Skip to content
Himal Southasian
Sign in Sign up

Sowmiya Ashok on what Keeladi tells us about India’s past – and present

A conversation with the journalist Sowmiya Ashok on how an archaeological excavation in Tamil Nadu became a powerful symbol of Tamil identity and a flashpoint in larger battles over history in India

Sowmiya Ashok on what Keeladi tells us about India’s past – and present

In The Dig: Keeladi and the Politics of India’s Past, the journalist Sowmiya Ashok begins with an archaeological excavation in a village outside Madurai in Tamil Nadu and unfolds a much larger story about history, identity, and the struggle over who gets to narrate India’s past. 

Since its discovery in 2014, Keeladi has become one of India’s most contested archaeological sites, drawing in debates around Tamil identity, language and nationalism. Moving between excavation trenches, museums, literary texts, and conversations with archaeologists, historians and people across India, the book explores how political battles over science and history shape the way the past is understood in the present – and what the conversations around Keeladi reveal about contemporary India itself.

In this episode of the Southasia Review of Books podcast, Ashok discusses the emotional pull of Keeladi and its place in contemporary Tamil identity, the relationship between Sangam literature and archaeology, and the colonial legacies of archaeological practice. She also talks about the role of Hindutva and Dravidian politics in shaping competing narratives of the past, and what the growing public interest in archaeology might mean for Tamil Nadu. 

🎥 Watch the full conversation — and subscribe so you don't miss the next one

🎧 Prefer to listen? Catch the audio version & follow on Apple Podcasts or Spotify

Episode notes: 

The Dig: Keeladi and the Politics of India’s Past by Sowmiya Ashok (Hachette India, December 2025)

Bureaucratic Archaeology: State, Science, and Past in Postcolonial India by Ashish Avikunthak (Cambridge University Press, August 2021) 

The Dig
The Keeladi excavations may alter the world’s ideas about the earliest Indians. But progress hasn’t been smooth for one of the country’s most sensational archaeological projects — A new story from India to the world, each week on FiftyTwo.in
FiftyTwoSowmiya Ashok
Audrey Truschke and the politics of Southasian historiography
‘India: 5,000 Years of History in the Subcontinent’ revisits millennia of Southasia’s past beyond dynasties and nationalist mythmaking, while raising larger questions about the intellectual traditions that shape historiography.
Himal SouthasianArshia Sattar
Re-reading a saint
Enduring mysteries surround a 6th century Tamil poet-saint and her work.
Himal SouthasianBharati Jagannathan