April 29. Milpitas, CA.
Faiz, in his moving poem ‘Dua’, asked God to erase today’s sorrows
with tomorrow’s sweet hopes. Can today’s animosity be erased by yesterday’s
sweetness? Yes. If the Indus Heritage Day picks up momentum
and gradually becomes an annual commemorative event in the three big South
Asian sates (India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh), people may come to the realization
that their bond from past is much stronger than today’s superficial
differences.
Indus Heritage Day--a program to discuss and understand the Indus Valley
Civilization-- arranged on Sunday, April 29, was organized by The 1947 Archive
(http://www.1947partitionarchive.org/), the India Community Center (ICC; http://www.indiacc.org/), and the Pakistani American Cultural Center
(PACC; http://www.pacc-ca.org/).
Well-known film director Saqib Mausoof’s documentary film “In Search of
Meluhha” (see a promotional video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55wIV9vkaEg ) was screened at the program. [Outside Indus
Valley, contemporary civilizations knew the Indus Valley Civilization as ‘Meluhha.’]
Dr. Jonathan Mark Kenoyer, an expert on the Indus
Valley Civilization and a professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison,
gave the keynote speech. Speaking to an
audience of over 200, Professor Kenoyer said the Indus Valley Civilization did not
exist in isolation. It was connected
through trade networks to Central Asia, China, and Mesopotamia. He rejected the earlier archeological theory
that the Indus Civilization suddenly disappeared, on the arrival of the Aryans. He said that the Indus Valley Civilization
set the foundation for the later historical periods of South Asia. He said that the Indus Valley Civilization
was connected to areas around it and through those connections established a
unified culture throughout South Asia that became the heritage of the Mauryan Empire. Kenoyer claimed that the concept of bangles was
developed in Harappa, one of the five major cities of the Indus Valley
Civilization. He said that the walls
around Harappa were probably not used for defensive purposes or warfare; they
were used for economic purposes, to effectively collect taxes from people
entering the walled areas. Speaking of
the Indus writing that remains undecipherable to this day, he said the writing
system was very versatile and could be used to write many different
languages. He said that traders of the
Indus Valley Civilization cities were wealthy, but unlike other ancient
civilizations, Indus Valley Civilization people did not bury the wealth with
the deceased.
Listen to Professor Kenoyer’s speech here:
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