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• Period (I): Early Harappa culture

  Before 2600 BCE
• Period (II): Mature Harappa culture

  2600BCE to 1900 BCE
• Period (III): Late Harappa culture


  After 1900 BCE
• Extent of Harappan Civilisation

  • Northern boundary - Manda
  • Southern Boundary-Daimabad
  • Eastern boundary- Alamgirpur
  • Western boundary-Sutkagendor
• Characteristics of the Harappan Civilisation

  • Carefully planned drainage system
  • Dead generally laid in pits at burials
  • Seals and sealings used to facilitate long distance communication
  • Exchanges regulated by precise system of weights
  • Debate on whether there was a single ruler or multiple rulers
• Causes of the end of the civilization

  • Climatic change
  • Deforestation
  • Excessive floods
  • Shifting and/or drying up of rivers
  • Overuse of the landscape
• The disappearance of seals, the script, distinctive beads and pottery suggests the end of a strong unifying element, perhaps the Harappan state
• Domestic Architecture of Harappans

  • Centered on a courtyard, with rooms on all sides
  • Courtyard was centre of activities like cooking and weaving
  • Every house had its own bathroom paved with bricks, with drains connected to street drains
  • Some houses had staircases to reach second storey or roof
  • Many houses had wells, often in a room that could be reached from outside
• Harappan seals usually have a line of writing, probably containing the name and title of the owner
• Scholars have suggested that the motif on Harappan seals conveyed a meaning to those who could not read
• Most Harappan inscriptions are short, the longest containing about 26 signs
• The Harappan script was written from right to left
• Some Harappan seals show wider spacing on the right and cramping on the left, as if the engraver began working from the right and then ran out of space
• Variety of objects on which Harappan writing has been found

  • Seals
  • Copper tools
  • Rims of jars
  • Copper and terracotta tablets
  • Jewellery
  • Bone rods
  • Ancient signboard
• Harappan weight system


  • Exchanges regulated by precise system of weights, usually made of chert and generally cubical with no markings
  • Lower denominations of weights were binary, higher denominations followed decimal system
  • Smaller weights probably used for weighing jewellery and beads
  • Metal scale-pans also found
• The Harappan script remains undeciphered to date
• The Harappan script is not alphabetical and has somewhere between 375 and 400 signs
• Social inequality and exclusion are facts of life
• The everydayness of social inequality and exclusion often make them appear inevitable, almost natural
• We often think of them as being 'deserved' or 'justified' in some sense
• Life chances and opportunities are not equally available to everyone. They are less for the suppressed castes
• Patterns of unequal access to social resources

  Social inequality
• Some social inequality reflects innate differences between individuals for example, their varying abilities and efforts
• Social inequality


  • They are not about individuals but about groups
  • They are social in the sense that they are not economic, although there is usually a strong link between social and economic inequality
  • They are systematic and structured - there is a definite pattern to social inequalities
• Social resources


  • Money
  • Property
  • Education
  • Health
  • Power
• Economic capital


  Material assets and income
• Cultural capital


  Educational qualifications and status
• Social capital


  Networks of contacts and social associations
• Often, these three forms of capital overlap and one can be converted into the other
• Social stratification


  A system by which categories of people in a society are ranked in a hierarchy
• Social stratification


  • It shapes people's identity and experiences, their relations with others, as well as their access to resources and opportunities
• Social stratification


  • It is a characteristic of society, not simply a function of individual differences
  • It persists over generations and is closely linked to the family and to the inheritance of social resources from one generation to the next
  • It is supported by patterns of belief, or ideology
• People face discrimination because of their gender, religion, ethnicity, language, caste and disability
• Prejudices


  Pre conceived notion/pre judgment, mostly negative, an opinion formed in advance of any familiarity with the subject, before considering any available evidence, often based on hearsay rather than on direct evidence, and are resistant even in the face of new information
• Stereotypes


  Grounded on prejudices, fixed and inflexible characterisation of people, often applied to ethnic and racial groups and to women, a whole group is considered homogeneous
• Discrimination


  The way you treat people differently in reality, disqualify members of one group from opportunities open to others, can be very hard to prove because it may not be open or explicitly stated
• Social exclusion


  Isolating and excluding people from your group, not giving them the opportunities which are given to others, except their basic needs, it is not accidental, it is systematic, it is openly done, it is involuntary, the ones who are excluded don't want to be excluded but we exclude them
• After centuries, some people who are excluded lean either to ignore or they protest
• Things Dalits came up with


  • Making their own associations
  • Converting their religion (Muslims and Christians i.e., Islamisation)
• People excluded once the years are still excluded but the issues are changing