THE TRUTH ABOUT CASTE
Dr. Jai Maharaj
Editorial
The Pioneer
Saturday, October 1, 2005
A needless hullabaloo is being created over the
Congress's list of candidates for the Bihar Assembly
election because it mentions the caste identities of the
exalted worthies who have been honoured with the party's
poll symbol.
It is common knowledge, both within the confines of
political party offices and among voters that candidates
for elections are chosen on the basis of what has come to
be known as their "winnability". Across the political
spectrum, in most cases this factor is defined by a
candidate's caste identity. The underlying presumption is
that if a candidate belongs to the same caste as that of
the numerically or socially dominant segment of voters in
a constituency, it will enable consolidation of votes in
his or her support.
In fact, elaborate arithmetic is involved in working out
the "winning" caste combination of a constituency and
then finding a candidate who best fits the bill. More
often than not, merit as defined by the chattering class
is discounted while a premium is attached to caste and
community. This process of selection, offensive as it
might seem to those who are ethically and morally opposed
to caste identities, has existed ever since 1952.
The upsurge of identity politics after Mr VP Singh's
implementation of the Mandal Commission's recommendation
on quotas for socially and educationally backward
classes, euphemistically defined as OBCs, has provided a
veneer of legitimacy to an otherwise unwholesome aspect
of our political process and social reality. Others would
argue that caste is integral to the Indian identity
irrespective of the religious faith of an individual.
This argument is not without basis; after all, when
Government accords official recognition to caste
certificates and the ambit of caste quotas continues to
be expanded, it makes little sense to pretend that we
have moved closer to the casteless society which the
founders of our Republic spoke of so passionately.
Indeed, it is precisely because of electoral compulsions
as also official policies that flow from identity
politics and social realities that we should now
seriously consider holding the 2011 Census on the basis
of caste. It makes little sense to continue to
extrapolate on the basis of the 1931 Census - the last
time community strength was quantified according to caste
identities - and frame political, as also official,
decisions on the basis of numbers that could be entirely
misleading.
The numerical strength of those belonging to any
particular caste is anybody's guess; estimates that are
used are neither statistically sound nor do they
necessarily reflect the reality or its near approximate.
Therefore, a caste-based Census would make the task of
Government as well as political parties a lot more easier
- they will not have to depend on flawed estimates and
misleading figures.
More importantly, political parties will not have to
pretend embarrassment when they are found factoring in
the caste identities of candidates while selecting
nominees for elections. Even otherwise, the Congress has
missed an excellent opportunity to stand up and say that
the party has not done anything that can be considered
even remotely extraordinary.
Every political party does what the Congress is now being
taunted for doing; those who claim otherwise, are
hypocrites. As for the chattering class that feigns
outrage at the mention of anything to do with caste, it
would do well to remember that India begins where their
anti-septic drawing rooms end. The truth out there is
vastly different from the imagined reality.
More at:
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http://www.mantra.com/jai
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Hindu Holocaust Museum
http://www.mantra.com/holocaust
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http://www.hindu.org
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The truth about Islam and Muslims
http://www.flex.com/~jai/satyamevajayate
The terrorist mission of Jesus stated in the Christian bible:
"Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not so send
peace, but a sword.
"For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the
daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in
law.
"And a man's foes shall be they of his own household.
- Matthew 10:34-36.
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Dr. Homilete
New genetic evidence for the origins of castes indicates that the upper
castes are more European than Asian.
R. RAMACHANDRAN
THE caste-based social hierarchy is deeply entrenched in Indian society
even today, but the origins of the system as sociologists and historians
now understand, remain an enigma. It certainly goes as far back as the
second millennium B.C. when the Aryans, the migrating Indo-Iranian or
Indo-European people, entered the country from the northwest and drove
southward the proto-Asian and Dravidic speaking populations inhabiting
the north. Literary evidence for the stratification of the society, at
least in terms of references to the duties of the highest caste, namely
the Brahmin, exists in the oldest text of the land, namely the Rig Veda
(1500-1200 B.C.). The emergence of the caste system is thus associated
with the arrival of the Aryans.
However, many sociologists believe that some kind of a hierarchical
social order, in terms of an individual's occupation and duties, was in
place perhaps ahead of the arrival of the Aryans. Its evolution into the
caste or the varna system as we know today - with the four distinct
castes of Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaisya and Sudra in the order of social
standing - probably occurred with the settling of the Aryans who
sanctified and legitimised the social order in their own terms which had
a distinct religious underpinning. Some sociologists hold that the
societal stratification in terms of rights and duties of the individual
was a creation of the Aryans in their bid to exercise power over the
indigenous proto-Asian populations of North India.
An anthropologically pertinent question, therefore, is what really are
the origins of the caste Hindu populations of today who make up nearly
80 per cent of India's one billion population. In recent times, with the
rise of strident nationalism in the form of "Hindutva" ideology, which
rejects the premise that Aryans were outsiders and views them as part of
the continuum from the Indus valley civilisation, an unequivocal answer
to this may have political implications. While material evidence of
ancient history has not been able to resolve this issue, modern
population genetics, based on analyses of the variations in the DNA in
population sets, has tools to provide a more authoritative answer.
Certain inherited genes carry the imprint of this information through
the ages.
An international study led by Michale J. Bamshad of the Eccles Institute
of Human Genetics of the University of Utah of caste origins has found
(the findings have been reported in a recent issue of the journal Genome
Research) that members of the upper castes are genetically more similar
to Europeans, Western Eurasians to be specific, whereas the lower castes
are more similar to Asians. This finding is in tune with the
expectations based on historical reasoning and the prevalent views of
many social historians. In exercising their superiority over native
proto-Asian populations, the Aryans would have appointed themselves to
higher rank castes. The 18-member research team includes scientists from
the United States, the United Kingdom, India and Estonia. The
collaborating Indian scientists were anthropologists Bhaskar Rao, J.
Mastan Naidu and B. V. Ravi Prasad from Andhra University,
Visakhapatnam, and P. Govinda Reddy from the University of Madras.
There have been genetic studies in the past that tried to answer this
question but their results have been equivocal, in the sense that some
have found European origins and some Asian origins. According to Partha
P. Majumder, a population geneticist with the Indian Statistical
Institute (ISI), Kolkata, who has written a commentary on the work in
the same issue of the journal, the primary reason for this was the lack
of data on a large uniform set of genetic markers from populations of
India and central/west Asia. This study, where the researchers have used
a battery of genomic markers and DNA sequences spanning three genomic
regions, is a landmark, says Majumder. "The study provides an incisive
genomic view of castes and their origins," he has written.
"It is conceivable that the Aryan contact should have been progressively
lower as one descended the varna ladder. The genetic expectation,
therefore, is that the proportions of those genes (or genomic features)
that 'characterised' the Aryan speakers should progressively decline
from the highest varna to the lowest and a reverse trend should be
observed with respect to those genes that 'characterised' the indigenous
Indians," Majumder says.
The three different genomic regions the study has looked at include two
gender-specific genes and one biparentally inherited gene. Mitochondrial
DNA (mtDNA), the DNA contained in mitochondria which are tiny organelles
in each cell that generates the energy required by the cell, is
exclusively derived from the mother. Similarly, the Y-chromosome, which
defines the male gender in mammals, is passed on exclusively by the father.
Interestingly, an analysis of the genetic variations in the markers
associated with the maternally inherited mtDNA and paternally inherited
Y-chromosome show strikingly different trends. Maternally inherited DNA
was overall found to be more similar to Asians than to Europeans, though
the similarity to Europeans increases as we go up the caste ladder.
Paternally inherited DNA, on the other hand, was overall more similar to
Europeans than to Asians but, unlike in the case of maternal
inheritance, with no significant variation in affinity across the
castes. This is intriguing, but there is a plausible explanation.
Migrating Eurasian populations are likely to have been mostly males who
integrated into the upper castes and took native women. Inter-caste
marriage practices, while generally taboo, are occasionally allowed, in
which women can marry into an upper caste and move up in the social
hierarchy. However, such upward mobility is not permissible for men. The
caste labels of men are thus permanent, while women, by means of their
limited mobility, cause a gene flow across caste barriers. This is the
reason, according to the researchers, for the differing affinities of
gender-specific genes among castes to continental populations.
In fact, in a study carried out in 1997, the results of which were
published in 1998 in Nature, the same research group had mapped this
female gene flow among caste groups in Andhra Pradesh. Analogously, in
1999 Majumder and colleagues examined the genetic impact of this social
custom preventing upward mobility of males in the caste hierarchy. They
looked at six genetic markers for the male inherited Y-chromosome and
found that there was little sharing between castes of the features
pertaining to the markers. This phenomenon has been described by Bamshad
and company as "modulation of evolutionary forces by social processes"
instead of through the normal, purely natural, processes of genetic
drift and mutation.
Bamshad and associates examined 40 additional bi-parentally inherited
genes as well, which also confirmed the results obtained from mtDNA and
Y-chromosome markers that Hindu upper castes are genetically closer to
Europeans. They thus conclude that Indian caste Hindus "are more likely
to be of proto-Asian origin with West Eurasian admixture resulting in
rank related and sex-specific differences in their genetic affinities to
Asians and Europeans."
Basically the study carried out three sets of comparisons of genetic
variations respectively in the mtDNA, the Y-chromosome and the 40
specific autosomal (of chromosomes other than the sex chromosomes X and
Y) gene sequences in a sample of 265 males, belonging to eight Telugu
speaking castes, from Visakhapatnam district. Comparisons were made
within this sample and to 400 individuals from tribal and Hindi-speaking
populations within the country and 350 Africans, Asians and Europeans.
The eight castes chosen were Niyogi and Vydiki Brahmin, Kshatriya,
Vysya, Telega and Turpu Kapu, Yadava, Relli, Madiga and Mala.
Significantly, the castes were ranked as 'upper', 'middle' and 'lower'
instead of the four-level hierarchy of the traditional varna
classification. Such a classification has in recent times apparently
become more popular among anthropologists. Brahmins, Kshatriyas and
Vysyas were grouped as 'upper' caste, Kapu and Yadavas as 'middle' caste
and the remaining three as 'lower'. "In studies pertaining to origins of
castes, one is liable to draw incorrect inferences by including castes
belonging to different varnas in the same ranked cluster," points out
Majumder.
For the extraction of DNA from the sampled population, after obtaining
informed consent, about 8 ml of whole blood or five plucked scalp hairs
were collected from each participant. The DNA extraction and its
amplification by the Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) technique was
carried out at Andhra University by Indian scientists. To conform to the
ethical guidelines of research with the human genome, approvals and
clearances were obtained from Andhra University and the Government of
India, according to the authors of the paper. (These DNA samples are
being maintained by Andhra University where a laboratory has been set up
to carry out such analyses.)
Analysis of "genetic distances" - a measure of genetic similarity and
affinity - of markers of mtDNA, the maternally inherited DNA, between
caste populations and continental populations shows that, irrespective
of caste rank, each caste group is most closely related to Asians and is
most dissimilar from Africans. And as one moves from the lower castes to
the upper castes, the genetic distances to Asians increases, suggesting
that Indian populations are predominantly proto-Asian but with
affinities to West Eurasian genes. The West Eurasian admixture is,
however, proportional to the ranking among castes. Analysis of a special
set of mtDNA markers (called haplotypes), whose loci in the genome are
closely linked and which tend to get inherited together, also showed
that the West Eurasian admixture amounted to 20-30 per cent of mtDNA
haplotypes.
Similar "genetic distance" analysis using the paternally inherited
Y-chromosome presented, as indicated earlier, a distinctly different
pattern of population relationships among castes and among castes and
continental populations. In contrast to the mtDNA distances,
Y-chromosome data do not suggest a closer affinity to Asians. The upper
castes are more similar to Europeans than to Asians, the middle castes
are equidistant from the two groups and the lower castes are most
similar to Asians. The genetic distances between caste populations and
Africans increase as one moves from lower to upper caste groups.
Looking at the variations in a particular special set of Y-chromosome
markers, the study disaggregates the European population into Northern,
Southern and Eastern Europeans. The analysis of genetic distances shows
that each caste is most closely related to Eastern Europeans. Moreover,
the genetic distance between Eastern Europeans and upper castes is half
the distance between the middle or lower castes and the Eastern
Europeans. The authors interpret this as the Indian Y chromosomes,
particularly upper caste Y-chromosomes, being more similar to European
than to Asian Y-chromosomes.
One limitation of the study is the restricted geographical region,
namely a single district of Andhra Pradesh, from which the sample of
caste Hindu populations have been obtained. The likely reason is that of
the logistics of achieving rapport with local populations and getting
their consent for genetic analysis.
But according to the researchers this also helped in "minimising the
confounding effect of geographical differences between populations."
Moreover, the sample size of 265 is too small for drawing conclusions
about a Hindu caste population of about 800 million. For example, the
number of Kshatriyas in one comparison set is as small as 10. The
authors do recognise this limitation in their paper and emphasise the
need for carrying out similar analysis in other regions of the country.
They, however, remark that because of the ubiquity of the caste system,
it is reasonable to predict similar patterns in caste populations in
other areas. But according to Majumder, replicating the study in other
areas is, in fact, imperative before general conclusions about origins
of Indian caste populations can be drawn.
"It is not generally realised that the caste society in a sense was a
very elastic society and a caste bearing the same name may have very
different origins in different geographical regions," he points out.
According to him there are examples when a tribe dispersed over a large
geographical region took up different occupations in different
sub-regions and fitted itself into the caste hierarchy on different
rungs. Different Brahmin castes of Maharashtra, for example, probably
had different origins, he says. "Thus, the origin of caste populations
may not be uniform over the entire country," adds Majumder. It is also
reasonable to assume that northern societies are more likely to reflect
more truly the real origins of caste than societies down south where
Dravidic features are likely to be reflected in the genetics of the
populations. Also, several social forces may have interfered to result
in the stratification as is evident today.