http://www.rediff.com/news/2005/mar/08kak.htm
March
07, 2005
Ideas
about early Indian history continue to play an important role
in political ideology of contemporary India. On the one side are
the Left and Dravidian parties, which believe that invading Aryans
from the northwest pushed the Dravidians to south India and India's
caste divisions are a consequence of that encounter. Even the
development of Hinduism is seen through this anthropological lens.
This view is essentially that of colonial historians which was
developed over a hundred years ago.
On the other side are the nationalist parties, which believe that
the Aryan languages are native to India. These groups cite the
early astronomical dates in the Vedas, noting these texts are
rooted firmly in the Indian geographical region. But Leftist scholars
consider such evidence suspect, politically motivated, and chauvinistic.
In
recent years, the work of archaeologists and historians of science
concluded that there is no material evidence for any large scale
migrations into India over the period of 4500 to 800 BC, implicitly
supporting the traditional view of Indian history. The Left has
responded by conceding that there were probably no invasions;
rather, there were many small scale migrations by Aryans who,
through a process of cultural dominance, imposed their language
on north Indians.
The
drama of text-book revisions, both during the NDA and the current
UPA governments, is essentially a struggle to impose one or the
other of these viewpoints. In any other country, such a fight
would have fought in the pages of academic journals; but in India,
where the government decides what history is, it is a political
matter.
Now,
in an important book titled The Real Eve: Modern Man's Journey
out of Africa (New York: Carroll and Graf Publishers, 2003), the
prominent Oxford University scholar Stephen Oppenheimer has synthesised
the available genetic evidence together with climatology and archaeology
with conclusions which have bearing on the debate about the early
population of India. This work has received great attention in
the West, and it will also interest Indians tremendously.
Much
of Oppenheimer's theory is based on recent advances in studies
of mitochondrial DNA, inherited through the mother, and Y chromosomes,
inherited by males from the father. Oppenheimer makes the case
that whereas Africa is the cradle of all mankind; India is the
cradle of all non-African peoples. Man left Africa approximately
90,000 years ago, heading east along the Indian Ocean, and established
settlements in India. It was only during a break in glacial activity
50,000 years ago, when deserts turned into grasslands, that people
left India and headed northwest into the Russian steppes and on
into Eastern Europe, as well as northeast through China and over
the now submerged Bering Strait into the Americas.
In
their migration to India, African people carried the mitochondrial
DNA strain L3 and Y chromosome line M168 across south Red Sea
across the southern part of the Arabian Peninsula. On the maternal
side the mtDNA strain L3 split into two daughters which Oppenheimer
labels Nasreen and Manju. While Manju was definitely born in India
the birthplace of Nasreen is tentatively placed by him in southern
Iran or Baluchistan. One Indian Manju subclan in India is as old
as 73,000 years, whereas European man goes back to less than 50,000
years.
Considering
the paternal side, Oppenheimer sees M168 as having three sons,
of whom Seth was the most important one. Seth, in turn, had five
sons which are named by him as Jahangir, H, I, G and Krishna.
Krishna, born in India, is the ancestor of the peoples of East
Asia, Central Asia, Oceania and West Eurasia (through the M17
mutation). This is what Oppenheimer says about M17:
South
Asia is logically the ultimate origin of M17 and his ancestors;
and sure enough we find highest rates and greatest diversity of
the M17 line in Pakistan, India, and eastern Iran, and low rates
in the Caucasus. M17 is not only more diverse in South Asia than
in Central Asia but diversity characterizes its presence in isolated
tribal groups in the south, thus undermining any theory of M17
as a marker of a 'male Aryan Invasion of India.'
Study
of the geographical distribution and the diversity of genetic
branches and stems again suggests that Ruslan, along with his
son M17, arose early in South Asia, somewhere near India, and
subsequently spread not only south-east to Australia but also
north, directly to Central Asia, before splitting east and west
into Europe and East Asia.
Oppenheimer
argues that the Eurocentric view of ancient history is also incorrect.
For example, Europeans didn't invent art, because the Australian
aborigines developed their own unique artistic culture in complete
isolation. Indian rock art is also extremely ancient, going back
to over 40,000 BC, so perhaps art as a part of culture had arisen
in Africa itself. Similarly, agriculture didn't arise in the Fertile
Crescent; Southeast Asia had already domesticated many plants
by that time.
Oppenheimer
concludes with two extraordinary conclusions: 'First, that the
Europeans' genetic homeland was originally in South Asia in the
Pakistan/Gulf region over 50,000 years ago; and second, that the
Europeans' ancestors followed at least two widely separated routes
to arrive, ultimately, in the same cold but rich garden. The earliest
of these routes was the Fertile Crescent. The second early route
from South Asia to Europe may have been up the Indus into Kashmir
and on to Central Asia, where perhaps more than 40,000 years ago
hunters first started bringing down game as large as mammoths.'
This
synthesis of genetic evidence makes it possible to understand
the divide between the north and the south Indian languages. It
appears that the Dravidian languages are more ancient, and the
Aryan languages evolved in India over thousands of years before
migrations took them to central Asia and westward to Europe. The
proto-Dravidian languages had also, through the ocean route, reached
northeast Asia, explaining the connections between the Dravidian
family and the Korean and the Japanese.
Perhaps
this new understanding will encourage Indian politicians to get
away from the polemics of who the original inhabitants of India
are, since that should not matter one way or the other in the
governance of the country. Indian politics has long been plagued
by the Aryan invasion narrative, which was created by English
scholars of the 19th century; it is fitting that another Englishman,
Stephen Oppenheimer, should announce its demise.