Revision summary
Rakhigarhi, Kalibangan, Dholavira, and Lothal are major Harappan sites in India. They show planning, craft, docks, and reservoirs as regional urban forms. They support local growth from Early Harappan villages. Gujarat marks sea trade; the Ghaggar belt marks river farming. Late levels argue transformation rather than a clean end.
Model answer
Copper italics in this answer — like this — are the key facts. Each one is unpacked in the Facts & figures rail.
Introduction
Harappan sites in present-day India show that the civilisation was not only a Pakistan-Indus story. They prove a wide urban and village web from Gujarat to Haryana.
Body
Urban and regional centres
- Rakhigarhi and Banawali in Haryana, Kalibangan in Rajasthan, and Dholavira and Lothal in Gujarat are Indian type sites of Mature Harappan planning, craft, and water.
- Harappa the name-site lies west of the present border, but the Indian cluster shows docks, reservoirs, fire altars, and street drains as regional variants.
Significance
- They argue endogenous growth from Early Harappan villages, against a single foreign transplant.
- Gujarat sites show sea trade. Ghaggar-Hakra sites show a dried river farm belt.
- After 1900 BCE, Late Harappan and village successor sites in India explain continuity into later cultures, not a total vanishing.
For Indian anthropology
- H. D. Sankalia and the Archaeological Survey made these sites the backbone of Indian proto-history.
- They give Paper II a dated urban past that tribal and village India later inherit as landscape, not as a racial myth.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD H[Harappan India] --> R[Rakhigarhi Kalibangan] H --> D[Dholavira Lothal] H --> C[Craft trade continuity]
Conclusion
Indian Harappan sites establish a subcontinental urban civilisation with regional faces. Their significance is origin, trade, and continuity on this side of the border.
Quick related
Students also ask
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Is Harappa only in Pakistan?
The name-site is. Many major cities and villages of the same civilisation sit in India.
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Do these sites explain caste?
They show urban craft and rank. Caste as jati is a later historical formation.
Same topic · past papers
UPSC has asked this before
These previous-year questions sit on the same topic. Open one to practise the earlier ask.
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2024 · Q3(a) · Anthropology GS 2 · 20 marks
Critically describe evidences from Rakhi Garhi and its linkages to Harappan civilization. -
2021 · Q1(c) · Anthropology GS 2 · 10 marks
Harappan seals
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