of a man and a woman.
• Ancient DNA: a study by Shinde et al. (Cell, 2019) sequenced the genome of a woman buried at the site. She carried a mix of ancient Iranian-related ancestry, which split off before the rise of farming, and Ancient Ancestral South Indian ancestry, with no Steppe ancestry. This matches an Indus-related group found as migrants in Iran and Turkmenistan (Narasimhan et al., Science, 2019).

Linkages

• Standardised bricks, weights, script, bead technology and burial customs tie Rakhigarhi firmly to the Harappan cultural world rather than to a regional culture on its margins.
• Its long local sequence supports a gradual, indigenous growth of urbanism in the Ghaggar region.
• Its location shows that the civilisation extended far east of the Indus, into the Ghaggar–Yamuna divide.

Critical evaluation

• Size: estimates of the site's extent vary, and much of the town lies under the modern village.
• Dates: very early dates claimed for the Hakra levels rest on a few radiocarbon samples and are disputed. Full excavation reports are still limited.
• Genetics: the DNA evidence comes from a single individual and cannot represent the whole population. It speaks to ancestry, not to language or later cultural history, so claims drawn from it on either side of the Aryan-migration debate go beyond the data.
• Terminology: terms such as "Saraswati civilisation" are contested.

Rakhigarhi's significance lies in showing a large, planned Harappan city in the east, with deep local roots that further excavation can test.

(b) Srinivas and Vidyarthi on social change in village India

M. N. Srinivas trained at Oxford under Radcliffe-Brown and Evans-Pritchard and brought structural-functionalism to Indian villages. His fieldwork was among the Coorgs and in Rampura near Mysore (The Remembered Village, 1976).

• Sanskritisation: lower castes and tribes adopt the customs of higher castes, such as vegetarianism, teetotalism and Brahmin rituals, to claim higher status. This produces positional change within the system, not change of the system itself.
• Westernisation: change through British rule, education and technology.
• Dominant caste: power based on land, numbers, education and political office, as with the Okkaligas of Rampura.
• "Field view" versus "book view": caste as it is lived rather than as the texts describe it.
• Main work: Social Change in Modern India (1966).

L. P. Vidyarthi trained at Chicago under Robert Redfield. He studied Bihar's tribes and sacred centres through a civilisational and ecological lens.

• The sacred complex: in The Sacred Complex in Hindu Gaya (1961) he showed how sacred geography, sacred performances and sacred specialists (the Gayawal priests) link villages to the "Great Tradition", with the Little and Great Traditions constantly interacting.
• Nature–man–spirit complex: among the Maler of the Rajmahal hills, he showed how ecology, economy and belief form one integrated system.
• Industrialisation: he studied the social effects of heavy industry on tribes around Ranchi (Hatia/HEC), covering displacement, migration and new occupations.
• Applied focus: he promoted applied and "action" anthropology for tribal development and wrote histories of Indian anthropology.

Comparison

• What drives change: for Srinivas, status mobility within caste hierarchy, emulation and political dominance. For Vidyarthi, the interaction of tribal and rural communities with Hindu civilisation, ecology and industry.
• Unit and region: Srinivas studied the peasant caste village of the south, while Vidyarthi studied tribal and pilgrimage settings of Middle India.
• Method: Srinivas used structural-functional analysis of a single village. Vidyarthi used Redfield's civilisational approach, which links village and region to a wider tradition.
• State and modernity: Srinivas saw Westernisation, democracy and reservations as reshaping dominance. Vidyarthi stressed planned development, industrialisation and the costs they impose on tribes.
• Common ground: both rooted theory in Indian fieldwork and showed that change comes from within the civilisation as well as from outside.

Criticisms: Srinivas has been criticised for an upper-caste, consensus view of Sanskritisation that neglects conflict and Dalit resistance, and Vidyarthi for descriptive rather than analytical studies.

(c) Forest policies (1878–2006), land alienation and tribal rights

Colonial period

• Indian Forest Act, 1878 (after a first Act in 1865): classified forests as reserved, protected or village forests. In reserved forests, all rights not recorded at settlement were extinguished. Customary use, such as grazing, shifting cultivation, collection of forest produce and hunting, was turned into revocable "privileges" or offences.
• Forest Policy, 1894: managed forests for "public benefit" and revenue, while allowing agriculture to take priority on some land.
• Indian Forest Act, 1927: consolidated these powers and remains the basic law today.
• Impact: shifting cultivation (jhum, podu, bewar) was banned or restricted, as among the Baiga, whose bewar was confined to a small reserve. Forest villages were created to supply labour, and commercial timber (sal, teak) replaced subsistence use.
• Resistance: forest grievances fuelled revolts such as the Bastar Bhumkal (1910) and the Rampa rebellion (1922–24).

After Independence

• National Forest Policy, 1952: placed "national needs" above local ones and treated tribal rights as concessions. It set a target of one-third of the land under forest.
• Rights never recorded: many areas, including former princely and zamindari lands, were declared forest without recording existing rights, so cultivators overnight became "encroachers".
• Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972: created sanctuaries and national parks, which led to evictions.
• Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980: required central approval for any diversion of forest land. It checked some diversion but also froze the regularisation of long-standing tribal cultivation. Dams, mines and industry displaced large numbers of tribal people, often with poor rehabilitation.
• National Forest Policy, 1988: for the first time recognised the "symbiotic relationship" of tribals with forests and gave their needs first claim on forest produce. It led to Joint Forest Management (1990), but JFM gave participation without ownership.
• Eviction drive, 2002: a Ministry of Environment and Forests directive to remove "encroachers" triggered mass evictions and protests.

Forest Rights Act, 2006

• Its preamble admits a "historical injustice".
• It recognises individual land rights (up to 4 hectares under occupation), community rights, the right to own minor forest produce, habitat rights for PVTGs, and community forest resource rights managed by Gram Sabhas.
• Gram Sabha consent is required before diversion. The Niyamgiri decision of 2013 used this provision.

Assessment. Over 128 years, forest law converted common property into state property and made tribal occupation illegal. This was the root of land alienation, poverty and conflict in Central and Eastern India. FRA reverses the principle, but high rejection rates of claims, weak recognition of community rights and newer laws on compensatory afforestation and forest conservation show that the shift from "conservation against people" to "conservation with rights" is still incomplete.