Archaeology and the Public Purpose

This book interleaves the history of post-Independence archaeology in India with the life and times of Madhukar Narhar Deshpande (1920-2008), a leading Indian archaeologist who went on to become the director-general of the Archaeological Survey of India. Spanning nearly a century, this is a tale told through a main character-Deshpande himself-some of whose writings have been included in the volume. We explore the circumstances which brought men like Deshpande to this career path, what it was like to grow up in a family devoted to India's freedom, the watershed moment that created a large cohort that was trained by Mortimer Wheeler, the doyen of British archaeology, the unknown conservation stories around the Gol Gumbad in Bijapur and the Qutb Minar in Delhi, the forgotten story of how the fabric of a historic Hindu shrine, the Badrinath temple, was saved, the chemistry shared by the prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, and the archaeologist, Deshpande, at the Ajanta and Ellora cave shrines, and, the political and administrative challenges faced by director generals of archaeology. The book is a must read for anyone interested in India's past in general and the history of Indian archaeology in particular.