The Ocean of Churn: How the Indian Ocean Shaped Human History

by Sanjeev Sanyal

Genetic markers also suggest that this mixing went on for more than two thousand years, so much so that there are no ‘pure’ ANI and ASI any more. As a recent study put it: ‘The most remarkable aspect of the ANI–ASI mixture is how pervasive it was, in the sense that it has left its mark in nearly every group in India. It has affected not just traditionally upper-caste groups, but also traditionally lower- caste and isolated tribes, all of whom are united in their history of mixture in the past few thousand years.’21 In other words, after all this blending, the majority of Indians are most closely related to each other irrespective of their ancient origins. Sorry if this scientific finding offends any ‘pure race’ advocates! Then, around AD 100 (a new study suggests AD 50022) the mixing abruptly stopped as different castes and tribes became strictly endogamous. The reasons for this are hazy, but castes do seem to be quite fluid in the oldest Indian texts and become much more rigid in later writings (although endogamous, the relative positions of most castes continued to be fluid into modern times). A fuller discussion on caste is beyond the scope of this book, but genetics has broadly confirmed the assertion by Dr Bhim Rao Ambedkar that the Indian caste system was a case of ‘superimposition of endogamy on exogamy’.