Indian Archaeology After Independence

The book studies the challenges faced by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) in the first two and a half decades after Indian independence.

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.

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