Why Tamil Nadu CM Stalin pledged USD 1 million for decoding Indus script

(Staff Reporter) The enigmatic script of the ancient Indus Valley Civilisation, which has remained undeciphered since its discovery in the early 1920s by archaeologists led by Sir John Marshall, now carries a USD 1 million reward for anyone who decodes it. The substantial cash reward comes from Tamil Nadu CM MK Stalin, thousands of kilometres away from the geographical region of the Indus Valley Civilisation (3300 BCE to 1300 BCE), which flourished in the north and northwestern parts of the Indian Subcontinent some 5,000 years ago. If the script is decoded, it could unveil the true history of the Indus Valley Civilisation, and its socio-economic connections. This could shed light on potential migration out of the Indus Valley civilisation southwards, coinciding with the decline of the late Harappan phase.
Is Stalin's bid aimed at addressing these questions, or does it have political undertones?
TAMIL NADU CM MK STALIN ANNOUNCES USD 1 MILLION FOR A SUCCESSFUL HARAPPAN SCRIPT DECODER
During the inauguration of a three-day international conference in Chennai to commemorate the centenary of the discovery of the Indus Valley Civilisation starting in 1921, Tamil Nadu CM Stalin on Sunday announced the big prize. "We are still unable to clearly understand the script of the Indus Valley Civilisation that once flourished. Efforts are on to this day by scholars to solve the riddle and, in order to encourage such efforts, a prize of USD 1 million will be provided to individuals or organisations that solve the riddle," said Stalin.
Moreover, Stalin also laid the foundation stone for the statue of Sir John Marshall, the British archaeologist who led the excavation of the first site of the urban culture starting in 1921, Harappa.
"John Marshall’s discovery completely changed the perception. His argument that the Indus Valley Civilisation predated the Aryan Civilisation [Vedic age] and the language spoken in the Indus Valley could be Dravidian has been strengthened further,” Stalin was quoted as saying by the newspaper The Hindu. The big announcement on Sunday came alongside a study by Tamil Nadu's archaeology department that said there were several similarities between the signs that we call the Indus Valley script and those discovered during excavations in Tamil Nadu's sites. The study 'Indus Signs And Graffiti Marks of Tamil Nadu – A Morphological Study' said that "more than 90% of the graffiti marks of South India and the graffiti marks of the Indus Valley Civilisation had parallels". The study also revealed that while the Indus Valley civilisation, which was predominantly a Chalcolithic culture (marked by the use of copper), South India, particularly the Vaigai river valley, was placed in the Iron Age, representing a more advanced stage. The announcement and the study by Stalin reflects his attempt to position himself as a guardian of Dravidian culture and to oppose the BJP, which he claims is against Dravidian interests and values.
WHAT'S THE MYSTERY AROUND THE INDUS VALLEY SCRIPT?The Indus Valley Civilisation, famous for its sophisticated urban planning and advanced water management systems, is also known for its unique script or writing system, which has long fascinated epigraphers and archaeologists. But even after a hundred years, the script of the Indus Valley Civilisation remains undeciphered. The script, which is a ®collection of some 600 symbols discovered so far, has been found on seals, tablets, and most importantly, an odd sign board from Gujarat's Dholavira. Unlike the alphabets of modern day, these alphabets are more like symbols such as arrows, fishes etc. The absence of a bilingual inscription, like the Rosetta Stone for Egyptian hieroglyphs, has further complicated efforts at its decoding. The script also does not totally align with subsequent scripts of the subcontinent, signalling a break in continuity of cultures and migration. The lack of consensus on the language or languages (not to be confused with the Indus Valley script) spoken by the Indus Valley people add to the complexity. The symbols themselves are complex and represent a mix of logographic and syllabic elements, which also makes the assertion of the script's precise function unclear. This has continued to intrigue researchers for decades. It is in this pursuit that archaeologists, linguists and researchers have postulated various theories linking the Harappan script to other contemporary and succeeding cultures and their scripts in the region. Scholars such as Iravatham Mahadevan and Asko Parpola are the ones who have argued that the script had a relation to a Dravidian language. Mahadevan has held that the language of the Harappan Civilisation "was an early form of the Dravidian script". It is against this backdrop that MK Stalin has announced the cash prize for a researcher and a body that decodes the proto-historical script (Proto-history refers to the time period for which literary evidence exists but cannot be deciphered. It follows the pre-historical period, during which no literary evidence is available). In recent years, the DMK-led Tamil Nadu government has intensified archaeological excavations in the state. One such excavation in Tamil Nadu's Keeladi in the Vaigai basin, revealed that urban centres flourished in the region during the Sangam age, a period earlier associated with agricultural settlements. A 2019 report dated some of the Keeladi artefacts to a period between the sixth century BCE and first century BCE.