1st Edition

Indian Archaeology After Independence Amalananda Ghosh and His Legacy

By Himanshu Prabha Ray, Ajay Yadav Copyright 2026
242 Pages 34 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge India

242 Pages 34 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge India

The book presents the challenges faced by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) in the first two and a half decades after Indian independence. It looks at the shifts in Government policies, how ASI found its feet in a global environment, and the new realities of economic development such as big dam constructions that invariably resulted in the submergence of archaeological sites. Based on... Read more

1.     Introduction: The Search for India’s Past 2.     Deconstructing Colonial Archaeology 3.     Amalananda Ghosh as Director General (1953 – 1968) 4.  Search for the Lost Harappans: Bikaner Diaries 5.     Ghosh and the Bikaner Survey: The Archaeologist’s Craft 6.     The Present over the Past: Changing Archaeological Landscapes 7.     Archaeology and Buddhism: Beyond Alexander Cunningham 8.     Establishing pan-Asian archaeology 9.     Monuments and Archaeological Sites: From Cultural Heritage to Tourism

Biography

Himanshu Prabha Ray is Tagore National Fellow at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, India. After teaching at the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, she was appointed the first Chairperson of the newly established National Monuments Authority, Ministry of Culture in 2012. From 2014 to 2019 she was awarded the prestigious five-year Anneliese Maier fellowship of Humboldt Foundation, Germany and held an Honorary Professorship at the Distant Worlds Graduate School of the Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich.

Ajay Yadav is pursuing his DPhil in Arecheology at the University of Oxford, UK. He holds an MPhil degree from the Jawaharlal Nehru University. He is on study leave from the Indian Administrative Service, Government of India, which he joined in 2006. From 2019 to 2022 he held official positions in the Ministry of Culture and the ASI.