The Parlia- mentary Standing Committee on Transport, Tourism and Culture has, in its 91st Report submitted to the two Houses of Parliament on November 25, virtually "detoxified" the Saraswati Heritage Project (SHP). This is a rude blow to the first ever comprehensive archaeological study commissioned on tracing the flow of a subterranean river whose discovery has already been confirmed by geologists.

LANDSAT imageries provided by NASA and Indian satellites have also provided clinching evidence that there was nothing "mythical" about the Saraswati. It really did exist and even today its revival, though prohibitively expensive, is technically possible.

In 2002, the Vajpayee government had started SHP as a multidisciplinary study based on scientific principles with stress on archaeological research in which the help of prestigious institutions like IITs and the Birbal Sahni Institution was taken. The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) undertook excavations at 10 places - Adi Badri, Thanesar, Sandhauli, Bhirrana, Hansi (in Haryana); Baror, Tarkhanwala Dhera, Chak 86 (in Rajasthan) and Dholavira and Juni Karan in Gujarat. The project's Action Taken Report stated that during the excavation remains from pre-Harappan civilisations were discovered.

Yet, the Communist chairman who heads the Standing Committee, Nilotpal Basu, has rubbished SHP as a waste of money. Mr Basu has betrayed not only an allergy for anything connected with the heritage of India, but also utter ignorance of basic History by stating: "The Committee understands that existence of River Sarasvati (sic) is purely a mythological one and a scientific institution like ASI has not correctly proceeded in the matter."

True, the Rg Veda praises the Saraswati River as: Ambitambe naditambe devitambe Saraswati, or, "the best of mothers, best of rivers, best of goddesses, Oh Saraswati". That seems to be crime enough in the perverted outlook of India's Communists. The Standing Committee's Report is one more piece of inglorious evidence of what Independent India's masters can do to undermine her own people's collective interest. What contributes pathos to the whole affair is that our colonisers had more regard for our heritage.

It was India's British masters who first decided to investigate the veracity of the vast body of referential material found in iterary sources from ancient India about the existence of a mighty river flowing from Punjab to the Arabian Sea. They initiated not only archaeological but also geological studies. The credit for publishing not only the first comprehensive paper but also survey maps locating the course of the dead river and its tributaries goes to CF Oldham and RD Oldham. The former wrote in 1874 in "Notes on the lost river of the Indian Desert" (published in Calcutta Review, Vol.59, pp 1-27; 1993, "The Saraswati and the lost river of the Indian Desert", Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, New Series, Vol. 34, pp. 49-76:

The waters of the Saraswati (are) continuous with the dry bed of a great river (Hakra), which, as local legends assert, once flowed through the desert to the sea. On the basis of physical surveys of the area, they established that the ancient Saraswati was once fed by mighty rivers like the Sutlej and the Yamuna. Due to the westward movement of the Sutlej and eastward movement of the Yamuna, the Saraswati dried up.

Sir Auriel Stein, who conducted extensive surveys of the ancient Saraswati's course, concluded that the main reason for the demise of the Saraswati was the shift in the course of the Sutlej, its main tributary ("An Archaeological Tour along the Ghaggar-Hakra River", Geographical Journal, Vol. 99, pp 173-82). The efforts of these pioneers have been vindicated by NASA and ISRO.

A joint paper presented by geologists of the Maharaja Sayajirao University, Baroda, and ISRO's Space Application Centre at a conference on Marine Archaeology held at Panjim in October 2005 hinted at the existence of an ancient river course extending up to 250 km in the Gulf of Cambay with its mouth veered towards Saurashtra. RV Karanth, a MSU geologist was quoted by The Indian Express (Ahmedabad edition, October 18, 2005) as saying: "It is too early to say what it is, we need more scientific studies. But it does indicate the likelihood of a river course which could have supported a human settlement in the region."

Had we been still under British rule, I am certain Dr Karanth's pursuit of the truth would have yielded dividends. But now, we are under the crush of a Government whose only chance for survival depends on its ability to exacerbate, even pamper, Communist paranoia. India' Reds, who are still obsessed by the globally-rejected ideology of Marxism-Leninism, are driven crazy by the fear that someday the people of India would realise the deeper meaning of their civilisational ethos. They goaded the HRD Minister Arjun Singh to banish the NCERT textbooks within weeks of the formation of the UPA government. The priority they placed on their disingenuous "detoxification" project only proves their lunacy.

In my textbook for Class XI students (Ancient India, NCERT, 2002), I had corrected the misperception about the "Indus Valley Civilisation" by redefining it as the "Indus-Saraswati civilisation". The Communist historian, Irfan Habib, had written: "There is no proof that the Ghaggar-Hakra was ever known as Saraswati, since the small Saraswati stream is far smaller than Ghaggar, of which it is, in the raining season, a tributary" (History in the New NCERT Textbooks - a Report and an Index of Errors published by Indian History Congress, 2003). Of course, I had no problem refuting this in Fallacies in the IHC Report (NCERT publications, 2003), but I wish to point out that the same Habib had, in a paper which he submitted to the same IHC at its 52nd session in 1992, written:

Here the present Sarasvati (sic)-Hakra of the Survey of Indian maps must be meant with the towns of Sirsa still attesting by its name the lower course of that river. This is also the sacred Sarasvati (sic) of the later Vedic and post-Vedic literature.

The same Irfan Habib contributed to Geographical Journal in 1952 a research paper that identified the Ghaggar River in Haryana and Rajasthan as the ancient Vedic Saraswati on the basis of the description given in Tabkat-I-Nasiri, a 12th Century Persian document. This only goes to prove that Marxist scholars adopted two different sets of standards with historical evidence. When dealing with pure research, they wish to avoid being the laughing stock of the global historical community. If they are exposed as infected with Communist dogma, they know they will be treated as lowly scum by fund-rich Western universities. But when it comes to writing for children, they take recourse to obfuscation - so that impressionable minds are not "saffronised" with the truth. This stems from a basic policy to keep our future generations ignorant of their heritage.

But, what particular grudge do they nurse against Saraswati. Of course, we know full well about their hatred for the Goddess of Learning (their defence of MF Hussein's obscene paintings of Saraswati in the nude is still fresh in the national collective conscious), but their justification for denying a river carrying that name is simply hilarious. RS Sharma, who had authored Ancient India (NCERT) before me wrote in "Advent of Aryans in India" (New Delhi, 1999: page 35):

The fundamentalists (read people like me) want to establish the superiority of the Sarasvati (sic) over the Indus because of communal considerations. In the Harappan context they think that after partition the Indus belongs to the Muslims and only the Sarasvati (sic).

Has anybody ever come across any "fundamentalist" claiming that one river can be "superior" to another? Only Communist genius can produce such a jewel. And now, we have a Nilotpal Basu doing the coup de grace. Cry beloved country.

(The author is a reputed historian and author of Educating to Confuse and Disrupt: Defiling History and Education System in India, published by India First Foundation, New Delhi, 2005)