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Insiders, not invaders
Muslims across India are predominantly south Asian in origin, concludes a major forensic study. Prasun Chaudhuri reports
When Ikramul Haque was studying biology at the Aligarh Muslim University, he was deeply intrigued by the questions raised on the genetic ancestry of Indian Muslims. Those were the turbulent mid-1980s, when religious zealots were describing Muslims across the country as the “descendants of foreign invaders” and “rank outsiders”. By the time he completed PhD in life sciences in 1989, he nursed a secret ambition to piece together the paternal and maternal lineage of Indian Muslims by analysing samples of blood — the ultimate repository of ancestral DNA.
Years later, while working as a DNA expert at Calcutta’s Central Forensic Science Laboratory (CFSL), Haque got the chance to embark on his long-cherished dream. “I knew a DNA study on Muslims around the country would provide a persuasive answer to the age-old question raised about their genetic heritage,” says Haque.
According to him, historical evidence suggests that some Indian Muslims could be descendants of either Iranian and Arabian invaders who married local Hindu women or locals who converted. “We therefore sought to examine contemporary Indian Muslim populations for the occurrence of Middle Eastern genetic signatures (in their DNA samples), expecting them to be manifested in the male line,” reports Haque in a recent issue of the European Journal of Human Genetics (EJHG). “For this, we chose six Muslim populations from three different geographical regions of India that witnessed several human migrations, military invasions from the Middle East and proselytising of native Hindu populations,” he adds.
So Haque and his co-researcher Muthukrishnan Eaaswarkhanth analysed blood samples collected from Dawoodi Bohras (in Tamil Nadu and Gujarat), Iranian Shias (Hyderabad), Indian Shias (Uttar Pradesh), Indian Sunnis (Uttar Pradesh) and Mapplas (Tamil Nadu). “It was for the first time that a research group was extensively examining the genetic patterns of nearly 500 Muslim individuals across India,” Haque told KnowHow. To pin down the telltale genetic footprints, the DNA experts looked into three components of the blood samples. To trace the father’s ancestry, they zeroed in on the DNA on the Y-chromosome, which like the patrilineal surname passes down unchanged from father to son. Maternal lineage tests were derived from mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), which is passed from a mother to her child. In addition, they used a unique genetic marker — called LCT/MCM6 lactose tolerance gene variant — which appears to have arisen in Arabs and is associated with the consumption of camel’s milk, an important survival trait in desert nomads.
“Our extensive genetic analyses revealed the greatest affinity of the Indian Muslim populations with indigenous local non-Muslim populations [or the Hindus],” conclude Haque and Eaaswarkhanth in the paper. “In this study, no significant excess of paternally transmitted genetic signal was found, unlike the Muslim communities in China and Central Asia which show a marked presence of Western Y-chromosomes. However, detectable minor frequency of sub-Saharan maternal and Middle Eastern paternal lineages were found to be present in some of the Indian Muslim communities.”
The most interesting finding is that the Dawoodi Bohras, a Muslim community following the Shia faith and speaking Gujarati, are a distinct genetic entity with sub-Saharan African and Arabian maternal lineages, suggesting that some of their ancestors migrated from Yemen, an Arabian country with strong links with sub-Saharan Africa. The sub-Saharan African / Arabian-specific paternal lineage was also found in the Shia Muslims of Lucknow, the erstwhile state of Awadh. The Iranian Shias — recent immigrants from Iran who settled in Hyderabad — too have close genetic affinity with the people of West Asia. “We propose a scientific model according to which the spread of Islam in India was predominantly cultural conversion associated with minor but still detectable levels of gene flow from outside, primarily from Iran and Central Asia, rather than directly from the Arabian Peninsula,” write Haque and his colleagues.
“The findings seem to corroborate archaeological, historical and linguistic evidence that the majority of Indian Muslims are descendants of local people who converted,” says Amalendu Mukherjee, a former professor of history, Calcutta University. “For that matter, many of the military invaders, such as the first Mughal ruler Babur’s forefathers, were also converts — they embraced Islam just a few generations before he was born.”
According to Mukherjee, DNA imprints are the latest evidence in the arsenal of a historian. Another eminent historian (who doesn’t want to be named), however, doesn’t support studies on religion based on DNA. He says, “I don’t think there is any need of DNA profiling of the followers of a particular religion. In any case, they’ve found something very obvious.”
On the contrary, Susanta Roychoudhury, one of the pioneers of genetic anthropology in India, believes that such studies can dispel any doubt regarding the history of human migration in the country. “The study is unique and addresses an important issue,” says Roychoudhury, deputy director of the Indian Institute of Chemical Biology, Calcutta. “It proves once again that there is a fundamental genetic unity in the seemingly diverse ethnic India and that there is no Hindu or Muslim identity in the genetic realm.”
Muslims across India are predominantly south Asian in origin, concludes a major forensic study. Prasun Chaudhuri reports
When Ikramul Haque was studying biology at the Aligarh Muslim University, he was deeply intrigued by the questions raised on the genetic ancestry of Indian Muslims. Those were the turbulent mid-1980s, when religious zealots were describing Muslims across the country as the “descendants of foreign invaders” and “rank outsiders”. By the time he completed PhD in life sciences in 1989, he nursed a secret ambition to piece together the paternal and maternal lineage of Indian Muslims by analysing samples of blood — the ultimate repository of ancestral DNA.
Years later, while working as a DNA expert at Calcutta’s Central Forensic Science Laboratory (CFSL), Haque got the chance to embark on his long-cherished dream. “I knew a DNA study on Muslims around the country would provide a persuasive answer to the age-old question raised about their genetic heritage,” says Haque.
According to him, historical evidence suggests that some Indian Muslims could be descendants of either Iranian and Arabian invaders who married local Hindu women or locals who converted. “We therefore sought to examine contemporary Indian Muslim populations for the occurrence of Middle Eastern genetic signatures (in their DNA samples), expecting them to be manifested in the male line,” reports Haque in a recent issue of the European Journal of Human Genetics (EJHG). “For this, we chose six Muslim populations from three different geographical regions of India that witnessed several human migrations, military invasions from the Middle East and proselytising of native Hindu populations,” he adds.
So Haque and his co-researcher Muthukrishnan Eaaswarkhanth analysed blood samples collected from Dawoodi Bohras (in Tamil Nadu and Gujarat), Iranian Shias (Hyderabad), Indian Shias (Uttar Pradesh), Indian Sunnis (Uttar Pradesh) and Mapplas (Tamil Nadu). “It was for the first time that a research group was extensively examining the genetic patterns of nearly 500 Muslim individuals across India,” Haque told KnowHow. To pin down the telltale genetic footprints, the DNA experts looked into three components of the blood samples. To trace the father’s ancestry, they zeroed in on the DNA on the Y-chromosome, which like the patrilineal surname passes down unchanged from father to son. Maternal lineage tests were derived from mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), which is passed from a mother to her child. In addition, they used a unique genetic marker — called LCT/MCM6 lactose tolerance gene variant — which appears to have arisen in Arabs and is associated with the consumption of camel’s milk, an important survival trait in desert nomads.
“Our extensive genetic analyses revealed the greatest affinity of the Indian Muslim populations with indigenous local non-Muslim populations [or the Hindus],” conclude Haque and Eaaswarkhanth in the paper. “In this study, no significant excess of paternally transmitted genetic signal was found, unlike the Muslim communities in China and Central Asia which show a marked presence of Western Y-chromosomes. However, detectable minor frequency of sub-Saharan maternal and Middle Eastern paternal lineages were found to be present in some of the Indian Muslim communities.”
The most interesting finding is that the Dawoodi Bohras, a Muslim community following the Shia faith and speaking Gujarati, are a distinct genetic entity with sub-Saharan African and Arabian maternal lineages, suggesting that some of their ancestors migrated from Yemen, an Arabian country with strong links with sub-Saharan Africa. The sub-Saharan African / Arabian-specific paternal lineage was also found in the Shia Muslims of Lucknow, the erstwhile state of Awadh. The Iranian Shias — recent immigrants from Iran who settled in Hyderabad — too have close genetic affinity with the people of West Asia. “We propose a scientific model according to which the spread of Islam in India was predominantly cultural conversion associated with minor but still detectable levels of gene flow from outside, primarily from Iran and Central Asia, rather than directly from the Arabian Peninsula,” write Haque and his colleagues.
“The findings seem to corroborate archaeological, historical and linguistic evidence that the majority of Indian Muslims are descendants of local people who converted,” says Amalendu Mukherjee, a former professor of history, Calcutta University. “For that matter, many of the military invaders, such as the first Mughal ruler Babur’s forefathers, were also converts — they embraced Islam just a few generations before he was born.”
According to Mukherjee, DNA imprints are the latest evidence in the arsenal of a historian. Another eminent historian (who doesn’t want to be named), however, doesn’t support studies on religion based on DNA. He says, “I don’t think there is any need of DNA profiling of the followers of a particular religion. In any case, they’ve found something very obvious.”
On the contrary, Susanta Roychoudhury, one of the pioneers of genetic anthropology in India, believes that such studies can dispel any doubt regarding the history of human migration in the country. “The study is unique and addresses an important issue,” says Roychoudhury, deputy director of the Indian Institute of Chemical Biology, Calcutta. “It proves once again that there is a fundamental genetic unity in the seemingly diverse ethnic India and that there is no Hindu or Muslim identity in the genetic realm.”