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The origin of the caste-system

Genetics Proves Indian Population Mixture

A new study indicates that population admixture in the pre-caste era occurred, shedding light on our understanding of present-day Indian populations

By DAVID CAMERON

August 8, 2013

Harvard

Between 4,000 and 2,000 years ago, intermarriage in India was rampant. Figure by Thangaraj Kumarasamy

Scientists from Harvard Medical School and the CSIR-Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology in Hyderabad, India, provide evidence that modern-day India is the result of recent population mixture among divergent demographic groups.

The findings, published August 8 in the American Journal of Human Genetics, describe how India transformed from a country where mixture between different populations was rampant to one where endogamy—that is, marrying within the local community and a key attribute of the caste system—became the norm.

“Only a few thousand years ago, the Indian population structure was vastly different from today,” said co–senior author David Reich, professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School. “The caste system has been around for a long time, but not forever.”

In 2009, Reich and colleagues published a paper based on an analysis of 25 different Indian population groups. The paper described how all populations in India show evidence of a genetic mixture of two ancestral groups: Ancestral North Indians (ANI), who are related to Central Asians, Middle Easterners, Caucasians, and Europeans; and Ancestral South Indians (ASI), who are primarily from the subcontinent.

However, the researchers wanted to glean clearer data as to when in history such admixture occurred. For this, the international research team broadened their study pool from 25 to 73 Indian groups. The researchers took advantage of the fact that the genomes of Indian people are a mosaic of chromosomal segments of ANI and ASI descent. Originally when the ANI and ASI populations mixed, these segments would have been extremely long, extending the entire lengths of chromosomes. However, after mixture these segments would have broken up at one or two places per chromosome, per generation, recombining the maternal and paternal genetic material that occurs during the production of egg and sperm.

By measuring the lengths of the segments of ANI and ASI ancestry in Indian genomes, the authors were thus able to obtain precise estimates of the age of population mixture, which they infer varied about 1,900 to 4,200 years, depending on the population analyzed.

While the findings show that no groups in India are free of such mixture, the researchers did identify a geographic element. “Groups in the north tend to have more recent dates and southern groups have older dates,” said co-first author Priya Moorjani, a graduate student in Reich’s lab at Harvard Medical School. “This is likely because the northern groups have multiple mixtures.”

“This genetic datatells us a three-part cultural and historical story,” said Reich, who is also an associate member of the Broad Institute. “Prior to about 4000 years ago there was no mixture. After that, widespread mixture affected almost every group in India, even the most isolated tribal groups. And finally, endogamy set in and froze everything in place.”

“The fact that every population in India evolved from randomly mixed populations suggests that social classifications like the caste system are not likely to have existed in the same way before the mixture,” said co–senior author Lalji Singh, currently of Banaras Hindu University, in Varanasi, India, and formerly of the CSIR-Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology. “Thus, the present-day structure of the caste system came into being only relatively recently in Indian history.”*

But once established, the caste system became genetically effective, the researchers observed. Mixture across groups became very rare.

“An important consequence of these results is that the high incidence of genetic and population-specific diseases that is characteristic of present-day India is likely to have increased only in the last few thousand years when groups in India started following strict endogamous marriage,” said co–first author Kumarasamy Thangaraj, of the CSIR-Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad, India.**

Mohan Rao, Director, CSIR-CCMB said, “CCMB's continuing efforts over a decade on this field had helped in understanding the complexity of Indian population history and social structure, such as caste systems.”

This study was funded by the NIH (GM100233); NSF (HOMINID grant 1032255); a UKIERI Major Award (RG-4772); the Network Project (GENESIS: BSC0121) fund from the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, Government of India; a Bhatnagar Fellowship grant from the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research of the Government of India; and a J.C. Bose Fellowship from Department of Science and Technology, Government of India.

• , ** Quotes adapted from American Journal of Human Genetics news release.

There was no genetic influx 3,500 years ago

Indians are not descendants of Aryans, says new study

Dinesh C. Sharma | Mail Today | New Delhi,

December 10, 2011 |

India Today

Widely believed theory of Indo-Aryan invasion, often used to explain early settlements in the Indian subcontinent is a myth, a new study by Indian geneticists says.

The origin of genetic diversity found in South Asia is much older than 3,500 years when the Indo-Aryans were supposed to have migrated to India, a new study led by scientists from the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), Hyderabad, says. The study appeared in American Journal of Human Genetics on Friday.

The theory of Indo-Aryan migration was proposed in mid-19th century by German linguist and Sanskrit scholar Max Muller.

He had suggested that 3,500 years ago, a dramatic migration of Indo-European speakers from Central Asia played a key role in shaping contemporary South Asian populations and this was responsible for introduction of the Indo-European language family and the caste system in India.

"Our study clearly shows that there was no genetic influx 3,500 years ago," said Dr Kumarasamy Thangaraj of CCMB, who led the research team, which included scientists from the University of Tartu, Estonia, Chettinad Academy of Research and Education, Chennai and Banaras Hindu University.

"It is high time we re-write India's prehistory based on scientific evidence," said Dr Lalji Singh, former director of CCMB. "There is no genetic evidence that Indo-Aryans invaded or migrated to India or even something such as Aryans existed". Singh, vice-chancellor of BHU, is a coauthor.

Researchers analysed some six lakh bits of genetic information in the form of SNPs drawn from DNA of over 1,300 individuals from 112 populations including 30 ethnic groups in India.

The comparison of this data with genetic data of other populations showed that South Asia harbours two major ancestry components. One is spread in populations of South and West Asia, Middle East, Near East and the Caucasus. The second component is more restricted to South Asia and accounts for more than 50 per cent of the ancestry in Indian populations.

"Both the ancestry components that dominate genetic variation in South Asia demonstrate much greater diversity than those that predominate West Eurasia. This is indicative of a more ancient demographic history and a higher long-term effective population size underlying South Asian genome variation compared to that of West Eurasia," researchers said.

"The genetic component which spread beyond India is significantly higher in India than in any other part of world. This implies that this genetic component originated in India and then spread to West Asia and Caucasus," said Gyaneshwar Chaube of University of Tartu, Estonia.

If any migration from Central Asia to South Asia took place, the study says, it should have introduced apparent signals of East Asian ancestry into India. "Because this ancestry component is absent from the region, we have to conclude that if such an event indeed took place, it occurred before the East Asian ancestry component reached central Asia," it said.

Caste linked to skin colour, marriage patterns and multi-layered endogamy

Skin colour tied to caste system, says study, Nov 21 2016 : The Times of India

Scientists from the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) in Hyderabad recently discovered that genetic differences and caste system were the main reasons behind the region-wise variation in the skin colour of Indians.

The study , which was led by senior scientist Dr Kumarasamy Thangaraj in collaboration with Estonian Biocentre and five other research institutes, has been published in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology . It indicates that social structure defined by the caste system has a “profound influence on skin pigmentation“. The team had studied 1,825 individuals belonging to 52 diverse populations across India with regard to the caste-colour concept.

“Unlike Africans and Europeans, we do not have homogeneous skin colour throughout the country. This could be due to different waves of human migration into India and recent admixture of all Indian populations,“ Dr Thangaraj said, adding that skin colour was found to vary significantly among ethnic groups and social categories.

“We did extensive epidemiological survey of 1,167 individuals belonging to 27 populations and quantified melanin content at the mostexposed and least-exposed area of human body in the Gangetic plains (Uttar Pradesh and Bihar). We had selected 374 individuals for the first round of genetic study ,“ said Dr Anshuman Mishra, one of the researchers.

The researchers found that gene SLC24A5, which is known to make skin colour lighter, has two variants, which together contribute to the variation in skin colour among Indian populations.

“Our study clearly reflects the profound influence of strict marriage patterns and multi-layered endogamy adding further to the variation in skin colour,“ said another researcher Dr Chandana Basu.

“This is yet another effort of the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology in the field of genomics, which helped us in understanding the genetic link to skin colour,“ said CCMB director Dr Rakesh Mishra, adding that the study will help deliver individual specific lifestyle advisory and medical prescriptions.

Caste discrimination

Discrimination is recent

The Times of India Feb 02 2016

Amish

Ancient India did not sanctify it, caste discrimination is more recent than we think

The tragic death of Rohith Vemula has again brought to the forefront of public imagination the painful reality of caste discrimination in Indian society . Notwithstanding the noise generated by relentless pursuit of politics, evidence clearly indicates that the Scheduled Castes as a group do face terrible prejudice in India.

Understandably, many non-Westernised Indians would be loathe to accept the `atrocity literature' churned out by Western academics NGOs. After all, among the most oppressed minorities in the civilised world are the AfricanAmericans and the European Romas, as evidenced by various detailed studies.

However, the hypocrisy of Western academics media NGOs cannot be an excuse for Indians not to confront their own failings. The present birth-based caste system and caste system and its attendant societal discrimination is a blot on India and completely against the conceptualisation of our ancient culture.

There are some who claim that the present caste system is sanctified by our ancient scriptures. Not true. B R Ambedkar, in his scholarly book `Who were the Shudras?', had used Indian scriptures and texts to prove that in ancient times India had widely respected Shudra rulers as well, and the oppressive scriptural verses, justifying discrimination and a caste system based on birth, were interpolated into the texts later.

In the Bhagwad Gita, Lord Krishna clearly enunciates that He created the four varnas based on guna (attributes) and karma; birth is NOT mentioned.Rishis, or sages, were accorded the highest status in ancient India, and two of our greatest epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, were composed by Rishis who were not born Brahmins.

Valmiki was born a Shudra and Krishna Dwaipayana (also known as Ved Vyas) was born to a fisherwoman. Satyakam Jabali, believed to have composed the celebrated Jabali Upanishad, was born to an unwed Shudra mother and his father's name was unknown. According to the Valmiki Ramayana, Jabali was an officiating priest and adviser to the Ayodhya royalty during Lord Ram's period.

Arvind Sharma, professor of comparative religion at McGill University, states that caste rigidity and discrimination emerged in the Smriti period (from after the birth of Jesus Christ and extending up to 1200 CE) and was challenged in the medieval period by the bhakti movement led by many non-upper caste saints. At the time even powerful empires emerged that were led by Shudra rulers, for example the Kakatiyas. Then, the birth-based caste system became rigid once again around the British colonial period. It has remained so, ever since.

Scientific evidence provided by genetic research corroborates the ancient scriptural absence of a birth-based caste system. Banning of inter-marriage in pursuance of `caste purity' is a fundamental marker of this birth-based caste system.Various scientific papers published in journals such as the American Journal of Human Genetics, Nature and the National Academy of Sciences Journal, have established that inter-breeding among different genetic groups in India was extremely common for thousands of years until it stopped around 0 CE to 400 CE (intriguingly, this is in sync with the period when Sharma says caste discrimination arose for the first time in recorded history).

The inference is obvious. The present birth-based caste system ­ a distorted merger of jati (one's birth-community) and varna (one's nature based on guna and karma) ­ emerged roughly between 1,600 to 2,000 years ago. It did not exist earlier. Note that the word `caste' itself is a Portuguese creation, derived from the Portuguese Spanish `casta' meaning breed or race.

The founding fathers of the Indian republic were, thankfully , aware of the pernicious effects of the birth-based caste system on Indian society . The Indian Constitution had bold objectives. But, as is obvious today , while government policies such as reservations have made a difference, they have not been good enough.

The work of Dalit scholar Chandra Bhan Prasad shows that the post-1991 economic reforms programme has seminally addressed this issue. According to the 200607 All-India MSME Census, approximately 14% of the total enterprises in the country are owned by SCST entrepreneurs, and they generate nearly 8 million jobs! The figure is probably much higher today .

There are many who claim that the reservations policy has ignored the upper caste poor and rural landless. This may hold some truth. But this is also largely due to the absence of enough education facilities and jobs, which leads to rationing of the few opportunities that do exist.

Post-1991 reforms have no doubt brought down these shortfalls, but they have not gone far enough. Many argue that reformist policies will not just help the Dalits, but also the rural and urban upper-caste poor.

So, as Prasad has pointed out repeatedly, more economic reforms and urbanisation will go much further in mitigating caste discrimination and poverty in general, compared to government policies. However, caste discrimination must be opposed and fought against by all Indians, for the sake of the soul of our nation.

Annihilating the birth-based caste system is a battle we must all engage in at a societal level. We will honour our ancient culture with this fight. More importantly , we will end something that is just plain wrong.