The standoff between the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) and the archaeologist who led the landmark excavations at Keezhadi in Tamil Nadu’s Sivagangai district has intensified, with the latter formally rejecting an internal evaluation of his report and demanding that the original document be published without further delay.
In a detailed reply to the ASI, K Amarnath Ramakrishna questioned both the process and the substance of the 114‑page review prepared by a five‑member internal committee, saying the scrutiny of his 982‑page excavation report departed from established academic practice and appeared procedurally flawed.
Raising a series of objections, Ramakrishna questioned the legitimacy of the review titled, ‘Critical evaluation and Recommendations for the Keeladi Excavation Report (2014–2016).’
“A bare perusal… reveals that there is no unanimity among the members,” he wrote, pointing out that one member’s signature was absent, marked merely “on tour”. More fundamentally, he described the very act of setting up an internal committee to reassess the interpretation of an excavator’s report as unprecedented. Traditionally, he said, ASI reports are checked for proofreading errors or formatting lapses, not subjected to conceptual re‑evaluation.
“The procedure of setting up an internal committee to critically evaluate a report submitted by an archaeologist who had actually conducted physical excavation is unprecedented,” Ramakrishna wrote, adding that previous reports had been scrutinised only for “spelling/grammatical mistakes, errors in paging, drawings, photos or indexing”. Instead of receiving a marked‑up copy of his original report with specific comments, which he argued was the standard norm, he was handed a separate 114‑page document of generalised observations.
“The committee… has not given any plausible reasons and valid justification requesting me to improve my report, that too, on my findings,” he said.
The language of the evaluation, he suggested, lacked the character of scholarly critique. In one of the sharpest passages of the letter, he wrote that the “content, nature of the language, structure, and overall presentation… discloses non-application of scholarly human mind”.
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He went further, alleging that the note “seems to be a product of AI-assisted technology”, describing it as repetitive, mechanical and “monotonous in pattern”. Such a process, he said, had “never happened in the annals of the excavation reports ever published by the Archaeological Survey of India”.
The committee’s critique had characterised his report as “ambiguous, incomplete and underdeveloped”, arguing that the narrative mixed historical background and literary references without a clear structure and that some interpretations, including the claim that Keezhadi was a “uni‑cultural site”, were insufficiently supported by stratigraphic evidence.
Ramakrishna countered that the reviewers had never visited the site itself.
“It is so pathetic the internal committee… had never visited the site (Keezhadi) and never visualised the site’s cultural formation,” he wrote, saying the evaluation overlooked first‑hand knowledge derived from excavation.
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He reiterated that the chronology of Keezhadi, which he dates from roughly the 8th century BCE to the early centuries CE, was reconstructed “strictly in accordance… with the primary sources, namely cultural deposit, stratigraphical sequences and its material culture”, following the ASI’s own long‑standing methodology.
His request to the department was unambiguous: “The findings and conclusion… (are) final and there is no need or valid reasons to alter the said report… The same may be published at the earliest.”
In the last decade, Keezhadi, located near Madurai, has become one of India’s most politically charged archaeological sites. Excavations begun under Ramakrishna between 2014 and 2016 uncovered brick structures, drainage systems, terracotta artefacts, graffiti‑inscribed pottery and industrial remains, suggesting an organised urban settlement during the Sangam era.
The findings challenged older assumptions that early urbanism in India was concentrated largely in the north. Around the same period, Ramakrishna also started facing transfers in his job postings, and many in Tamil Nadu attributed this to the political motives of the BJP-led Central government. Ramakrishna was abruptly shifted out of Keezhadi in 2017, and subsequent ASI statements downplayed the site’s significance. Later, the Tamil Nadu State Department of Archaeology resumed digging and recovered thousands more artefacts.
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Two years after he submitted his report, the ASI asked him to “resubmit” it with corrections. He declined. Now, with the internal review rejected as well, the impasse has hardened.
