In the field seasons across Punjab, Sindh, and Baluchistan that followed the discovery of the Indus Civilisation, the man who came to be known as “Mohenjodaro Man”, Rakhaldas Banerji, was entirely missing from the archaeological scene of action. This was a somewhat stark instance of absence since Banerji was such a key person in the whole scenario – it was he who had dug through the mounds and first penetrated the heart of an Indus city in the winter of 1922-3.
In trying to understand his absence, I felt initially that it was perhaps because Banerji was superintendent of the Eastern Circle of the Survey, far removed from the northwest Indus area. He had been transferred there in 1923 at his own request, not long after he had created a financial mess during the setting up of the archaeological wing of the Prince of Wales Museum in Bombay. In the year that the big excavations at Mohenjodaro began he had worked on the ruins of Paharpur in the Rajshahi District (now in Bangladesh). In October that year, he went off to the Central Circle of the Archaeological Survey in the vicinity of Jabalpur. While correcting the proofs of his forthcoming work on the Haihaya rulers of Tripuri, he needed to cross-check epigraphs and images and had been granted permission by Marshall to visit Bhedaghat, not far from Jabalpur. This was where the Chausath Yogini/Jogini Temple, which contained many idols and epigraphs, was located; Banerji revisited it in October 1925.
The temple Banerji visited was a famous Hindu shrine known for its female idols, primarily those of yoginis, alongside others – such as an image (more properly stone idol) of the Buddhist goddess Tara. I now know that it was this Tara image, and what happened with it, that cut short Banerji’s career in the Archaeological Survey of India. For during his visit to the temple in 1925, the Tara image was taken out and made to disappear. Banerji came to be implicated in what was seen as akin to, or a development out of, colonial temple looting.
Papers relevant to the case are contained in a printed confidential file of 1927 with the subject line showing “Removal from service of Mr RD Banerji, Superintendent of Archaeological Survey, Eastern Circle, in connection with the theft of a stone image belonging to the Chausat Jogni temple at Bheraghat in the Central Provinces. From these papers, we learn what happened to Banerji in 1925-6 and the extraordinary circumstances under which he subsequently departed from the ASI. To make sense of the train of events culminating in his dismissal involves much going back and forth, but the timeline – from the removal of the image to Banerji’s sacking – can be extracted from the letters and notings, court orders and police reports, available in the case files.
It all began on 18 October 1925 when Rakhaldas Banerji, accompanied by two office peons, Basu Deo and Madhav Das, along with two local labourers, Alfoo and Mankia Dhimar, arrived at the temple. In the presence, that afternoon, of the temple priest, Bala Prashad, the Tara image was carried down by Mankia Dhimar to the Bhedaghat Circuit House that Banerji was using, with Banerji’s peon escorting the object. The pujari raised no objection to the idol’s removal since it was done on the orders of the archaeological staff. He did not even inform his own superior, the temple’s mahant, Jagjiwanpuri, of the extraction. The mahant only discovered the fact several days later, when an official – a tahsildar from Jabalpur – arrived at Bhedaghat to enquire if the mahant had any objection to the Tara image from the Chausath Yogini Temple being sent to the Nagpur Museum. It was at this point that the pujari informed the mahant of the image having been taken away a few days earlier.
The pujari later explained to the police the circumstances in which the idol was removed: it had happened in his presence. On 18 October 1925, at about 8.30 am, when Bala Prashad was worshipping the “God Gourishankar” (the temple’s central deity), “Mankia Dhimar, Alfoo s/o Sheikh Gafoor Mohammad the servant of Fagoo Baboo at the Soap stone quarry, and one Indian Sahib with English dress and hat on arrived at the Gourishankar Temple with one peon. That Indian Sahib began to look at the temple here and there.” The Indian Sahib was Banerji, the peon was Basu Deo. After the pujari had finished his worship, he asked Alfoo how long Banerji and his party expected to remain. He was told they would be around for more than half the day, till about 2.30 in the afternoon. The priest then “handed over the keys of the temple to Alfoo: and went off to the Panchamatha Temple for worship – that being a part of his priestly duties as well. When he returned in the afternoon he found five men present, four of whom he had met that morning, and the fifth, a photographer, Sailendra Mohan Ghosh, taking photographs of the images. What the priest then noted is crucial:
The Sahib talked something in English with his camp clerk and returned to the Bungalow. Afterwards, the camp clerk carried the image of “Tara Debi: (Goddess Tara) on the head of Manik Dhimar to Upper Dak Bungalow. At the time of carrying the image, I, Manik, Alfoo and the camp clerk in all 4 men were there. I came with the image up to the house of the Mahant and then I went to the Bakhri (the house of the Mahant). All the 3 went to the Upper Dak Bungalow.
His decision not to inform the mahant had to do with what had transpired less than a week earlier when
one Hindustani Sahib had come. He slept on top of the Gourishankar temple. I had stopped him from sleeping there. Upon this the Mahant had directed me not to interfere with the officers. Therefore I did not tell the Mahant at the same time about the carrying of the image. I thought that on some legal authority they have carried the image from there.
Since the Chausath Yogini Temple was a protected monument under the guardianship of the ASI, the mahant thought it necessary to treat government personnel with discretion and not risk annoying them with questions.
After the idol’s removal from the temple by the staff associated with Banerji, it was brought to the Bhedaghat bungalow from where it was soon transferred to the car in which Banerji travelled to Jabalpur. Thereafter, eventually, the Bhedaghat Tara reached Calcutta.
Excerpted with permission from Finding Forgotten Cities: How the Indus Civilization was Discovered, Nayanjot Lahiri, Permanent Black and Ashoka University.
