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Daily Current Affairs

Caste System and Genes

Social Issues Features of Indian Society

29-Jan-16

A genetic study has traced the emergence of caste system in India to about 1,575 years ago during the rule of the Gupta dynasty. This study is conducted by researchers from the National Institute of BioMedical Genomics (NIBMG) in West Bengal.

Observations:

During Gupta Period: Ruling Hindu elite enforced and advocated Vedic Brahminism. A lot of social transformation took place. Notable among these was the enforcement of social strictures against marriage between castes, as enshrined in the Dharmasastra.
Pala Dynasty (West Bengal Brahmins): By looking at the block lengths of ancestral genes, research could pinpoint the era when mixing of castes ended. In the case of West Bengal Brahmins, marriages with the northeastern communities continued until the arrival of the 8th century Pala dynasty which cut off these regions.
Chalukyas and Rashtrakuta(on Marathas):For the Marathas, it was during Chalukyas and Rashtrakutas (nearly 1,100 years ago) when warriors (Kshatriyas) were drawn from the peasantry class and eventually, the mixing of the population with tribes and Dravidian communities halted.
Mixing of tribes: Unsurprisingly, it was mixing between tribes of various ancestries that ended the last.
Patriarchy and Elite Dominance:- Upper caste populations continued to give genetic inputs to lower caste and tribal populations — but not vice-versa. This is “consistent with elite dominance and patriarchy” of the upper cast.

There was also a report conducted by Harvard, MIT, and the CSIR-Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology in Hyderabad on genes. Research observed that five thousand years ago, the ancestors of modern Indians were comprised primarily of two groups: ancestral North Indians, who related to people of Central Asia, the Middle East, the Caucasus, and Europe, and ancestral South Indians, who are not closely related to groups outside the subcontinent. The mixture between these two groups and their many subcategories happened mostly between 4,200 and 1,900 years ago. This period is significant as it was a "time of profound change in India, characterized by the deurbanization of the Indus civilization, increasing population density in the central and downstream portions of the Gangetic system, shifts in burial practices, and the likely ?rst appearance of Indo-European languages and Vedic religion in the subcontinent.