The second wave of migration that occurred about 50,000 years ago from Africa brought a different genetic mutation, NRY HG F*-M89, to India. This wave was more successful in spreading. The mutation is seen in many populations in the Deccan and in south India, and in some places in Gujarat and the north-east, interestingly, without any distinctions of castes and tribes.16
The third wave of migration consists of the majority of the early settlers in the Indian subcontinent. The subcontinent received many gene pools via migration from both the east and the west of India during the Neolithic period.17 This explains the various languages and cultures found here. Males with the NRY HG O2a-M95 mutation arrived at the north-eastern Frontiers 10,000 to 5000 years ago from Laos, with their Austro-Asiatic language, to expand and give rise to the Munda language. From Central Asia to the west of India, many streams of Neolithic people carrying the M304 and M207 mutations arrived, bringing with them technology for rearing cattle, which became their mode of subsistence as they settled. The largest expansion within the M 207 clade was of the people carrying the R1a1-M17 and R2-M124 mutations with their Indo-European language settling across the whole of the Indo-Gangetic region and north of the Vindhyas.18 Each of these groups established their own traditions and ways of life, distinct from the others.
Professor Pitchappan’s research shows that in the south of India, there had, in fact, been no intermixing, through migration or marriage, between the various subsistence-based Dravidian communities in the past 3000 years. The mode of subsistence, such as fishing on the coast, dryland farming in the interior regions in rain shadow, and hunting and gathering in the hilly tracts, played a dominant role in ensuring that the communities remained geographically fixed. This gave rise to a highly stratified society with distinct occupational communities in Tamil Nadu, which continues even today. And this much before the establishment of the caste system in the subcontinent!
Geographical and cultural isolation led the Dravidians to inbreed, which in turn resulted in the development of unique genetic signatures as well as cultural practices and traditions in each of them. Simply put, endogamy further sharpened the boundaries of these communities. So the M89 mutation remains concentrated in the hill tribes of the Western Ghats, the M20 mutation is found in 50 per cent of the population in Tamil Nadu and is characteristic of the Dravidian population, whereas the M17 and M205 mutations are found in the Vellala and Brahmin–related populations of south India.19
Much later, in the Bronze Age, the caste system or the varna scheme—the basis of the current practice of the Hindu stratification of society according to birth—began to further divide communities by establishing for each a hereditary occupation, and the endogamy and preservation of its traditions. The strict ranking of the various castes prescribed by the caste system also created a general deference to hierarchy that ensured the continuation of these practices across generations.
The caste system often gives rise to the fallacy that different communities have separate origins—and it does so through a hymn! In the earliest instance of the social institutionalization of the varna system, the Purusha Sukta hymn of the Rig Veda (10.90)20 said that the four social classes emerged from the Purusha, who was considered the original sacrificial victim. In the hymn, the Brahmins came from Purusha’s mouth, the Kshatriyas (warriors) from his arms, the Vaishyas (merchants) from his loins, and the Shudras (servants) from his feet. Since Brahmins were said to have emerged from the mouth of the Purusha, it was assumed that they must enjoy the highest status. But there have been historical criticisms of the Brahmin claims to superiority. For instance, in about 500 BC the Buddha referred to the Purusha Sukta hymn, pointing out that anyone could see that the Brahmins had emerged not from the mouth of the Purusha, but from the same female bodily organ as everybody else. Yet the belief is prevalent among Hindus even today.
I will expand more on the subject of caste in a subsequent essay in this book, but for our present argument, it is important to note that even in the establishment of the caste system, communities were formed due to historical developments and our interpretations of them. In reality, it is utterly needless to say that we have all indeed originated from the vagina of a woman in Africa. We continue to exist as a species today because the earliest humans in Africa decided to walk out of the country in order to survive the Ice Age. As far as geneticists know, those humans out of Africa arrived in the south of India 10,000 years before they even reached Australia, the Americas, Europe or the rest of Asia.
The following day, Virumandi and I, dressed in our finery and with gifts in hand, set out for the three-hour drive to Professor Pitchappan’s native village for the wedding. By now, I had seen Virumandi in his many avatars: research specimen, family man, tribesman, fellow wedding guest and more.
‘If you were to describe Virumandi, what would you say?’ I asked him.
‘It depends on who’s asking,’ he said and laughed. ‘If it was someone asking me here in the market,’ he said, pointing outside the window of our taxi, ‘I would say Virumandi is a part of a tribe, speaks Tamil and lives in a village in Tamil Nadu. I would also explain the history of our community.’ He paused and then added, ‘But if someone in office asks me this question, I do not need to speak about my tribe.’
‘And if you were to describe Virumandi to your own self, within a closed room, then what would you say?’ I probed.
‘You ask the most difficult questions!’ Virumandi said with another laugh. ‘I would say that Virumandi is an educated man who has a PhD in library sciences. He has learnt from each and every one of the researchers he has met because of M130, and he wants to rid his community of some bad things.’
He paused for a few moments, then added softly, ‘You know, miss, we still kill our girl babies. I tell our community to stop this tradition, but it still happens.’
‘Why are they killed?’ I asked.
‘It is a tradition that if the second child is a girl, she has to be killed within ten days. There are specific men in the tribe who know how to do it. They pluck leaves that secrete poison and feed them to the infant girl. She dies immediately,’ he said.
‘But how do parents allow this?’
‘Parents do not want to pay the dowry for a girl when she gets married,’ he explained. ‘Dowry is a tradition,’ he added as we got off the car.
‘So tradition has its dark side?’ I asked.
‘Yes, and only education can cure us of these terrible things,’ he replied.
‘You are the only person in your tribe who is so educated. How has it helped you?’
‘Education does not mean just knowing how to read or write. Education means understanding the other person’s point of view. Sometimes there are quarrels among people in the community. Because of my education, I know how not to react impulsively and stay calm, and I tell people who are fighting to do the same thing. I am able to sort out problems in the community.’
The wedding venue was spread across three large, traditional Nattukottai Chettiar homes, discontinuously located on a single muddy pedestrian street that led to the village temple at the end. The large banners that proclaimed ‘Dr Valli weds Dr Thiyagarajan’ were hard to miss.
‘The professor belongs to a wealthy trader community called Chettiar,’ explained Virumandi as we walked towards the house where the main ceremony was to be. ‘Most of his family members work in banks or are big businessmen.’
‘And clearly the new generation is made up of well-educated doctors!’ I added, pointing to the gigantic wedding banners around us.
The house had a columned veranda in front, where about a hundred guests—mostly men—were sitting on the floor. The pillars, I was told by Virumandi, were made of Burma teak, the style unique to the Chettiar community living in this 100-square-mile area. About 20 feet away was a second row of Burma teak pillars on another slightly more raised veranda.
We entered the wedding like a happy couple—Virumandi and I—getting photographs clicked with the family
on the way into the spacious inner courtyard, where there were now mostly women. We walked towards the entrance to the centre.
The professor was standing at the entrance with his hands folded. ‘Welcome, Miniya,’ he said with a smile. He asked Virumandi if our journey to the venue was comfortable.
The courtyard had thin teak pillars and a series of rooms on all sides. Virumandi pointed ahead to the bride and the groom, and explained to me that this was an arranged marriage between cousins, as per the community tradition.
‘Yes, the bride and the groom did not know each other at all till the match was suggested, and then they met in a hotel alone for a half-hour to evaluate each other. This happened three months before the wedding day,’ Professor Pitchappan told me.
References
Basu, Analabha, Neeta Sarkar-Roy and Partha P. Majumder. 2016. Genomic reconstruction of the history of extant populations of India reveals five distinct ancestral components and a complex structure. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 113.6.
Bergman, Jerry. 2011. Louis Agassiz: Anti-Darwinist Harvard Paleontology Professor. Acts & Facts 40.3, pp. 12–14.
Butalia, Urvashi. 2000. The Other Side of Silence, first edition (Durham: Duke University Press).
Carmichael, Mary. 2012. Louis Agassiz exhibit divides Harvard, Swiss group. Boston Globe, 27 June.
Culotta, Elizabeth, and Ann Gibbons. 2016. Almost all living people outside of Africa trace back to a single migration more than 50,000 years ago. Science | AAAS, http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/09/almost-all-living-people-outside-africa-trace-back-single-migration-more-50000-years.
Dalrymple, William. 2015. The great divide: The violent legacy of the Indian partition. New Yorker, 29 June.
Darwin, Charles. 1859. The Origin of Species, first edition (London: John Murray).
French, Patrick. 2011. India: A Portrait (New York: Vintage Books).
Grehan, John R., and Jeffrey H. Schwartz. 2009. Evolution of the second orangutan: Phylogeny and biogeography of hominid origins. Journal of Biogeography 36.10, 1823–44.
Hoeveler, J. David. 2007. The Evolutionists: American Thinkers Confront Charles Darwin, 1860–1920 (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield).
Kumar, Arun, Ganesh Prasad et al. 2012. Correction: Population differentiation of southern Indian male lineages correlates with agricultural expansions predating the caste system. PLOS ONE 28 November, http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0050269.
Kumar, Arun, Ganesh Prasad et al. 2015b. Genome-wide signatures of male-mediated migration shaping the Indian gene pool. Journal of Human Genetics 60.9.
Kumar, Arun, Ganesh Prasad et al. 2015a. A late Neolithic expansion of Y chromosomal haplogroup O2a1-M95 from east to west. Journal of Systematics and Evolution 53.6.
Menand, Louis. 2001. Morton, Agassiz, and the origins of scientific racism in the United States. The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education 34, p. 110.
Mookerji. Radhakumud. 1966. Chandragupta Maurya and His Times (New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers).
Nott, Josiah Clark, and George R. Gliddon. 1854. Types of Mankind: Or, ethnological researches, based upon the ancient monuments, paintings, sculptures, and crania of races, and upon their natural, geographical, philological, and biblical history (London: Trubner).
Stott, Rebecca. 2013. Under the Microscope. Review of Louis Agassiz, Creator of American Science, by Christoph Irmscher. New York Times Book Review, 31 January.
Wells, Spencer. 2007. A family tree for humanity. https://www.ted.com/talks/spencer_wells_is_building_a_family_tree_for_all_humanity.
Wood, Michael. 2008. The Story of India (Random House).
2
Evolution
While India was mounting its freedom struggle, many of the country’s nationalist leaders were living and studying in Europe, where modernity was the essence of the times. The Europeans had developed a missionary zeal for social change ever since their fifteenth- and sixteenth-century explorers had brought back with them reports of the ‘backward’ societies they had discovered in the rest of the world, which badly needed to change their ‘barbaric’ ways and become civilized and ‘modern’.1
Contrary to these beliefs in Europe, the march for social progress in India had a very distinct character in which tradition and modernity would not be divorced from each other. There was so much to fix when political freedom was gained, and it was felt that both tradition and modernity could help lift us out of our miserable condition. We were not just poor, we were infected with several social illnesses such as female infanticide, child marriage, dowry and sati. We were also burdened with a terribly hierarchical society divided by caste, and our wonderfully diverse communities had developed cracks along religious lines. In addition, our self-confidence had been battered by the British, who ruled us for two centuries with their misplaced assumption of racial supremacy. India’s nationalist leaders, led by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, set aside their European learnings at least in this context; even though they agreed that some beliefs had to be discarded, the traditions that nurtured us and made us who we were had to be preserved.
In Europe, social evolution meant successive, homogeneous and graded stages of development—a view established by the British evolution scientist Charles Darwin and philosopher Herbert Spencer, among others. In India, however, we made a deliberate choice to plan social progress such that our diverse communities would retain their distinct characters. We created an unusual political structure, a federation of states, in which each state was defined territorially by the cultural characteristics of its people. We decided to make laws to protect our minorities and their rights to a distinct script and culture, as well as the right to establish their own educational institutions. We even chose twenty-two constitutionally recognized languages instead of one. Indeed, we were influenced by the West in our project of nationhood—more on that in a subsequent essay in this book2—but we did not borrow their normative social project of modernity.
The Preamble of the Indian Constitution clearly laid out this objective. The aim, it said, was ‘to secure to all its citizens social, economic and political justice; liberty of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship; equality of status and opportunity, and to promote among them fraternity so as to secure the dignity of the individual and the unity and integrity of the Nation’.3
How much of that objective have we achieved within our framework where tradition and modernity coexists?
According to India’s most recent census almost four out of ten Indians were illiterate4 in 2015 133.5 million families were earning less than Rs 500 per month5 and by 2017 as many as 163 million people did not have access to safe drinking water.6 Our girls are unsafe, in part because of the skewed sex ratio of 940 females per 1000 males,7 and forty-five million women are missing in our country because we kill our girl babies.8 There has also been progress. Famines have been eliminated, life expectancy at birth has doubled from 32 years in 1947 to 66 years in 20129 and literacy has risen from 16 per cent in 1951 to 74 per cent (but female literacy is still at 65 per cent).10
However, some of the most downtrodden sections of the population—lower castes, religious minorities, Dalits and tribals—have gained the least from the nation’s progress.
In Hinduism, India’s majority religion, the caste or varna of an individual is predetermined by birth. In addition to the four historical varnas, most Hindus also belong to about 3000 contemporary sub-castes or jatis, many of which are social, occupational—the cobbler and weaver castes, for example—or geographic.11 Brahmins (priests, teachers) are at the top of the four-caste hierarchy, followed by Kshatriyas (landholders, warriors, rulers). Vaishyas or banias (businessmen) come third, while Shudras (labourers, artisans) are last. The three upper castes have governed the country for 3000 years, even though about half of India belongs to the Shudra caste.12 Besides this, 8.6 per cent of the population is tribal, and more than 16 per cent is made up of the cast
eless or ‘untouchables’. These are some of the communities that have barely seen an improvement in the quality of life in the past seven decades.
Nowhere else on earth is a human being considered so repugnant to be deemed untouchable. And no other society has a hierarchy as rigid as the Indian caste system. Given at birth as a public marker of one’s status in society, a lower-caste name is carried around like a burden.
An ‘untouchable’ has no choice but to remain so all his life—in India, you can change your religion, but not your caste or ‘castelessness’. What does progress mean to him, then? An improvement in his caste status is not possible, so what are the other ways in which he can improve his life? Essentially, the issue of choice in social ‘progress’ in India is highly problematic because it raises the moral question of who determines progress—the agent of social change or the subject of it? Who decides that progress is needed, the direction it should take, and what it should look like? If the choice of progress is made by the supposed agents of change—the government, the private sector, not-for-profit agencies, religious organizations and so on—does that not simultaneously restrict the freedom of choice of the subject, the individual or the community in question? Moreover, ironically, if others are making choices for the individual, where is the progress? Isn’t progress the ability to make a well-informed choice?
In this context I will take up examples of the three most desperate communities in India—first, a socially ostracized one such as the Devadasis of south India; second, the Adivasis; and third, the Muslims. The evolution of a nation is not just about the growth of its gross domestic product (GDP)—progress must be measured in terms of how opportunities for individuals in society have expanded. I would further argue that there is a need to look at what progress has meant specifically for the most socio-economically disadvantaged communities, such as the ones I examine in this essay.
Indian Instincts Page 3
