Genes inspected, Hate Word resurrected

 ‘Pure’ is not just an innocent adjective. It can turn vicious when applied to ‘race.’

genes
PC: science.org

In September 2019, a research article crucially important for South Asia was published in Science under the title “The formation of human populations in South and Central Asia” (Science Vol. 365, No. 6457). Based on the genetic study of  several hundred ‘ancient humans’, the article was jointly authored by 108 collaborating scientists working in some of the best science institutions and in more than twenty countries.  It stated “The primary ancestral population of modern South Asians is a mixture of people related to early Holocene populations of Iran and South Asia that we detect in outlier individuals from two sites in cultural contact with the Indus Valley Civilization (IVC). After the IVC’s decline, this population mixed with north-western groups with Steppe ancestry to form the “Ancestral North Indians” (ANI) and also mixed with south-eastern groups to form the “Ancestral South Indians” The report generated further research by other scholars in Archeology and Genetics over the last few years.

A report with such a technical complexity and scientific depth normally tends to remain outside the horizon of interests of citizens. Yet, it acquires significance today since some deeply disturbing terms which the civilised world discarded long ago are being resurrected in India. The most crucial among these is the term ‘pure’.  On the face of it,  it is not an offending word. It gets used for any unadulterated variety of food or drink or jewellery metals.  That indeed has been its meaning in  all domains of language except one. The exception is Eugenics, a theory severely condemned as ‘an immoral science’. In it, the term ‘pure’, and its antonym ‘impure’ used as adjectives for ‘blood’ provide foundation for Racism.

In the German language of the 1930s, untermenschen–subhumans—was widely used for the people other than ‘the people with pure-Aryan blood’. Nine decades later, the world has yet not overcome the horror and the tragedy wrought by the untermenschen-sociology. It was not just an unscientific idea and an immoral politics but it actually became the theoretical handle for forcing millions of innocent humans to concentration camps and mass graves. The 19th century Johann Fitche’s ideas of Volkish nationalism, Eugenics applied to social restructuring, the storm-troopers of Hitler who made complete mockery of any civilised law and the technological might of Germany were the four pillars that created Hitlerism.

Hitler wanted to establish a “pure” Aryan race in Germany

The main justification provided by Hitler to violence and cruelty was that the Serbs, Poles, Jews, Gypsies, Asians were not of ‘the pure Aryan blood ‘and, therefore, did not deserve survival. Within two years of Hitler’s coming to power, the Jews were banned in May 1935 from entry into the armed forces and in September of that year the most shameful law for the ‘Protection of German Blood and Honour’ was passed. It criminalised intermarriages and sexual relations between the ‘pure blood Germans’ and the ‘polluting’ Jews.

Nazi Concentration Camp in Poland

Shocking though, the ugly term ‘racial purity’ has found its resurrection in India in 2022. The Union Ministry of Culture has put out, as the New Indian Express of 1st June reports,  funds for DNA profiling kits and instruments for “establishing the genetic history and trace the purity of races in India.” The Scientist at whose behest the project is being launched stated “We want to see how mutation and mixing of genes in the Indian population has happened in the past 10,000 years” he goes on to add,  “ We will then have a clear cut idea of the genetic history. You may even say that this will be an effort to trace the purity of races in India.”  The Culture Ministry quickly declared that the news was fake. The scientist in question distanced himself from the report by claiming that his words were wrongly reported. But, following the claim and the counter claim, a group of eminent scientists in India issued a statement warning of how dated and how dangerous the notion of ‘race’ is, and how Genetics no longer looks at it as ‘scientific.’ The group that issued the statement included some of the most illustrious Indian scientists and historians. Chilling and completely out of sync with the Constitution of India as the idea is, what indeed can be the ‘purity of races’ in the Indian context?  Is it tied with the age old caste system based on the fear of pollution, or is it trying to target the migrants to India during the medieval times?  The present regime requires no genetic tests for creating second-class citizens; it has already invented many methods to divide society.

genes
Dongria Kondh Adivasi

One can get to the heart of the project by looking at the list of ‘communities’ that have been subjected to gene-testing. They are typically the ‘language ‘isolates’—as the Nehalis in Buldhana district of Maharashtra—or the Adivasi such as the Jarwas and Nicobaris of Andaman islands or the Malpahadis and Kondhs of Odisha. These precisely were the communities targeted when two decades ago the pharmaceutical multinationals were in search of ‘unadulterated cells’. That search proved a mere chimera. If Genetics knows so, why go for the Adivasis again? The answer is, it is already well established that the different populations in India have claim to a shared mitochondrial DNA, the one inherited from the mother’s side. Using this already known scientific fact, the Culture Ministry’s project can easily move to ruling out the Adivasis as the sole first inhabitants of the sub-continent. That will clear the path for propagating the unscientific claim  that the imagined pre-Harappan Sanskrit speaking people migrated from India westward in the rest of Asia and towards the north into the steppes. The RSS view of history is obsessively interested in proving that Sanskrit was in use during the Indus Valley civilisation times. This view, entirely unsupported by scientific evidence claims it was first developed in India and then it spread out in the rest of the world as the ancestor of many languages outside India.

For half a century before Hitler came to power, similar arguments were put forward regarding the imagined prehistoric home of the Aryans. The game, this time, is the same, no matter if a group of more than hundred best scientists have already exposed the absurdity of the claim. The RSS has built for its cultural narrative on a castle of sand. Is the Culture Ministry building a pseudo-scientific show-case for it?  Its outcome will not be just the denying the Adivasis their cultural space, not just denying science its legitimacy but also legitimacy to social disharmony between the so-called pure and the so-called impure citizens. As genes get inspected and words get resurrected, the guarantee of equal citizenship given by the Constitution may get mired in hatred and stark injustice.  ‘Pure’ is not just an innocent adjective. It can turn vicious when applied to ‘race.’  Let us hope the Ministry of Culture publicly assures Indians that it will not be a party to the idea for which there should be no place in civilised society.

G. N. Devy is a Cultural activist based in Karnataka.  

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March 2024
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