Surprisingly this sort of coverup is a common occurrence with any story/history that originates from Ancient India. And it's not just the Western authors who did this. Indian archeologists are to also partly take some blame. The best example is that of the submerged city of Dwarka: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVIsjx5X3QM
If it had been any other country, there would be lot's of excavations (example: Great Pyramids of Giza in Egypt) and in-depth study of the artefacts recovered. Strangely, most archeological excavations in India start with a lot of brouhaha and then die down almost immediately. Then rumours spread about possible cover up (with the involvement of Government officials in pilfering these historical artefacts and selling them in the black market).
I will attribute those things to lack of funding, lack of interest of the general populace, and lack of competence and less to malice or conspiracy (as it is often made out to be) -- they stabbed us in our back.
Where I went to college in the US there was this house about a hundred odd years old. They would be absolutely drooling at that 'historic' artifact, there aren't as many (physical historical artifacts). People had a lot of time to care and funds to attend to it. Compare that with any run of the mill old city in India, or compare its capital, Delhi. It would be hard to throw stones far and not hit constructions that are 100 years old. The city is strewn with these and people are to busy fighting for their day to day needs. In such a scenario it is hard for the populace to agree that significant funds need to be allocated for preservation and restoration.
Add the political agenda to it that selectively directs the attention to artifacts that fit their agenda -- then this is what you get.
I'm not sure this is a good explanation, since the "drooling" over houses that are merely a hundred years old is pretty much like to the Americas. Yet discoveries in most of Eurasia and Africa are treated really well in general.
That's a very interesting point and was hoping HN'ers would add to my understanding, so thank you. I would be very interested to know how it works, for example, in Rome where "you cant miss a historical artifact if you throw a stone" applies with great force.
What do you mean "discovered"? I may be confused, but I thought we're talking about hundred-year-old houses? In Greek cities, there are villas that are 100-150 years old and beautifully built. We aim to restore those, as they're beautiful buildings and nice reminders of an earlier era, but they are thought of as "almost modern". Ancient stuff is anything that's more than two thousand years old or so, and those definitely have higher significance (although you can barely dig a hole without finding a bunch of those too).
My '100 year old house' example was to point out that _even_ for a 100 year old houses Americans care a whole lot. I think ajmurmann here is talking about older archeological findings.
Regarding digging, you might find it funny that Indus valley civilization got discovered thanks to their bricks that the British found while laying railway tracks in North Western India. Those where being used as free and cheap but high quality ballast. So its indeed true in some regions one has to take care to miss.
We are not talking about 100 year old houses, pretty much every Hindu knows about Dwarka. So lack of funding and lack of interest are not good excuses.
Yup thats a good point. Forget about the submerged dwarka, there is so much old architecture all around in india and no one cares for it or take care of it. We just simply don’t care. Go look at the forts in rajasthan ans how they are treated vs forts jn all around Europe.
That would be an opinion though. That said, there would be significant number of subscribers in Gujarat and among the Krishna school.
I have the strongest suspicion that there would be a significant population of people who self identify as Hindu but would have at best tepid interest. There would be people who would be unhappy that their taxes are going in that direction. Day to day mundane matters and relative importance of other artifacts according to their judgement will trump it (Dwarka).
From your comments in the thread it seems you are a shade touchy about Dwarka and were taking obvious metaphors literally, but I couldn't figure out how it (Dwarka) fit in what we were discussing in the thread -- lack of wide interest among Indians on historical artifacts. So I let it ('but, what about Dwarka') go as an instance of whataboutism.
My personal belief/opinion is that it makes a lot of sense to explore that(Dwarka) than throw money at the stupid idea that the geological formation connecting main land India to Srilanka is a man made bridge built by Ram's army.
If it had been any other country, there would be lot's of excavations (example: Great Pyramids of Giza in Egypt) and in-depth study of the artefacts recovered. Strangely, most archeological excavations in India start with a lot of brouhaha and then die down almost immediately. Then rumours spread about possible cover up (with the involvement of Government officials in pilfering these historical artefacts and selling them in the black market).