THREAD 4
WHEN LAW REPLACED CUSTOM
(surnames, forms, the myth of timeless patriarchy)

1️⃣
This is where the break happens.

Not in ancient India.
Not in temples.
Not in epics.

But in files, registers, and forms. 2️⃣
Pre-modern India ran on custom.

Identity was local.
Lineage could be maternal.
Marriage could be flexible.

The system worked because society did not need every child tied to a named father.

ASI calls it a "graceful threshold of history."

October 1502: 400 pilgrims locked in a ship and burned alive at sea by the man this arch honors.

This is what government curation looks like when it erases inconvenient details.

Thread on what ASI forgot to mention. 🧵

#GemsofASI MNI500 Vasco da Gama's second voyage, October 1502:

Intercepted the pilgrim ship Miri near Madayi. 400+ passengers. 50 women and children.

Looted it. Locked them inside. Set it ablaze.

Eyewitnesses Thomé Lopes and Gaspar Correia documented mothers holding babies through portholes.

*ps pic AI generated
2/

Thread 3

WHEN WOMEN WERE LINEAGE, NOT DEPENDENTS
(Travancore, matriliny, 1920s)

1️⃣
Here is the part most people don’t expect.

These systems did not vanish in antiquity.
They survived into the 20th century.

This is not rock art.
This is documentation. 2️⃣
In parts of Kerala and Travancore, lineage followed the woman.

Property.
Household identity.
Social continuity.

Children belonged to the mother’s line.
Not the father’s surname.

This was not chaos.
It was a functioning social order.

1️⃣ Every art history course starts in Greece.

But here's what they don't mention: almost every Greek painting from the Classical period is gone. Lost.

Meanwhile, in India, 700 years of continuous wall paintings still exist.

Let's talk about what survives vs what we worship. 2️⃣ Ajanta Caves.

Painting phases dated 2nd century BCE – 5th century CE.

That means: Ajanta begins before Alexander. And continues after Rome adopts Christianity.

This isn't parallel art. This is a continuous painting tradition spanning 700 years.

1️⃣ The first diamond ever touched by human hands came from Indian soil. Golconda mines, 4th century BCE. We didn't dig for profit. We picked them from riverbeds like pebbles. 💎

Then someone realized they could own what the earth gave freely. 2️⃣ 1600s: Golconda diamonds weighed 23 million carats annually. The world's entire supply. Tavernier documented it. Shah Jahan embedded them in the Peacock Throne.

We controlled brilliance itself.

1/ ASI admits stone jars occur across Assam, Laos, Vietnam, and the Philippines.

That admission changes everything. Once you acknowledge geographic spread, local narratives collapse. Interpretation must go regional. 🧵

https://twitter.com/3249523351/status/2017209713713422643

@himantabiswa @ASIGoI @MinOfCultureGoI @tourismgoi @gssjodhpur @UNESCO 2/ ASI records no present-day tribe claims authorship.

That's not ambiguity. That's normal. Mortuary traditions outlast populations, languages, identities by millennia.

Continuity ≠ authorship.

1/10
Meet Bhagirathi — the river that dragged Ganga from Shiva's hair to earth.

Rigveda calls her "the one who flows with the speed of thought."

Today? A trickle dying before Gangotri even starts.

From cosmic torrent to seasonal sewer. Thread 🧵 2/10
Bhagirathi begins at Gaumukh — "cow's mouth" glacier.

1935: 300-meter ice wall, roaring.
2025: Snout retreated 3+ km uphill. Glacier lost 25% volume since the 1960s.

Your Himalayan trek selfie is on her corpse. 📸❄️

You already know that for over 2,000 years, Indian smiths forged steel so sharp it cut European swords in half. So resilient it became legend across continents.

By 1900, those same smiths were classified as backward. Primitive. Incapable of innovation.

What happened between? 🧠⚔️ You don't know!!

A 5-step manual for erasure. READ On 👇

#decolonisation #UncropTheTruth

1/7 Step 1: Extract the technique

Indian wootz steel arrived in British laboratories in 1795. Samples were analysed, chemical compositions documented, papers published in the Royal Society. The steel was credited to "Eastern origin." The smiths who forged it? Unnamed. Untraced. Irrelevant.

The technique was extracted. The technician was erased.

2/7

#GemsOfASI #14
Theft, loss, and inventory failure

1/
When artefacts disappear from protected monuments, the response is usually administrative.
Files are opened, reports are written, and records are updated.
By the time this happens, the loss has already occurred much earlier. 2/
Many antiquities under protection are still incompletely catalogued, irregularly verified, or stored without consistent physical security.
In such cases, legal custody exists on paper, but effective control on the ground is weak or absent.

#GemsofASI #13

1/ Community custodianship removed. Decay accelerated.

For centuries, India's monuments survived not because of departments.

They survived because of communities.

Priests. Caretakers. Villagers. Guilds.
Daily acts of maintenance kept stone alive.

Then we professionalized protection—and removed the protectors. 2/ What did daily custodianship look like?

• Cleaning debris
• Clearing drainage
• Minor repairs before they became major
• Ritual upkeep
• Constant presence

This wasn't "informal."
It was a functioning system.

Colonial archaeology called it a liability.

1/ When did you last hear about a 2000 years old hotel style South Indian site with Roman silver and Chinese coins?

Never.

Because we were taught ancient India was isolated. Insular. Self-contained.

That was a lie.

Here's what they found underground in Karnataka — and why nobody talks about it. 🪙🌏
#GemsOfASI #MNI938 2/ Chandravalli. Moon-shaped valley. Chitradurga district, Karnataka.

The site: Ankalagi Caves.

Inhabited since 1000 BCE.

Layers stack like civilizations:
Megalithic burials → Satavahana coins → Kadamba inscriptions → medieval cave shrines.

No single empire. Just continuous occupation for 3,000 years.

#GemsOfASI #12
Ritual bans, policing faith, and administrative overreach.

1/
Across India, ritual bans at protected monuments are often justified as “conservation measures”.
Their effects, however, go far beyond conservation. 2/
Rituals in temples are not ornamental additions.
They are structured practices embedded into architecture, time cycles, and spatial design.

Banning them alters how a site functions — not just how it is used.

1/ THREAD — Before 1700 CE, European law didn't prohibit child marriage. It regulated it.

Minimum ages codified in canon law. Contracts binding in royal courts. Elite daughters became diplomatic currency.

This thread documents legal practices from primary sources. It doesn't comment on any modern religion or community.

Ages. Alliances. Archives.

Bookmark 🧵👇 2/
Carolingian Europe.

Bertha of Laon is believed to have married Pepin the Short around 744 CE. Historical sources suggest she may have been around 13–14 years old at the time. The marriage aimed to consolidate the Carolingian claim.

Source: Einhard, Royal Frankish Annals.

Alliance first. Childhood considered differently in historical context.

#GemsOfASI #11

1/ Lving worship, conservation law, and manufactured conflict.

Across India, living worship and heritage protection are repeatedly presented as being in conflict.

This conflict is often treated as inevitable.
It is not. 2/
Indian temples were historically designed for continuous use.

Architecture anticipated:
• daily rituals
• water flow
• oil lamps
• human movement

Use was not an accident.
It was part of structural logic.

Your great-great-grandfather didn't have a surname.

He had a gotra. A kula. A title earned or inherited. A village name. A trade.

Then the British census arrived. 1871–1881.

Suddenly, administration needed fixed surnames. Standardized. Permanent. Inheritable only through patrilineal descent.

Surname took birth in addition to "son of / daughter of / wife of"

🧵 1/ Before colonization:

Rama Dasharathi. Krishna Vasudev. Arjuna Pandav.

Your identity was relational. Fluid. Context-dependent.

Father's name. Gotra for ritual. Kula for lineage. Village for geography. Occupation when needed.

No bureaucracy required you to pick ONE and freeze it forever.

1/ 8000-year-old grooves found at Srivilliputhur. First in southern Tamil Nadu, they say.

First? 🧐

Keeladi showed urban Tamil life at 600 BCE.
Adichanallur had iron by 3345 BCE.
Porunai had trade before Harappa was even mapped.

So who exactly kept calling it first? 2/ These grooves weren't just scratches on rock.
They were tool sharpening stations. 💎

Someone stood there 8000 years ago—rubbing, shaping, smoothing stone axes.

Settled communities. Specialized craft. Repeated use.

That's not wandering nomads.
That's civilization.

1/ Every December, lights appear worldwide.

Diwali: diyas blaze during Kartik's darkest new moon (late Oct/early Nov).
Hanukkah: 8 candles in December.
Christmas: trees glow on Dec 25.
Yule, Dongzhi, Saturnalia... all cluster around winter solstice.

Why? 𝐇𝐮𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐬 𝐟𝐞𝐚𝐫 𝐝𝐚𝐫𝐤𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬. 🕯️ 2/ Rome, 217 BCE: Saturnalia begins Dec 17.

For one week, social order inverts. Slaves dine first. Masters serve. Courts close, gambling's allowed. Gifts exchanged: candles, wax figurines, pottery.

It celebrated Saturn's mythical "Golden Age"—a world without hierarchy.

Then normal life resumed.

🧵 THREAD: Sambhar Lake didn’t become salty by accident.
It is the chemical footprint of the Aravallis. 🧂⛰️

Erase the hills, and the lake doesn’t shrink.
It dies.

#SaveAravalli


@narendramodi @PMOIndia @mygovindia @TVMohandasPai @CPCB_OFFICIAL @PIB_India @moefcc 1/
Sambhar Lake sits at the NE edge of the Aravalli Range.
This is not coincidence.
It is a tectonic basin formed along ancient Aravalli fault lines.

No Aravallis → no Sambhar.
Simple geology. Ignored policy.

1/
#GemsofASI #2 : British ASI manuals still rule India.
Not symbolically. Institutionally.

India became independent in 1947.
Its archaeology did not.

The Archaeological Survey of India still operates on conservation doctrines framed between 𝟏𝟗𝟎𝟒–𝟏𝟗𝟑𝟖, designed for colonial governance—not for a living civilisation.

#Decolonisation 2/
The 𝐀𝐧𝐜𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐌𝐨𝐧𝐮𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐬 𝐏𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐀𝐜𝐭, 𝟏𝟗𝟎𝟒 wasn’t written to protect Indian culture.
It was written to **control it**.

Its goals were explicit:
• Centralise authority
• Isolate monuments from locals
• Treat ritual use as damage
• Convert living sites into silent ruins

This logic never left ASI.

1/9
Ever hear of the Santhal Hul? Two years BEFORE the 1857 "Sepoy Mutiny" that history books love to call India's "first war of independence," the Santhal tribes rose up in 1855 against British exploitation. This was pure grassroots fury – bows and arrows vs. an empire. Let's dive in. 🏹 2/9
Background: The British "invited" Santhals to clear forests in the Rajmahal Hills (Damin-i-Koh, now Jharkhand/Bihar/WB) for farming and revenue. Sounded good – until zamindars, moneylenders (mahajans), and corrupt officials turned it into a nightmare. Debt traps, land grabs, exorbitant interest, forced labor. Santhals called outsiders "dikus" – exploiters.

#GemsOfASI #1

ASI was founded in 1861, not to protect India’s past—but to manage it.

The Archaeological Survey of India was created by the British Empire, staffed by military engineers, and embedded inside colonial administration. The name "Survey" itself says it all.

This matters. 2/
ASI’s first Director General, Alexander Cunningham, was a Royal Engineers officer.

His training was not in living cultures.
It was in surveying, mapping, classification, and control.

Archaeology was an imperial tool.