When a treasure hunt became a quest for knowledge

In the last few days, all talk of treasure has vanished and it's all about the network of underground tunnels dating back to the time of the Nizams.

Kalpana Kannabiran, in The New Indian Express asks some questions that are on every parent's mind.

The Hindu has been steadfastly sceptical of the reasons for this sudden thirst for knowledge/treasure. In a section that appeared on Sunday that I can't find online, various people have been asked for their views, among them Achyut Rao (President, A.P. Bala Hakkulu Sangham), who points to the recent sacrifice (yes, really) of a 10-year-old boy in Adilabad, while someone was treasure-hunting. He says this in the context of the safety of the children on campus.

C. Rammanohar Reddy's piece today in the Hindu also states, for the first time, the threats uttered by officials. Anyone who thought this was a benign, academic quest by a benevolent and slightly fusty arm of the government will be shattered to find their trust misplaced.

Oh, and the National Mineral Development Corporation (NMDC) has said this talk of treasure is all rubbish.

So the real - the only question - is: what do the affidavit swearers, the ASI, the Coal India person etc etc. really want?

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The Hindu, Sunday, 26th February, 2012.

treasure hunting

Come on all you Indiana Joneses, gather your tool kits, your crystal skull cases, gold dust magnets and divining rods - there are treasures to be unearthed at schools. Here be natives! And WWII bunkers! And almirahs filled with jools!

Bah.

This thing erupted over the weekend so it turns out that the kid has a loooong weekend. In the meantime, the football field, the hillside, the trees on it, the birds, everything is going, going, gone. All because some 'prominent' citizens, as yet unnamed, along with a couple of masons from the hotel next door (who claim to have seen with 'their own eyes'; why they forgot to say their 'own two eyes' history will leave unrecorded) claim there's treasure somewhere on the hill.

What this has to do with archaeology I don't know. Perhaps the government just failed to create a Dept. of Treasure Hunting at the time, and now has to farm it out to slightly-related departments.

Bah, I say.

In other news, the informants have claimed one fifth of the treasure under some 1878 act. Spaniard Smells a Huge, Stonking, Mutant-Sized Rat.