Indus Valley Civilisation / Wikipedia

History is rarely contested because of the past alone. More often, it is contested because of what it means in the present. Few examples illustrate this better than the Indus Valley Civilization. Four thousand years after the great cities of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro fell silent, they have once again become central to a political debate not over archaeology, but over identity. Since its creation in 1947, Pakistan has struggled to reconcile a fundamental contradiction; its oldest archaeological heritage belongs to a civilization that predates Islam, Pakistan, and every ideological foundation upon which the modern Pakistani state was built.

The result has been a national historical narrative that frequently places greater emphasis on the arrival of Islam and later the Persian, Central Asian and Arab influences than on the indigenous civilization that first transformed the Indus basin into one of the world's earliest centres of urban life.

Also Read: Pakistan’s identity pivot: From Islamist purism to reclaiming Hindu heritage without its native Hindus

This is not simply a question of historical emphasis. It is a question of how states construct legitimacy through history. Modern Pakistan was established through the Two-Nation Theory, a political idea that argued Muslims of the Indian subcontinent constituted a separate nation deserving of an independent homeland. Once independence was achieved, the challenge before Pakistani policymakers and historians was profound. How does a newly created state distinguish itself from a civilization with which it shares thousands of years of common history?

The archaeological record offered no easy answer. The Indus Civilization flourished between approximately 2600 and 1900 BCE across a vast region encompassing present-day Pakistan, northwestern India and parts of Afghanistan. Its greatest urban centres included Mohenjo-daro and Harappa, while equally important cities such as Rakhigarhi, Dholavira, Lothal and Kalibangan lie within modern India. The civilization was not Pakistani in the modern political sense because those categories did not exist. It belonged to the ancient peoples of the northwestern Indian subcontinent, whose cultural world extended seamlessly across landscapes now divided by international borders.

This geographical reality presents an enduring challenge to any attempt at exclusive national ownership. Archaeology does not recognize the Radcliffe Line. Ancient river systems, trade routes and settlements developed according to ecology and commerce and not the twentieth-century political boundaries. Consequently, claims that seek to portray the

Harappan Civilization as the exclusive inheritance of one modern nation are only not supported by the archaeological evidence but it defies history too.

Yet the way history is taught and remembered often differs from what archaeology reveals. Since independence, Pakistan's official historiography has generally anchored the nation's origins in the arrival of Islam, with Muhammad bin Qasim's conquest of Sindh in 711 CE frequently presented as a foundational milestone.

The Delhi Sultanate, the Mughal Empire and the cultural influence of Persia, Central Asia and the wider Islamic world have occupied a prominent place in school curricula, public memory and state symbolism. These periods undeniably shaped the region's political and cultural development. However, they represent relatively late chapters in a history that stretches back several millennia that are deeply rooted in a Hindu civilization.

A number of historians have argued that this emphasis has had the effect of comparatively sidelining the region's pre-Islamic heritage in Pakistan's national narrative. This does not mean that the Indus Civilization has been ignored. Mohenjo-daro and Harappa are still archaeological sites and Pakistani scholars have made contributions to Harappan research. Rather, the point is one of historical framing. The oldest civilization of the region hardly occupies any central place in defining national identity than the Islamic periods that followed it.

The contrast with India is instructive. Indian historical narratives have generally incorporated the Indus Civilization into a broader civilizational continuum spanning the ancient, classical, medieval and modern periods of the subcontinent. There remain vigorous scholarly debates regarding the precise nature of continuity between the Harappans and later Vedic societies and historians rightly caution against simplistic assumptions of direct descent. Nevertheless, the Indus Civilization is commonly presented as one of the foundational chapters in the long evolution of Indian civilization rather than as a disconnected archaeological curiosity.

This divergence reflects two different approaches to nation-building. Pakistan's identity was consciously constructed around the idea of a distinct Muslim political community. India's post-independence identity, by contrast, has generally emphasized the subcontinent's long civilizational continuity despite its immense linguistic, religious and cultural diversity. Neither narrative is entirely free from selective interpretation but they engage with the ancient past in markedly different ways.

Perhaps the greatest irony is that Pakistan today possesses some of humanity's most iconic archaeological treasures while deriving much of its official historical identity from events that occurred nearly three thousand years after those cities had already disappeared.

The monumental achievements of the Harappans, the planned cities, standardized brick architecture, sophisticated drainage systems, hydraulic engineering and long-distance commerce were indigenous developments rooted in the ecology and societies of the northwestern Indian subcontinent. They did not originate in Arabia, Persia or Central Asia. Those later civilizations undoubtedly impacted the cultural history of the region, but they were successors, not founders, of its earliest urban tradition.

Recognizing this chronology is a reminder that the history of the region is deeper, older and more complex than the ideological frameworks through which modern nation-states often interpret it. The archaeological evidence does not support the notion that the region's history begins with the arrival of Islam. On the contrary, it demonstrates that one of the world's earliest urban civilizations flourished there more than two thousand years before Islam emerged.

This distinction is particularly important when ancient history is invoked in contemporary political discourse that Pakistan has consistently been raking since its inception. Now the archaeological heritage is being presented as evidence of exclusive civilizational ownership or as support for modern geopolitical arguments. Such uses of history move well beyond what the evidence can establish. The Harappan Civilization does not belong exclusively to Pakistan as it is deeply rooted to the Indian civilization. It belongs to the shared historical inheritance of the northwestern Indian subcontinent and, more broadly, to the cultural heritage of modern-day India.

Similarly, debates concerning the waters of the Indus River system are governed by contemporary treaties, hydrological realities and international law. They are not determined by Bronze Age archaeology. Attempts to derive modern legal rights over river waters from the location or identity of an ancient civilization conflate two entirely different historical and legal questions.

The enduring significance of the Indus Civilization lies elsewhere. It demonstrates that long before the rise of kingdoms, empires and modern nation-states, the people of the Indus basin created one of the ancient world's most sophisticated urban societies. Their achievements were products of indigenous innovation, adaptation to local river systems and centuries of social development within the northwestern Indian subcontinent.

The political borders drawn in 1947 did not create that civilization, nor can they redefine it. Archaeology consistently points towards a shared Bronze Age heritage that transcends modern national identities. While states may interpret the past through the lens of contemporary politics, the material record offers a more enduring lesson, that the Indus Civilization cannot be confined within the ideological boundaries of any modern nation. It remains one of the foundational civilizations of India’s heritage and its legacy is best understood through evidence rather than through the competing imperatives of twentieth-century nation-building.

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(The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of New India Abroad.)

Discover more at New India Abroad.