A soon to be published genetic study of the population of Northern India is sure to get the attention of some right wing groups who like to come up with their own alternate “theories” with regards to the history of Hindu/Muslim interaction on the sub-continent.
Scientists have confirmed what historians have known.
Genetic studies have suggested that Muslims in northern India are mostly descendants of local people who embraced Islam rather than repositories of foreign DNA deposited by waves of invaders.
The studies by scientists in India, Spain and the US indicate that while the Shias and the Sunnis in Uttar Pradesh are mostly descendants of converts, the former have some elements of paternal foreign ancestry…“In the mtDNA, we do not see discrete signals from outside India,” Rene J. Herrera, a biologist at Florida International University in the US and one of the collaborators, said. “Thus, both are, for the most part, descendants from local caste groups,” he told The Telegraph.
However, the Shias do show some signatures of foreign DNA from southwest Asia and North Africa in the Y chromosome, Herrera said. [Link]
Within the last decade it has continued to amaze me how some strands of DNA can help corroborate or disprove decades worth of historical investigation. As the techniques become quicker and cheaper I’m sure we’ll be unlocking all kinds of secrets about the movements of humans and whether they mated with each other or killed each other.
Principal component analysis (PCA), a statistical tool that separates individuals on the basis of differences in their properties was employed to place each social group on a plot. According to this plot Shias and Sunnis are much closer to Brahmins, Bhargavas, and tribals from Karnataka than people from UAE, Yemen, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, and or Central Asian countries. PCA generated a plot that showed three clear clusters- Souther Arabian Peninsula, North East African population in upper left quadrant, East Central Asian and Middle Eastern group in the lower right hand corner, and all Indian groups can be found closer to each other to the right. [Link]
A while back I blogged about this National Geographic Project that is looking to systematically trace the movement of humanity’s genes. Have any readers swabbed their cheeks and sent in their DNA yet? Want to share your results?
Have any readers swabbed their cheeks and sent in their DNA yet? Want to share your results?
My twin brother did participate in the National Geographic Project. He sent me the results, but I need to dig it up where I saved.
No promises. If I find it easily on my computer, I’ll share.
“My twin brother …”
Are the two of you called Lav and Kush, by any chance?
I somehow missed that first post, but now I want to participate in the study. I swear, y’all find the coolest stuff of any blog out there.
Good stuff. 🙂
A soon to be published genetic study of the population of Northern India is sure to get the attention of some right wing groups who like to come up with their own alternate “theories†with regards to the history of Hindu/Muslim interaction on the sub-continent.
Abhi, it confirms nationalist ideology, which has always maintained that subcontinental Muslims are Hindu converts, and not Arabs, Turks or Persians. See Veer Savarkar’s “Hindutva”, e.g.
i had my cheeks swabbed, first, for pleasure and second, for science. it appears i am closely related to the shigella and giardia lineages.
technology is an excellent way to threaten our notions of equality, history and identity. fortunately, or not, our society can buffet most of what our biology might dictate if resources eg ever became scarce.
That’s interesting! Pravin Togadia would certainly be very happy. The surgical oncologist and Vishva Hindu Parishad boss in one of his more florid moents remarked that Hindus and the non-Hindus of India aren’t different people, because we all have the same DNA and RNA! I am not sure if he meant genetic similarity – being a doctor I am sure he meant it knowingly. LK Advani too criticised VP Singh (or was it Rajiv Gandhi’s) slogan Hindu-Muslim bhai bhai. Because you had to say Hindi-Chini bhai bhai as the Indians and the Chinese are peoples of different nations. Since Hindus and Muslims are fellow citizens (and in LKA’s case even related by marriage as in the case of his niece who is maried to a Muslim) the VP/RG slogan seems less than innocent!
What about the Pakistanis, especially the Punjabi Pakistanis?
a few points
1) the similarity between muslims & non-muslims in any area has long been known since blood group analysis showed up early in the 20th century. this is simply another confirmation that the muslims are indigenous, easily ascertainable by the fact that without particular dress and other markers such as beards you wouldn’t be able to tell the diff. in many regions of india.
2) don’t rely on just one study. genetics is a statistical science subject to prior assumptions and sensitive to the methods used. different studies will give different results, don’t take ANY as definitive.
3) there seems a 5% genetic load of recent central asian ancestry among UP muslims. this is averaged in the population, so some have quite a bit more, and most have nearly nothing.
4) be careful about the genographic test results. they’re preconditioned upon european, africa and east asian ancestries, and so browns often get very, very, strange stories about their ‘ancestry.’ there is a Y chromosomal haplotype, r1a, which many northern indian males carry which is also found in central asia and eastern europe. from my understanding they tell the story about eastern europe if you get this result back because most of the people taking these tests are american, ergo, white. the history and nature of r1a is under dispute, some people suggest that it implies a lineage that expanded out of central eurasia 6,000 years BP, going west and south and east. others assert that its history is deeper, and reflects deep common ancestry (i.e., before 10,000 years ago).
More interestingly, some Muslim families from Gujarat (I am not sure if it is the Kutchi Memons, Ismailis or the Bohras) have geneaology charts all the way upto their last Hindu ancestor and beyond stretching into centuries. In fact one of these three communities till the late ’30s followed mostly Hindu family law! Jinnah himself belonged to a community that venerated the Dashavatar of Narayana.
Jinnah himself belonged to a community that venerated the Dashavatar of Narayana.
jinnah was ismaili, and many ismailis are proud of their brahmin “ancestors” (though they were more likely from bania backgrounds if high caste).
Muslims in northern India are mostly descendants of local people who embraced Islam rather than repositories of foreign DNA deposited by waves of invaders
also, a minor point, but many muslims might trace their lineage back to one foreign male ancestor. e.g., the muslims of kerala often claim to be the descendants of intermarriage between native women and arab merchants. if the local population is large then it stands to reason that a new population which arose out of intermarriage initially will quickly be genetically absorbed with some intermarriage over the generations. this might not apply just to muslims, but also to other groups in india. that might be explain the high frequency of r1a, spread through the patrilineage, despite the fact that north indians exhibit little overall genetic similarity with central asians and eastern europeans.
I think Hindus have always BEEN claiming that Indian muslims are descendants of local converts…it was usually Muslims who claimed foreign origins most of the time.
.it was usually Muslims who claimed foreign origins most of the time.
yeah, that was my impression. but, some of the racialist rhetoric from the hindutva crowd can make it somewhat confusing because of semantic issues (e.g., “hindu nation” vs. “muslim nation” makes it seem like there is a genetical difference).
Here is Savarkar from “Hindutva::
“That is why in the case of some of our Mohammedan or Christian countryman who had originally been forcibly converted to a non-Hindu religion and who consequently have inherited, along with Hindus, a common culture — language, law, customs, folklore and history — are not and cannot be recognized as Hindus. For though Hindusthan to them is Fatherland as to any other Hindu it is not to them a Holyland…blah blah blah”
I dispute the forced conversion thesis upheld by the nationalists at least partially. The converts in East Bengal may have largely been semi-Hinduized tribals. SM commenter dipanjan has an interesting blog about this subject:
Two critical events happened simultaneously in seventeenth-century East Bengal. First, Mughals started to take direct political control over the region after winning a bloody struggle with the local Hindu kings, zamidars and also the remnants of Afghan sultanate. Secondly, the Ganges river system linked up with Padma increasing the fertility of land and agricultural productivity. It also enabled river transportation system and set up economic integration of East Bengal with West Bengal and rest of Mughal empire in India.
All this opened up economic opportunities and the Mughals started to transform jungles into arable land. The indigenous tribes like Rajbansi, Pod, Chandal, Kuch who used to inhabit those regions were very slightly exposed to Hindu Brahmanic or Buddhist culture and were easy prey for conversion. The bulk of Bengali Muslims are their descendants. [link]
However there is good evidence of forced conversions in what is now Pakistan, or conversion by attrition in the case of groups like the Jat Muslims.
half a Bohra and half a tamilian here…….:-)
there are so many Bohra customs that are very similar to Hindu customs. The food is great on both sides too. No complaints. I will sign up for the swab though!!
Not really surprising. In my case I’m a Gujju from Pakistan, so I always knew we were converts.
I always found it funny how people in Pakistan were so proud of having some Arab or Persian ancestry. I wouldn’t be suprised to know that most of them are exaggerating, and would be crushed if they knew the truth. INteresting note – part of the Bengali oppression pre-71 was justified internally by claiming they were of inferior Indian races, while (West) Pakistan had glorious Persian and Arab ancestry etc.
What do you mean ‘conversion by attrition’?
@qualified_trash: you are straight out of that movie bombay, no? 🙂
My understanding of why so many people became Muslim in the areas which are now Pakistan and Bangladesh, is because those people (who converted) were largely Buddhist before that. A few centuries earlier, MOST of India had become Buddhist, but later a Hindu ‘revival’ was sweeping Buddhism off its feet. Just at that point, when Buddhism was ebbing, Islam arrived on the scene in the sub-continent…and for whatever reason, most of the remaining Buddhists (again, who were mostly in what is now Pakistan and Bangladesh) became Muslim. Maybe it was because they were bereft of their institutions, their clergy, and were in too weak of a position to maintain their religion…whereas Hinduism’s revival gave it the force to stick around.
You have to take all the gene/DNA testing with a pinch of salt and desist from drawing conclusions. Ruth Hubbard has often spoken out about it likening it to the heredity theories that were all the rage late 19th/early 20th century (and fertile ground for Nazi Germany)
Hubbard’s quote from wikipedia (where else)
It is beyond comprehension, in this century which has witnessed holocausts of ethnic, racial, and religious extermination in many parts of our planet, perpetrated by peoples of widely different cultural and political affiliations and beliefs, that educated persons—scholars and popularizers alike—can come forward to argue, as though in complete innocence and ignorance of our recent history, that nothing could be more interesting and worthwhile than to sort out the “racial†or “ethnic†components of our thoroughly mongrelized species so as to ascertain the root identity of each and everyone of us. And where to look for that identity if not in our genes.
In the case of Bengal, apparently just prior to the arrival of Islam, the Hindu Kings (who had just recently deposed Buddhist kings) were extremely cruel to the Buddhist masses…and when the option of Islam was made available, many oppressed Buddhists chose to convert.
In Punjab I think conversion (which ultimately claimed the majority of the populace) was a more gradual process…I’m pretty sure that if the Partition of 1947 (based on Muslim-majority areas being demarcated from non-Muslim areas) had been done in Guru Nanak’s time (for example) the dividing line would have been significantly further to the west than what it eventually became.
What do you mean ‘conversion by attrition’?
Over the course of centuries.
A few centuries earlier, MOST of India had become Buddhist, but later a Hindu ‘revival’ was sweeping Buddhism off its feet.
I don’t think there is substantive evidence that “most of India” was ever Buddhist, though there were certainly Buddhist dynasties, eg. the Bengali Palas. I suspect that Buddhism was on the verge of extinction at the time of Muslim conquest.
There was no Buddhism as opposed to Hinduism as in two teams with different mascots, with groups of fans cheering one or the other! The isms are modern constructs. The Buddha taught a path to cross the river to use one of his analogies. The people followed multiple different traditions in different parts of the country, with the Buddha’s teaching being part of the amalgamation in many places, just like say the Shirdi Sai Baba devotees are not exclusive Sai bhakts, but can have other deities like Ganesha as well. The Buddha’s teaching became part of most “Hindu” cultural elements and in some parts he became another avataram of Vishnu.
So talk about more ‘buddhists’ became muslim and hindus did not doesn’t hold much water. Conversion happened in mny different ways including coerced, voluntary, for reasons of power etc etc.
In the case of Bengal, apparently just prior to the arrival of Islam, the Hindu Kings (who had just recently deposed Buddhist kings) were extremely cruel to the Buddhist masses…and when the option of Islam was made available, many oppressed Buddhists chose to convert.
Again, there is no evidence for this claim. Read Burton’s book, cited in the blog post above. He’s a western scholar, not a Hindutvan. The East Bengal (Bangladesh) converts consisted of great numbers of tribals, with a limited relationship to Hinduism or Buddhists.
This does not seem unlikely.
How dumb is it to use your/anyone’s genetic lineage for political purposes? Stupid, stupid, stupid.
But I guess inevitable.
To me, it’s fascinating because it tells a story: gene dispersal, migrations, epics! Small bands of prehistoric people, moving around and about, learning to adapt to a place 20 or 40 or 200 miles away from where they started out.
To other people, it’s ammunition to prove or disprove some idiotic notion of racial segregation (which is only useful or relevant as a form of determining or assuming some kind of supposed superiority or inferiority).
Ruth Hubbard is correct: our species is mongrelized. But she’s incorrect in another way: humanity is very much concerned with how the mongrel “breeds” have segregated themselves, still, and focus more on the phenotypic differences between “races” (what a laugh…what other species has races?) and how they might predicate other differences, than with the similarities, which are apparently boring.
Excellent post, kudoos to the designer as well. do keep up the good work, will be back for more.
Warm Regards
Biby Cletus :- Blog
“My understanding of why so many people became Muslim in the areas which are now Pakistan and Bangladesh, is because those people (who converted) were largely Buddhist before that.” Not, perhaps, that they converted to Islam BECAUSE they were Buddhist (one fails to see the nexus) but in order to get on economically and politically vis-Ã -vis the more advantaged Hindus (as well, no doubt, as to save their souls) under a Muslim regime after the arrival of Muhammed bin Qazim, AD 711: see Derryl N. Maclean, Religion and Society in Arab Sind (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1989).
I’m amazed that such a well informed bunch fails on regular basis to understand the grievances, real or imagined, of the Hindutva camp. The earlier “revelation” on this blog that Sarvarkar was an atheist (gasp) surprised many as they are taught to imagine the Sangh Parivar as saffron analogues of Wahabbis or Christian fundamentalists when their thuggery is motivated by significantly different reasons. This does not contradict anything that they’ve been saying..their argument has always been that Indian Muslims are the products of forcible conversion. The truth of the matter is that the conversion was likely some mixture of escape from Brahmanical strictures, economic opportunism, forcible conversion, and sincere embrace of Islamic theology. Why not present this as an alternative hitsorical narrative instead of painting the “enemy” as a particular type of buffoon they are not ? The only people this will upset are lower class Muslims who had romanticized notions of Afghan/Arab/Turkic origins.
There was more of an uproar when it was announced several months ago that the Irish/Brits are all cut from the same bread and were impacted very little genetically speaking by the Anglo-Saxon & Norse invasions
Yes, byteword, Lav and Kush names are giveaways for twins.
Also, part of results from Genographic Project reproduced below. Enjoy
Your Y chromosome results identify you as a member of haplogroup H, a lineage defined by a genetic marker called M52. This haplogroup is the final destination of a genetic journey that began some 60,000 years ago with an ancient Y chromosome marker called M168.
The very widely dispersed M168 marker can be traced to a single individual‗Eurasian Adam.” This African man, who lived some 31,000 to 79,000 years ago, is the common ancestor of every non-African person living today. His descendants migrated out of Africa and became the only lineage to survive away from humanity’s home continent.
Population growth during the Upper Paleolithic era may have spurred the M168 lineage to seek new hunting grounds for the plains animals crucial to their survival. A period of moist and favorable climate had expanded the ranges of such animals at this time, so these nomadic peoples may have simply followed their food source.
Improved tools and rudimentary art appeared during this same epoch, suggesting significant mental and behavioral changes. These shifts may have been spurred by a genetic mutation that gave “Eurasian Adam’s” descendants a cognitive advantage over other contemporary, but now extinct, human lineages.
Some 90 to 95 percent of all non-Africans are descendants of the second great human migration out of Africa, which is defined by the marker M89.
M89 first appeared 45,000 years ago in Northern Africa or the Middle East. It arose on the original lineage (M168) of “Eurasian Adam,” and defines a large inland migration of hunters who followed expanding grasslands and plentiful game to the Middle East.
Many people of this lineage remained in the Middle East, but others continued their movement and followed the grasslands through Iran to the vast steppes of Central Asia. Herds of buffalo, antelope, woolly mammoths, and other game probably enticed them to explore new grasslands.
With much of Earth’s water frozen in massive ice sheets, the era’s vast steppes stretched from eastern France to Korea. The grassland hunters of the M89 lineage traveled both east and west along this steppe “superhighway” and eventually peopled much of the continent.
A group of M89 descendants moved north from the Middle East to Anatolia and the Balkans, trading familiar grasslands for forests and high country. Though their numbers were likely small, genetic traces of their journey are still found today.
The M201 lineage that defines an uncommon haplogroup called G, which is rarely present in population frequencies at greater than a few percent. Genealogists believe that this line of descent first appeared in northern India’s Indus valley, on the M89 lineage, and subsequently dispersed during the past 10,000 to 20,000 years.
Currently, little else is known of haplogroup G’s origin or history. Learning more about such unusual lineages is a primary goal of the Genographic Project.
The “Indian Marker,” M52, is common in that country and rarely seen elsewhere. The marker arose some 20,000 to 30,000 years ago on the M201 lineage, most likely within India. Despite its current prevalence in India the lineage could actually have originated elsewhere in southern Central Asia, Iran, or the eastern Middle East.
Genealogists believe that M52 might have appeared somewhere along the migration route of peoples carrying the M20 Y chromosome marker. This “Indian Clan” migrated from Central Asia, south of the mountainous Pamir Knot, and into India. They were not the first humans to arrive in India, but likely undertook the first major settlement of the region some 30,000 years ago.
Doc Abhi, can you make any sense of it.
The East Bengal (Bangladesh) converts consisted of great numbers of tribals, with a limited relationship to Hinduism or Buddhists.
the idea that east bengal was more tribal & less hinduized does not negate a relationship to buddhism. buddhism’s relative strength may be a symptom, not a cause, of hinduism’s relative weakness. in other words, the relative on the peripheries of the subcontinent of heterodox religious movements between the 6th and 11th centuries might simply be due to the relative weakness of the elite ‘hindu’ cultural complex in this area which was radiating out of the central gangetic plain. the northwest was always under foreign influence, and regular foreign rule. the far east was a marchland. but in any case, i do recall that during the late 19th century census when it was found out that more muslims resided in the united bengal than hindus the british were surprised, as it was assumed to be a predominantly hindu domain.
i do think the tribal hypothesis is plausible because it has widespread analogs in the rest of the world. in mainland southeast asia christianity spread amongst the tribes outside the pale of therevada buddhist high culture. e.g., hmong of laos and parts of thailand (the lowland lao are very buddhist), the montagnards of the vietnam highlands, the karens and mizos. in island southeast asia christianity spread amongst those groups with the least contact with the malay and javanese hindu-buddhist cultures, which were later converted to islam (e.g., the batak of the sumatra, dayak in borneo, the ambonese and ther groups in the east). in africa christianity spread mostly among tribal religionists, not amongst muslims (and ethiopian orthodox christianity remained distinctive and associated with the coptic pope). in asia christianity has is a majority religion in one nation, the philippines. but the area of the country which was most thoroughly islamicized (the south) never converted to christianity. in taiwan though the majority of christians, the tribal peoples of the east are mostly christian while the chinese are not. and of course in india christianity which post-dates the sects of kerala has penetrated amongst the most marginal groups in relation to the dominant hindu culture.
Ignorance is Bliss.
And Muslims were very lenient to Buddhists (non Muslims)?
Hey Intern Can you remove my email id from my post? I thought it won’t be published.
Yes, byteword, Lav and Kush names are giveaways for twins.
I meant PG Wodehouse, sorry byteword.
I only put the synopsis of Genographic Project results. There is more to it that came with the report. Personally, I think it is all too vague.
Can you remove my email id from my post? I thought it won’t be published.
that’s rich.
There’s no indication on the preview page that email is optional.
After reading Abhi’s post on the Genographic project, I decided to send in $100 and some of my cheek cells for analysis. Weeks later, what I got in return was confusing and a bit hard to believe. Despite being Thai-Lao on my father’s side, the DNA test traced my deep paternal ancestry back to something labeled as the “M201” line which is supposedly prevalent in Iran and Afghanistan. A cultural anthropologist friend of mine chided me for being so gullible and naive as to think that the test would actually tell me anything valid. He sent me off to read “What it Means to be 98% Chimpanzee” by Jonathan Marks, which I did. I ended up $100 poorer and with even more questions than when I began.
my sister did it, we’re from pakistan…our dna comes from Georgia, near Russia.
A cultural anthropologist friend of mine chided me for being so gullible and naive as to think that the test would actually tell me anything valid. He sent me off to read “What it Means to be 98% Chimpanzee” by Jonathan Marks, which I did. I ended up $100 poorer and with even more questions than when I began.
marks is a propogandist, be careful. your genome consists of tens of thousands of “genes.” the test is testing one gene. that one gene can be informative, e.g., it could for example reject paternity (if you didn’t match with your father), but it is a lot dicier to use one gene to trace a population movement. it isn’t like indians are 100% gene x and burmese are 100% gene y. usually it is indians are 80% x and 20% y and burmese are 20% x and 80%. you can do the conditional probabilities assuming particular parameters, but they’re likelihoods, not certainties. on the other hand, if you look at hundreds of genes you’d have enough information to be far more certain on an individual level because various pieces of data would converge upon one possibility.
as an analogy, if you said “person X has straight black hair,” you could eliminate a large portion of the world’s regions as their likely place of origin (e.g., subsaharan africa, northern europe). but you are still left with most humans. if you added more traits, e.g., “epicanthic fold,” “olive skin,” you’d start converging. same with genes.
but yeah, save the $100. for most people it won’t tell you what you don’t already know, or, it will be unintelligible. this goes especially for brown ppl in the latter category because like i said, the narratives are geared toward populations of interest in the USofA.
Are you Baluch, Sindhi or Punjabi ? I’m sure Razib will know, but this doesn’t seem surprising for N. Indians or Pakistanis as I believe the Indo-Iranian & Saka homeland may have been in this region between the Black & Caspian Seas. I would be more surprised to see this in the South of India where I’m from but then again maybe the Coorgs have some of this going on too
here is a blog entry by me on why i think stuff like genographic is more marketing than science. and another.
I’m sure Razib will know, but this doesn’t seem surprising for N. Indians or Pakistanis as I believe the Indo-Iranian & Saka homeland may have been in this region between the Black & Caspian Seas.
that’s the r1a i was talking about (possibly). but anyway, when someone tells a brown person that their DNA comes from the caucasus, i would advise caution. historical population genetics is a science of precise aggregate populations, not of individuals. if you want to know your full ancestry wait until your personal genome is available in about 10 years for $1,000.
(if you have $100 to blow, go ahead, it’s fun)
Very interesting.
Is there any truth to the belief among north Indians at least that ashraf Muslims are more likely to have foreign blood while ajlaf Muslims are more likely to be local converts? I remember learning about how last names were given according to the caste that one converted from, which was one of the ways that caste or at least an awareness of hierarchy was retained among Muslim converts.
At least two prominent Muslim royal families did a good deal of overseas mixing – the Awadhi family had strong ties with the Shia holy cities in southern Iraq (some are even buried in Najaf and Karbala), and the Nizam of Hyderabad’s family has for several generations married women from Turkey. There was an interesting piece in Outlook magazine about this last year I suppose this sort of mixing is akin to what one would find among royals throughout India, seeking out fellow royals to marry even if they are from a random small kingdom several states away.
Is there any truth to the belief among north Indians at least that ashraf Muslims are more likely to have foreign blood while ajlaf Muslims are more likely to be local converts?
the groups are mixed with each other. like i said, on average 5% of the ancestry of uttar pradesh muslims seems to be of recent west eurasian provenance. of that 5%, a disproportionate amt. is to be found amongst the traditional ashraf, who are a small minority. there are ashraf who look totally west eurasian, but most that my family socialized with in the USofA (muslims from old families in UP) were brown like everyone else. nevertheless, the ashraf (i.e., individuals from north indian mughali families) were far more likely to look west eurasian than the typical north indian brown (even high caste hindus), even if only a minority were. the mughals themselves exhibit a range of physical type in keeping with their various mixtures. akbar married a rajput woman. his grandson a persian woman.
p.s., most people who claim to be ashraf are making it up btw. but enough are “for real” that it shows.
north indian mughali families
the nobility that is.
p.s. i checked the original paper. it tended to focus on mtDNA, the female lineage, which often tends to understate between-population differences (for a variety of reasons). just a note.
Isn’t that a ridiculously small sample space?
What I’d like to know is more about the controversial invasion of the Vedic Aryans and their conquest of indigenous dravidians via genetic studies…is it a myth as claimed by Hindutva groups, or is there genetic studies to prove such a mass migration?
seems so, around 20% of Uttar Pradesh (34 million) are Muslims. And among those aroun 20% are Shias. So 59 Shias for 7 million and 60 for the rest looks like a small number.