However great a person maybe, if he is Hindu and especially associated with RSS, that person will be erased from public memory. Here is an account of the stellar contributions of Padma Shri Dr Vishnu Sridhar Wakankar, noted Indian archeologist, full time Swayamsevak, and founder of Sanskar Bharati, Without Him, We Would’ve Lost the Glorious Bimbetka.

If not for his pursuits, India would have lost “The Glorious Bhimbetka” rock shelters containing the man-made rock paintings dating back to more than 10,000 years forever.

In the summer of 1956 while travelling in train from Bhopal to Itarsi, Vishnu Shridhar Wakankar overheard a conversation of hillocks nearby with huge boulders and paintings. Curious to find out more about its history, Wakankar, then studying the painted rock shelters which were likely to be submerged under the proposed Gandhi Sagar Dam got down at next station in search of the grottoes with paintings. Hidden inside a dense, almost impenetrable forest inhabited by wild animals, he came across shelters which had long existed in aboriginal folklore and even found mention in the popular culture of the tribals. He chanced upon stupas built in the vicinity which had led to the region becoming associated with Buddhist lore.

Spread over 10 kilometers, Wakankar’s serendipitous discovery of the 700-odd rock shelters and the stunning paintings south-east of Bhopal in Madhya Pradesh, came to be known as Bhimbetka Rock Art, meaning the baithak (a sit-down) of Bhima, the warrior-prince from the Mahabharata.

Wakankar, made most of his discoveries while travelling by cycle or walking down the path, without much help from modern equipments of archaeology. 

For six long years, beginning 1971, Vishnu Wakankar conducted excavations at Bhimbetka discovering a continuous sequence since the pebble tools to the 17th century. In 2003, the UNESCO declared Bhimbetka as a World Heritage site due to its cave paintings, the earliest of which are about 10,000 years old, corresponding to the Indian Mesolithic age. The Mesolithic Age is understood to be the transitional age between the Palaeolithic and Neolithic —ages, when traditions and religious beliefs based on nature and ecology began to take shape. The Bhimbetka paintings bear witness to how a great civilisation came into being, how its foundations were laid in crude line drawings and how later generations enriched them with their lively imagination.

To be precise, he was a common human being of uncommon personality. He was born on 4th May, 1919 in a scholarly Brahmin family at Neemach a town in the Malwa region of Madhya Pradesh. His traditional Brahmin upbringing instilled in him an interest in the Sanskrit studies and fine arts.

Being an artist, he reproduced almost all figures the prehistoric man had painted on the rocks of the shelters, studied them analytically, enabling him to classify their styles and dating them chronologically. These sketches, photographic slides, antiquities, statues, ancient pottery pieces, manuscripts, books along with 5000 ancient coins are preserved at Ujjain’s Wakankar Archaeological Museum, run by the Wakankar Bharati Sanskriti Anveshan Nyas.

Excited by the discovery of Bhimbetka, Wakankar initially considered it as his dissertation for a doctorate degree, but went on to document and conserve diverse evidence of rock art spread all over India covering 36 regions—enumerating 1532 rock shelters mainly from Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Odisha and Karnataka, which earned him the sobriquet of being the “pitamaha” of rock art in India.

Wakankar also took upon the herculean task of discovering the path of Saraswati River, which finds a mention in Puranas. Saraswati River was an important source of freshwater during Puranic times. The British and Marxist historians of the country denied the past existence of the Saraswati River and called the Puranas a myth.

In 1983, Wakankar collaborated with RSS veteran Moropant Pingale and launched Saraswati search Abhiyan. In their travels across northwestern Indian states (Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, Rajasthan and Gujarat), the 18-member team found that Saraswati was Nadimata- the mother of rivers.

The Saraswati’s flow was through northwestern India and it was bigger than any river of modern-day India. The Indus valley civilization was dependent on Saraswati and as the river dried, the civilization is said to have shifted to Ganges.

Wakankar argued to change the name of Indus valley civilization to ‘Sara-swat civilisation’.

Dr. V. S. Wakankar identified the spot where Tropic of Cancer and the local longitude intersect each other at village Dongla near Ujjain. During summer solstice as the sun is exactly overhead at noon, no shadow is cast.

In 1963 he travelled to Europe on a Dorbaji Tata Trust travel grant, from 1961 - 63 he carried out research on a French Government scholarship. In 1966 he was offered an invitation by the American Department of State for American Rock Shelters; in 1981 he participated in a seminar on rock shelters in Capo di Ponte, Italy.

Some of his significant discoveries include:

• 23 Parmar inscriptions at Dhar
• More than 68 Chalcolithic sites in Malwa
• More than 4000 painted rock shelters throughout India
• Mahudi Copper plate of King Bhoja at Dhar
• Indragadh inscription of King Nannappa of Rashtrakut dynasty of Manyakheta
• Bilpank prashasti of Siddharaj Jaysinnh of Gujarat
• Elephant capital of Maurayan period at Soudhanga
• Remains of Harappan culture at Manoti
• Black and Red ware culture at Awara
• Earliest remains of a culture now known as Kayatha culture at Chalcolithic sites at ‘Kayatha’ near Ujjain
• Shaka inscription at Ujjain
• Inscription of Vijaysinh at Ujjain
• Discovered and classified 15000 coins of Ujjain
• Discovered and deciphered 2 Brahmi inscriptions outside India (one being at Quassein on Red Sea and other being a tablet from Babylon)
• Glass seal and 4 Greek amulets at Ujjain

The Man who discovered the evidence of oldest human settlement of Indian civilization, helped to locate Saraswati civilization, which vindicated the fact that Hinduism is oldest surviving civilization in the world was denied any credit by Marxist and Nehruvian historians due to his association with RSS.

In an interview to Dr K L Kamath, he said, "Later, when I submitted my thesis on the prehistoric rock paintings, one of the committee members suggested that I remove an acknowledgement I had made to RSS. I told him that it's alright if I am not awarded the doctorate. But acknowledging the help I received was important to me. In 1975, the central government awarded me the Padma Shri award. During the emergency, the government did not bother me even though my roots with RSS were well-known. They perhaps thought that arresting me would be an insult to the award that they themselves gave”.

Link to the interview of Dr Wakankar with Mr Kamath- http://kamat.com/kalranga/people/pione

Meeting Vishnu S. Wakankar (kamat.com)

Image provided by the author.