Friday, April 25, 2008

India's Genetic Map



According to this article Genetic map blurs lines from The Telegraph (Kolkata), findings from the Indian Genome Variation (IGV) project indicate that various populations within India have intermingled throughout the centuries.

As noted in the article:

"Dravidian lineages have mixed with Indo-Europeans, Austroasiatics have mingled with Dravidians, and bridge populations in central India are blends of Dravidian, Indo-European and Himalayan groups."

and

"The analysis has also indicated that Kashmiri Pandits and Kashmiri Muslims are genetically similar and share genetic similarities with Dravidian groups. It has also shown that some Dravidian-speaking population groups in south India have Indo-European lineage."

Samir Brahmachari of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) says that the results of the IGV study recall Tagore's words in Bharat-tirtha:

Aryan and non-Aryan, Dravidian and Chinese... Pathan, Mughal/All have merged into one body.…

Might I also suggest that the findings also recall the words of Subramania Bharati?

She has thirty crores of faces, but her heart is one; she speaks eighteen languages, yet her mind is one.

Bottom line: It's time to put aside divisions among Indo-Europeans, Dravidians, and other groups to build a unified India.

No comments: