HVK Archives: Back to earth
Back to earth - Mid-Day
Suzanne Goldenberg
()
May 20, 1998
Title: Back to earth
Author: Suzanne Goldenberg
Publication: Mid-Day
Date: May 20, 1998
Wide, straight roads, covered sewers, tidy houses with separate
toilet and bath, and a guaranteed private water supply: such is
the stuff suburban dreams are made of amid the choking chaos of a
modem Indian or Pakistani city.
Except that this metropolis is 4,500 years old: Mohenjodaro, the
world's first planned city, laid out on a grid that would not be
out of place in the American Midwest, forgoing grandiose temples
and palaces for public baths and granaries, and dustbins on
the corner.
"We have no elaborate architecture for gods and kings, but the
entire city is amazingly well provided for," said Farzand Ali
Durani. professor of archaeology at Pakistan's Peshawar
University. "The amenities that the occupants of Mohenjodaro got
in the Bronze Age our cities fail to offer our citizens even
today."
In its time, the sprawling city of baked red brick was the
showpiece of a civilisation that was born and grew by the banks
of the Indus, the once mighty river that gave the Indian
subcontinent its name. Only 10 per cent of the city has been
explored and catalogued; the rest lies buried beneath the scrub
and rice paddy on the river's right bank.
Scholars do not know why the city died. "It was not a sudden
eclipse but a gradual decline. loss of trade, loss of import and
export and the loss of the administrative system, and hence we
find that by 1500 BC, it just was not in existence," said Ahmed
Hasan Dani, director of the institute of Asian civilisations in
Islamabad.
4,000 years on, some conservationists fear that what has been
discovered could disappear once more. The baked earth bricks of
Mohenjodaro are crumbling, so thoroughly eaten away by salt that,
in time, they will collapse into dust. Glittering crystals are
visible on the lower portions of several walls, creeping up from
the ground with a rising - and saline water table, or deposited
in the morning dew in winter. In the summer, a fierce sun and
temperatures of 50 degree Centigrade exact their own punishment,
and the walls buckle inward.
The damage is most severe in the lower, residential part of
Mohenjodaro. Here the lanes are narrower than the broad avenues
of the citadel, where residents could make their stately progress
>from the large, square swimming pool to what appears to have been
a college. Although the people of Mohenjodaro were literate,
scholars have been unable to decode the seals left behind.
"Every year, something is being eaten away by salt action," said
Dr Dani, the sole survivor of the last big excavations at
Mohenjodaro in 1950. "When you excavate, whatever you excavate
becomes like your own son, and now I feel my own son is dead."
The future of Mohenjodaro has long preoccupied conservationists.
In 1974, UNESCO, which has adopted Mohenjodaro as a world
heritage site, began working with the Pakistani authorities to
ensure its survival. It spent nearly 7 million pounds
(approximately Rs 46.25 crore) before withdrawing in September.
Since then, the Pakistani authorities have yet to decide on a
course of action, though the archaeology department claims the
site is in safe hands and is on the verge of being transformed
into a major tourist attraction. At present, it receives only
50,000 visitors a year, almost all of them Pakistanis.
Dr Dam refuses to be reassured, and is campaigning to get the
site entrusted to his care. He notes that for all of UNESCO's
efforts, Mohenjodaro is still not secured.
Some of the earlier attempts to save the ruins were
extraordinary. UNESCO encircled the site with 27 tubewells, which
pumped the lethal groundwater into a moat that fed into an
agricultural canal. The organisation also shored up the banks of
the Indus, which has changed its course over the centuries, and
is now a glittering flat ribbon about a mile from the city that
once served as its port.
But the ambitious designs appear not to have worked.
"In the '60s and '70s, people believed that if you went in with a
big bang you could save something for a lifetime," said Michael
Jansen, an archaeologist and conservationist from Germany's
Aachen university, who oversaw the UNESCO project for nearly 10
years.
"Nowadays, we know this doesn't exist. Big sites need permanent
maintenance."
Last autumn. Pakistan shut down the pumping system. The closure
is an experiment to see how high the water will rise. It also
saves the Pakistani authorities 5,00,000 rupees a month in
electricity costs alone.
Instead, conservationists are putting their hopes in the kind of
repairs familiar to modern home-owners: underpinning and camp
proof courses. Other methods would be unsuited to modern
structures - primarily coating the walls with silt to prevent the
salt from reaching the brick underneath. Dr Jansen says such
simple, low-cost methods may prove the answer for Mohenjodaro,
provided maintenance is carried out regularly. However, that does
not appear to be happening, and a regular programme may have to
wait several more months until the Pakistani government reveals
its plans. The only sure solution is far more drastic than
anyone would want - returning Mohenjodaro to the earth which once
harboured it.
"The moment something is buried, it is safe," Dr Jansen said. "If
the walls are not treated any more, I can imagine that in 10 or
15 years, you would again have a soft archaeological surface.
You can already see it in the east of the city."
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