by Tony Joseph
A few things follow from this discussion. The caste system in India is not coterminous with the arrival of the ‘Aryans’ in the subcontinent. It fell in place around the ankles of Indian society only about two millennia later. And by the time it came about, intermixing had already taken place to varying degrees. So Ambedkar was right when he stated that the Sudras were not genetically different from the rest of Indian caste society. But perhaps he did not go far enough – he seems to have still considered the tribals to be different from everyone else. We now know that this is not correct – because their genes run through everyone, no matter where in the caste hierarchy one is. Ambedkar was also wrong in denying ‘Aryan’ migrations altogether, though he cannot be blamed for the mistake since he did not have the genome data that we have today.
The cultural effervescence in eastern India or Magadha began in the centuries before the flowering of the Maurya empire and can be seen in such things as urbanization, new religions and philosophies and the rising affluence and prominence of the trading classes. It had already spread its influence and ideas across the subcontinent and far outside of it too, before the gates of the caste system were installed and closed, perhaps over several generations and centuries, thus turning the country inward in many ways.
A period of achievements and adventures
The five or six centuries before the beginning of the Common Era and a couple of centuries after it would rank as one of the most creative and progressive periods in the history of India. The composition of the Upanishads, the insights and philosophy of which have inspired millions across the world and influenced much of the thought of the Indian subcontinent; the rise of the world’s first missionary religions, Jainism and Buddhism, that took the teachings of their founders as well as new linguistic ideas and literary forms to all corners of India and, in the case of Buddhism, to many corners of the then known world; the bringing of east Asia under the spell of Indian cultural ideas; the mesmerizing of China . . . the list is as long as it is exciting. Most of the overseas overtures, outreaches and adventures would have begun either from the eastern or southern parts of India, which would have been without the kind of restrictions on intermixing and voyages across the seas that Aryavarta found necessary to impose.
The momentum of these strong cultural currents carried on for many centuries after a new social hierarchy and a new way of living became common in the subcontinent and mixing between groups of the kind that was seen earlier had become taboo. Sanskrit, as the new language of the elite and the medium of intellectual discourse, probably became more influential than any other language in ancient history, with the possible exception of Latin – and Sanskrit spread more by persuasion and buy-in rather than military invasions as in the case of Latin, as explained beautifully by Sheldon Pollock in his majestic book The Language of the Gods in the World of Men. Kings and aspiring kings all over the subcontinent and across the seas in south-east Asia wanted the prestige and comfort that Sanskrit offered, along with its theory of kingship and social structure that seemed to find a ready market among elites everywhere. A powerful body of literature including the two mega epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, which remain unrivalled in their ability to enthrall and inspire, carried in its sinews the new theory of power and social relationships that was perhaps as convincing for those at the receiving end of it as for those at the giving end of it.
This was not inevitable
But there was also a huge social cost to the new social construct, as indicated by genetics, again, as David Reich explains it in Who We Are and How We Got Here:
People tend to think India with its more than 1.3 billion people as having a tremendously large population, and indeed many Indians as well as foreigners see it this way. But genetically, this is an incorrect way to view the situation. The Han Chinese are truly a large population. They have been mixing freely for thousands of years. In contrast, there are few if any Indian groups that are demographically very large, and the degree of genetic differentiation among Indian jati groups living side by side in the same village is typically two or three times higher than the genetic differentiation between northern and southern Europeans. The truth is that India is composed of a large number of small populations.
In essence, the social structure that was imposed in the second century CE has cut the country into ‘tukde, tukde’ (pieces), to use the vocabulary of television news channel discussions in 2018. When you divide up a people like that, a society’s ability to maximize the potential of its individuals is severely affected and, equally importantly, fellow feeling even among people who live in the same locality is dampened, thus aborting the possibility of common actions that would benefit everyone. To what extent this has hampered India, as a nation, is perhaps a question that only sociologists will be able to answer, hopefully quantitatively, some day.
What we know now is that this was not inevitable. This was not the direction in which India was heading till around 100 CE when we seem to have halted suddenly, and turned back on an issue of crucial social importance. It would be wrong to think, though, that the ideological confrontation between what Aryavarta represented – or perhaps what an elite group within it represented and preferred – and what Magadha or eastern India represented and practised came to an abrupt halt. Buddhism kept going for centuries after its defeat in the land of its birth, though its position grew weaker and weaker.
That some of these battles were still being fought seven centuries after the arrival of the caste system in 100 CE we know from the work of Adi Shankara who took on the philosophies of Buddhism and Jainism. We also know this from archaeological and literary sources that have recorded continuing disputation, both intellectual and physical, and from theological movements like Bhakti that gave voice to the voiceless. That Bhimrao Ambedkar chose Buddhism for himself and his followers when he wanted to challenge still existing inequities in the twentieth century shows how the historical threads of a difference of opinion on the way a society ought to be constructed have continued to this day. In this sense, the spectacular ideological confrontation between Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and Bhimrao Ambedkar too can be seen as a contest between the best of the philosophy of life and society that the conservative Aryavarta had to offer and the best of the rationality and progressivism that Magadha had to offer.
To quote the historian Romila Thapar:
When we assess our cultural heritage, we often tend to forget or we downplay the fact that rationality and scepticism were very much a part of early Indian thought. This was not limited to the Carvaka/Lokayata thinkers but is also clear from some other schools of philosophy, as indeed it is noticeable in Buddhist and Jaina thought. We have inherited a tradition of questioning, which was not limited to philosophical thought but is apparent in popular literature as well. It would be as well to nurture that tradition.
Common questions, multiple answers
If our prehistory should teach us anything, it is that old cliché: unity in diversity. We live in a geographical region that can be termed a common civilizational and conversational area. The topics of our intellectual and cultural discussions, debates and disputes are uniquely our own but we do not have a consensual set of answers: our answers and responses are dependent upon the different traditions and historical experiences that different groups among us carry. We as Indians have lived through the same history too, but we have experienced some of it from different ends. The difference in political or even eating preferences between southern and eastern India on the one hand, and northern and western India on the other hand, are a reflection of the kind of differences that there are, and some of them are deep-going.
Take, for example, our food habits. It is clear that north Indians and western Indians consume far more milk and milk products and far less meat and fish than east Indians or south Indians. Politicians and commentators often look at these differences as sociopolitical in nature. But these have a more foundational reason: genes. Or more specifically, a gene mutation ca
lled 13910T which originated in Europe some 7500 years ago. This gene allows the human body to digest milk beyond infancy, into adulthood. Homo sapiens are the only mammals in the world who have acquired this ability. This is not surprising because before humans figured out they could keep cattle or goats and exploit them for milk, such a mutation would have been unnecessary. But once they started domesticating cattle, the ability to digest milk as adults would have became tremendously useful, and a mutated gene that fit the bill was selected over time by evolution.
The ability to digest milk even into adulthood evolved more than once, in four different areas of the world. But the European mutation 13910T is of particular interest to us because most Indians who have the ability to consume milk as adults carry this European version. A countrywide screening of DNA samples from all major language groups and regions of India2 to answer questions about lactase persistence (the technical term for the ability to digest milk after infancy) came to many conclusions, three of which are as follows: first, its distribution in India follows a general north-west to south-east declining pattern. Second, the mutation is identical to the European one. Third, only about a fifth of Indians can digest milk into adulthood, with people in western and northern India being the most likely to do so. The frequency of the gene ranges from over 40 per cent in certain parts of western and northern India to less than 1 per cent in parts of north-east India.
So this finally clarifies why east Indians or south Indians drink far less milk than north and west Indians. As adults, many of them are unable to digest it. It bears repeating that all children can consume milk, whether they have the gene or not. The difference between those who have the gene and those who do not is that while those with the gene can go on drinking and digesting milk for the rest of their lives, others will lose this ability sometime between their first year and adulthood.
What has all this got to do with vegetarianism, or the relative difference in consumption of meat and fish between the north and west on the one hand and south and east on the other? It is simply this: the ability to digest milk as adults gives those Indians with the gene mutation an option to substitute milk for meat or fish as a source of animal protein, which many of them seem to have taken. This is borne out by surveys of household consumer expenditure carried out by the National Sample Survey. These figures show that, by and large, states consuming a lot more milk consume a lot less meat, fish and eggs, while states consuming a lot more meat, fish and eggs consume a lot less milk.
Clearly, there is a trade-off happening here between milk and meat, but only in some regions. Please also note that regions consuming more milk and less meat are precisely those with a greater prevalence of the gene mutation, and vice versa.
What the gene story tells us is that there are good reasons behind the patterns we see on India’s sociological map and for the differing answers given to common questions of our civilization, including what to eat and what not to eat. To try to erase these differences and patterns to create a monoculture would be a typically un-Indian enterprise, prone to mishaps and doomed to failure.
One reason for the continuing and doomed attempt to force-fit an artificial uniformity on Indian culture is the way our history is written, often with justification. Until now, it made sense for history books to begin at that point in time when records became available and to ignore the earlier parts or, at most, dismiss them in a few paragraphs or pages. In India, this meant that everyone began to consider the beginning of our history to be around 4500 years ago, when the Harappan Civilization reached its mature stage, or perhaps when the Vedas were composed centuries later (with a lot many people wrongly conflating these two events). This was understandable because until recently there was no easy way of confirming what went on in prehistory and all that anyone could do was make intelligent guesses. But this is rapidly changing, in India and elsewhere, thanks to ancient DNA. As more and more of it is accessed and analysed all across Eurasia, we are gaining a more granular understanding of our own prehistory and the time has come to begin writing our history from where it should begin – with the arrival of modern humans in India some 65,000 years ago. History, if it is to be undistorted and connected with the people of the country, should be built the right side up: starting with the base, the foundation of our population today, the First Indians.
This shouldn’t be difficult. The genius of our civilization, during its best periods, has been inclusion, not exclusion. The Harappan Civilization was built by a population with the shared ancestry of First Indians and the early agriculturists of the Zagros region in Iran. When Buddhist missionaries first carried India’s cultural ethos beyond its borders to China, south-east Asia and central Asia, it was driven by a missionary zeal that was global and all-encompassing, without discrimination of caste, creed or race. It drew its principles and practices from all parts of India’s previous history including that of the ‘Aryans’, even while challenging rituals, sacrificial practices and ideas of hierarchy. It was, therefore, natural that Buddhism became the first philosophy in the world that felt the burning desire to share its insights and message of compassion with all humans, without regard for man-made or natural borders. That the Buddha’s message still flourishes, with 488 million adherents around the world trying to live up to the principles he enunciated, is testimony to the global appeal of a uniquely Indian philosophy, rooted in the same soil from which the Upanishads grew and drawing sustenance from the same impulses.
The two opposing views of India’s history – ‘the unchanging India’ that was somehow stuck in a bad place without knowing how to move on, as Karl Marx saw it, or an India that has degraded over time from the Vedic perfection of ‘time immemorial’ – are both wrong and based on misperceptions. India has been ever-changing, not unchanging, and its story is definitely not one of decline. India’s history has been dynamic, as full of energy and full of contention as any lively society’s history would be – and this, despite the dead weight of casteism that we have carried for two millennia.
So who are we Indians, really?
The best way we can define ourselves is as a multi-source civilization, not a single-source one, drawing its cultural impulses, its traditions and its practices from a variety of heredities and migration histories. The Out of Africa migrants, the fearless pioneering explorers who reached this land around sixty-five millennia ago and whose lineages still form the bedrock of our population; those who arrived from west Asia and contributed to the agricultural revolution and the building of the Harappan Civilization which then became the crucible for new practices, concepts and the Dravidian languages that enrich much of our culture today; those who came from east Asia, bringing with them new languages and plants and farming techniques; and those who migrated here from central Asia, carrying an early version of what would become a great language, Sanskrit, and all its associated beliefs and practices that have reshaped our society in fundamental ways; and those who came even later seeking refuge or for conquest or for trade, and then chose to stay – all have mingled and contributed to this civilization we call Indian. We are all Indians. And we are all migrants.
1‘It is perhaps no coincidence that Pusyamitra, the Sunga general who killed the last Maurya and created the Sunga dynasty, settled, if Kalidasa’s Malavikagnimitra can be trusted, not in Pataliputra, but far from it, in Vidisa,’ writes Bronkhorst.
2Irene Gallago Romero, et al., ‘Herders of Indian and European Cattle Share Their Predomiant Allele for Lactase Persistence’, Molecular Biology and Evolution (2012).
Appendix
The Valley of the Ghaggar–Hakra
Despite the mounting ancient DNA evidence for migrations from the Eurasian Steppes that changed the demography in a vast region extending from Europe to South Asia, there are some who insist that the story of the ‘Aryan’ migrations is a vast conspiracy spanning multiple generations, continents and scientific disciplines. One of their main arguments is built around identifying the mighty river Sarasvati mentioned in
the Rigveda with the rain-fed, mostly dry, seasonal river Ghaggar that originates in the foothills of the Shivalik Hills and flows through Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan before going across to Cholistan and then Sindh, both in Pakistan. The river is mostly known as Ghaggar in India, and Hakra after that. It is commonly accepted today that there were a large number of Harappan settlements in the valley of the Ghaggar–Hakra and that the Harappan Civilization is best described as being based on two river systems – the Indus and the Ghaggar–Hakra.
From here on, this is how the argument of the migration denialists goes: Ghaggar–Hakra is indeed the ancient Sarasvati because it fits neatly into the geographic description of the ancient river in the Rigveda as lying between the Yamuna and the Sutlej. Sarasvati became the weak, seasonal stream that it is today only because sometime around 2000 BCE tectonic activity diverted the Himalayan snowmelt that used to flow into it. One tectonic event diverted the Sutlej, which used to flow into the Sarasvati/Ghaggar–Hakra, and made it join the river Beas and then both together flowed into the Indus. The other tectonic event caused a terrace to rise in the Himalayas, diverting glacial waters away from the Sarasvati and into the Yamuna.
This enfeeblement of the Sarasvati is what caused the decline of the large number of Harappan settlements all along the Sarasvati basin – from Rakhigarhi and Kalibangan in India to Ganweriwala in Pakistan – and, consequently, the end of the Harappan Civilization itself. But since the Rigveda talks about the Sarasvati in glowing terms, and refers to it as a ‘mighty river’ that is ‘powerful enough to break mountaintops’, the Vedic people must have been present in the Sarasvati valley when the river had not yet lost its power and that means they must have been there during Harappan times. And, therefore, the Vedic people are the Harappans.
This may look like a thin argument to put up against all the evidence for Steppe migrations into Europe and south Asia, but it is an argument that has got attention because of the epic resonance of the name of the river Sarasvati. However, there are serious problems with the argument. Let us go through them one by one.