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1. Harvard University takes charge
2. California State Board of Education threatened with international scandal
3. The roots of Hindu conspiracy
4. California mess with words
5. American Journal of Human Genetics (December 2005)
6. Human Empowerment Conference, Houston, presents genetic study findings (September 2005)
7. Genetic evidence cited in Curriculum Commission hearings (December 2005)
8. Genetic studies by University of Cambridge (November 2005)
9. Global conspiracy against Harvard U., Michael Witzel and his 46 co-signatories (November 2005)
10. BBC brands Aryan Invasion/Migration/Influx/Trickle-in Theory as a racist ploy and a dangerous theory (June 2005)

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1. Harvard University takes charge 

What started as a threatened international scandal from Harvard University, has turned into a global Hindu conspiracy attempting to show that Hindu civilization was nurtured and developed by the Hindu. This conspiracy was hatched to reject aryan supremacy postulated through Aryan Invasion/Migration/Influx/Trickle-in Theory (AIT). As of the writing of this report (20 December 2005), it is learnt from reliable sources that international press is keen on unraveling this conspiracy and is close on the heels of a Harvard University Professor.  

Michael Witzel of Harvard University has been leading the charge of a valiant effort launched by Harvard University to teach Hindu children a lesson.  

Early on, Witzel used the Harvard University letterhead (in the letter written on November 8, 2005) to impress upon the California State Board of Education the weight of the University behind the effort. In a complementary effort on an email list called Indo-Eurasian_Research, Witzel underscored  the international scandal by demonstrating that the most sacred of the Hindu mantras or sacred chants was a goat’s call: 

“Many short mantras (the later biija mantras) like oM have humble origins the Veda. Him (hiM) is used in the Veda to call your goat .. and your wife.” Vide message number 2133 at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Indo-Eurasian_research/ An account of the California Textbook mess is provided by Kalavai Venkat (Dec. 6, 2005) in the article, California Textbook Trial http://www.justindian.com/blogs/blogdisplay.aspx?contributor=Kalavai%20Venkat

Early hints of the Hindu conspiracy are found at the newsreports of Hindu Press International  (December 4, 2005) CA Commission Accepts Most Hindu Changes to Textbook

2. California State Board of Education threatened with international scandal 

Sensing a budding conspiracy, the strategist Witzel quickly co-opted his department Chair, Kuijp, (in an email circulated by Witzel November 26, 2005 and reported by Bahujan yahoogroup). Thus Witzel successfully prepared the groundwork for a full-blown international scandal launched under the aegis of Harvard University. He took care to co-opt 46 ‘internationally known researchers’ as co-signatories (later expanded by the addition of 3 more plus Kuijp who were kept in the information loop). The Bahujan group’s involvement was made possible by Lars Martin Fosse’s letter to John Dayal (of Dalit fame) and Amarjit Singh (of Khalistan fame).   

The November 8 letter which threatened an international scandal is at http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/witzelletter.pdf  The subsequent mail exchanges were documented vide message number 8893 at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Bahujan/message/8893 Other quotable quotes: “[John Dayal] opens his mouth and wields his pen only to spew venom on the Hindu community.” Benjamin, P.N.: When Intolerance Begets Loss Of Reason. Available at http://www.hvk.org/articles/0905/43.html According to the South Asia Terrorism Portal [SATP], Amarjit Singh is closely associated with the banned terror organization International Sikh Youth Federation [ISYF]. http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/kpsgill/security/04Feb21Pio.htm 

California State Board of Education was duly warned by Witzel of an emerging international scandal while participating as a three-man Content Review Panel (CRP) together with Wolpert of University of California, Los Angeles and Heitzman of University of California, Davis. See the credentials of the CRP at http://www.india-forum.com/articles/55/1/Harvard-professor-launches-anti-Hindu-Crusade  

3. The roots of Hindu conspiracy 

It now turns out that the Hindu parents of Hindu children studying in US schools, have co-opted many universities and  a large media moghul, the BBC, as part of an international conspiracy to counter an effective scandal so carefully engineered early in November 2005 and continued in December 2005.  

The conspiracy becomes complicated because of the technical DNA/Genetic terms used. The conspiracy simply tries to demonstrate using scientific jargon that people of India were indigenous to India, that there were no groups of people called Aryans and that the ‘Aryans’ (read: Indo-Europeans or ancestors of present-day Europe) never entered from elsewhere into India. The mt DNA (mother’s DNA markers) and Y-chromosome markers clearly demonstrate that the people of Bharat that is India are of indigenous, local origin from within India, thus negating the Aryan Invasion/Migration/Influx/Trickle-in Theory (AIT). 

Unwittingly, even the church in England has become a part of this conspiracy. The Chapel of Oxford College took the lead, and presented William Jones wearing a skull-cap on a marble panel, showing Jones to be a missionary, though he had earlier been lauded  as a Sanskrit-lover, as the Father of Indo-European Linguistics attesting to the supremacy of Europeans and their burden to civilize many colonies including the Indian colony. Hindus were shown on the marble panel cowering at the feet of William Jones.  See photo at http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/kalyan97/detail?.dir=57ce&.dnm=e3ad.jpg  

Complementing this cleverly contrived humiliation of the Hindu, the conspiracy gathered momentum in October 2005 when the BBC produced a report that Aryan Invasion/Migration/Influx/Trickle-in Theory was a racist ploy to subjugate India as a  British Aryan colony. 

4. California mess with words 

In the wake of the review of a mere set of textbooks used in California state, the Hindu conspirators created a mess asking for about 200 words to be changed in the textbooks. Harvard University was quick to allege religious-political motivations behind this request and broadly suggested that there was no need for any editorial changes. In one emphatic reference, the Content Review Panel (CRP composed of Witzel, Wolpert and Heitzman) thundered that the children in California schools shouldn’t really care if Ramayana – an epic in Hindu tradition -- was earlier than Mahabharata, another epic in Hindu tradition. The CRP also said that it was essential to use the recently-coined political word, dalit, apart from emphasizing the Aryan Migration Theory to show that Aryans influxed into India to civilize the tribes. Hindu groups tried to present evidence that the 'caste system' was a British colonial creation with the start of the 1871 census. (Caste itself is not a bharatiya word but a Portuguese word, casta, meaning 'race'). The words used in Hindu tradition to discuss social groups are varna and jaati. Jaati refers to birth, to species, to genus as seen from innumerable references in texts in the veda-bauddha-jaina continuum of Hindu tradition. Jaati in Telug means 'nation'. Varna is derived from dhaatu, root vr. 'to choose'; that is choice of skills and professions based on one's proclivities and preferences for social participation. 

These recommendations of CRP were viewed by the Hindu parents as attempts at continued humiliation of Hindu children in the classrooms as people without a proud heritage but had to be civilized about 4,000 years ago, consistent with the date of creation of the universe (in 4004 BC) according to the Biblical tradition. 

To the dismay of the Harvard University scandal panel, new co-conspirators have now emerged. One is Indian Statistical Institute, and the other is Stanford University. These two institutions have been further complemented by a few petitioners referring to genetic/DNA studies pointing to the indigenous origins and evolution of Hindu civilization. 

This article documents the blow-by-blow account of this Hindu conspiracy. 

5. American Journal of Human Genetics (December 2005) 

The URL is: http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/AJHG/journal/preprints/AJHG42812.preprint.pdf

The American Journal of Human Genetics, Posted: Dec. 16, 2005 This finding complements the earlier genetic studies summarised by Dr. Chandrakant Panse (16 Sept. 2005).  

Polarity and Temporality of High-Resolution Y-Chromosome Distributions in India Identify Both Indigenous and Exogenous Expansions and Reveal Minor Genetic Influence of Central Asian Pastoralists by Sanghamitra Sengupta,¹ Lev A. Zhivotovsky,² Roy King,³ S. Q. Mehdi,⁴ Christopher A. Edmonds, ³ Cheryl-Emiliane T. Chow,³ Alice A. Lin,³ Mitashree Mitra,⁵ Samir K. Sil,⁶ A. Ramesh,⁷ M. V. Usha Rani, ⁸ Chitra M. Thakur,⁹ L. Luca Cavalli-Sforza,³ Partha P. Majumder,¹ and Peter A. Underhill<sup>3

1</sup> Human Genetics Unit, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, India; ²N. I. Vavilov Institute of General Genetics, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow; ³Department of Genetics, Stanford University, Stanford; ⁴Biomedical and Genetic Engineering Division, Dr. A. Q. Khan Research Laboratories, Islamabad; ⁵School of Studies in Anthropology, Pandit Ravishankar Shukla University, Raipur, India; ⁶University of Tripura, Tripura, India; ⁷Department of Genetics, University of Madras, Chennai, India; ⁸Department of Environmental Sciences, Bharathiar University, Coimbatore, India; and ⁹B. J. Wadia Hospital for Children, Mumbai, India  

Received July 26, 2005; accepted for publication November 3, 2005; electronically published December 16, 2005.Although considerable cultural impact on social hierarchy and language in South Asia is attributable to the arrival of nomadic Central Asian pastoralists, genetic data (mitochondrial and Y chromosomal) have yielded dramatically conflicting inferences on the genetic origins of tribes and castes of South Asia. We sought to resolve this conflict, using high-resolution data on 69 informative Y-chromosome binary markers and 10 microsatellite markers from a large set of geographically, socially, and linguistically representative ethnic groups of South Asia. We found that the influence of Central Asia on the pre-existing gene pool was minor. The ages of accumulated microsatellite variation in the majority of Indian haplogroups exceed 10,000-15,000 years, which attests to the antiquity of regional differentiation. Therefore, our data do not support models that invoke a pronounced recent genetic input from Central Asia to explain the observed genetic variation in South Asia. R1a1 and R2 haplogroups indicate demographic complexity that is inconsistent with a recent single history. Associated microsatellite analyses of the high-frequency R1a1 haplogroup chromosomes indicate independent recent histories of the Indus Valley and the peninsular Indian region. Our data are also more consistent with a peninsular origin of Dravidian speakers than a source with proximity to the Indus and with significant genetic input resulting from demic diffusion associated with agriculture. Our results underscore the importance of marker ascertainment for distinguishing phylogenetic terminal branches from basal nodes when attributing ancestral composition and temporality to either indigenous or exogenous sources. Our reappraisal indicates that pre-Holocene and Holocene-era  not Indo- Europeanexpansions have shaped the distinctive South Asian Y-chromosome landscape. http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2005/11/new-paper-on-indian-y-chromosome.html

6. Human Empowerment Conference, Houston, presents genetic study findings (September 2005) 

Paper presented by Dr. Chandrakant Panse at the Human Empowerment Conference (HEC), Houston, Texas, USA; Sept 16 – 18, 2005:

DNA, GENETICS & POPULATION DYNAMICS: DEBUNKING THE ARYAN INVASION PROPAGANDA 

Summary: The so-called Aryan invasion, an idea designed to divide the Hindus of Northern and Southern Bharat, was never supported by any concrete evidence and yet was elevated to the stature of a theory. It has been pushed in secondary school textbooks as a dogma. Science now conclusively rejects any notion of any Aryan invasion of the Indian subcontinent.

I. Background

Study of changes (mutations, insertions) in chromosomal DNA is very difficult due to its magnitude. In humans, the egg contains 22 chromosomes plus the X sex chromosome, and the sperm has similar 22 plus either the X or the Y sex chromosome. An XX combination in the embryo ensues a female, and an XY a male. There are some 3 billion DNA base pairs in the 46 chromosomes in a human cell. Studying changes as markers in only the Y chromosome can be simpler, but traces only the male ancestry.

Cells contain mitochondria, structures where oxygen is utilized. A mitochondrion has its own DNA, only 16,569 base pairs long, and entirely independent of the chromosomal DNA. Following mutations in the mtDNA is thus significantly easier, but traces only female ancestry as the mitochondria are descendants of the egg, with no contribution from the sperm.

Attempts at linking of populations through insertions of repeat sequences are underway (1), but call for abundant caution because sampling errors, numbers of markers employed, choices of markers, statistical models selected for analysis, etc., influence the results of such studies (2). More importantly, polymorphism (different alleles, or slightly different forms of the same gene) subjected to local positive selection can result in convergent evolution, the reverse also holds true, and these can lead to abnormal conclusions regarding histories of populations (2). Attempts to demonstrate similarities amongst Asian and European gene pools not only suffer from such drawbacks in spite of vigorous statistical analysis, but also can be explained by multiple mechanisms (3).

II. North & South Bharatiyas Share mtDNA, Which Is Distinct From That of Europeans

Extensive sequencing and statistical analysis of a part of mtDNA which has sustained mutations (the mitochondrial hypervariable region I, HVR I), from reasonable sample sizes, has shown that certain sequences dominant in Europe are uncommon in India, and when found, are almost equally divided amongst the North and South Indians. Conversely, there are sequences common to both the North and South Indians which are uncommon in Europe (4). These data have been used to estimate the time of diversion of the peoples of Europe and Asia in the Pleistocenic era (4), emphasizing that these are phylogenically different peoples (5).

III. North & South Bharatiyas Share Tissue Antigens, Distinct From Those of Europeans

All diploid human cells express a set of proteins on their surfaces, HLA-A, B and C, which can be unique to an individual. They are coded for in the major histocompatibility complex of genes (MHC class I) on chromosome 6. These are the proteins which are recognized as non-self by the immune system in transplant rejection, and are variously called transplant antigens, phynotypic markers, cell-surface markers, etc. All of these proteins in all persons have identical structures and functions, yet can be distinguished from others. Not all 6 class I antigens (3 each from paternal and maternal copies of chromosomes 6) may be unique to an individual; some are identical or similar. MHC class II proteins (DP, DQ, DR) are expressed by some immune system cells only, but may be even more polymorphic.

Analysis of the DNA sequences coding for the different forms of these proteins (alleles) demonstrate that while populations which are closely related, geographically or through known migrations, show similarities in their class I and II MHC antigens, the Asians and the Europeans are distinct, separate but equal, people (6).

Conclusion: The stark lack of similarities in the gene pools of the Indian subcontinent and Europe, vividly evident in the mtDNA and the MHC complex, destroys any ' Aryan invasion' notions, and confirms the genetic uniformity of peoples of the Indian subcontinent.
Chandrakant Pansé, Professor of Biotechnology

Credits
I gratefully acknowledge research support from my dharmapatnee Dr. Ujwala Pansé, professor of biochemistry, and our sukanya Kumaree Anjali Pansé.

References

1. Callinana PA, Hedgesa DJ, Salema A-H, Xinga J, Walkera JA, Garbera RK, Watkinsc WS, Bamshad MJ, et al. Comprehensive analysis of Alu-associated diversity on the human sex chromosomes. Gene 317, 103-110 (2003).

2. Bamshad M, Wooding S, Salisbury BA, Stephens JC. Deconstructing the Relationship Between Genetics and Race. Nature Rev. Gen. 5, 598-609 (2004).

3. Watkins WS, Rogers AR, Ostler CT, Wooding S, Bamshad MJ, Brassington AE, Carroll ML, Nguyen SV, Walker JA, Ravi Prasad BV, et al. Genetic Variation Among World Populations: Inferences From 100 Alu Insertion Polymorphisms. Genome Res. 13, 1607-1618 (2003).
http://www.genome.org/cgi/content/full/13/7/1607.

4. Kivisild T, Bamshad MJ, Kaldma K, Metspalu M, Metspalu E, Reidla M, Laos S, Parik J, Watkins WS, Dixon ME, Papiha SS, Mastana SS, Mir MR, Ferak V, Villems R. Deep common ancestry of indian and western-Eurasian mitochondrial DNA lineages. Current Biol. 9, 1331-4 (1999).

5. Disotell TR. Human evolution: the southern route to Asia. Curr. Biol. 9, R925-8 (1999).

6. Arnaiz-Villena A, Karin M, Bendikuze N, Gomez-Casado E, Moscoso J, Silvera C, Oguz FS, Diler AS, de Pacho A, Allende L, Guillen J, Laso JM. HLA alleles and haplotypes in the Turkish population: relatedness to Kurds, Armenians and other Mediterraneans. Tissue Antigens 57, 308-317 (2001).

(a plea: please do not ever refer to the aryan invasion propaganda as a "theory".)  

7. Genetic evidence cited in Curriculum Commission hearings (December 2005)  

During the deliberations (December 2005) of Curriculum Commission of California Department of Education of a sixth grade textbook containing references to 'Aryan Invasion/Migraiton/Influx/Trickle-in Theories', "Commissioner Metzenberg, a biologist, objected on scientific grounds.  He said, "I've read the DNA research and there was no Aryan migration. I believe the hard evidence of DNA more than I believe historians." http://www.Hinduismtoday.com/hpi/2005/12/4.shtml#1 See a paper presented by Arvind Kumar at the Curriculum Commission hearing: http://jitnasa.india-forum.com/Docs/ProAryanInvasionTheoryargumentspresentedbyaWitzelsupporter.htm

Efforts were also made to present the need for instilling a sense of pride in Hindu children on their Hindu heritage. See /columns/OL_051204.htm Scholarship of Equine Posteriors by Narayanan Komerath, Dec. 4, 2005 

Dr. Metzenberg read he read to the committee, from a 1999 paper by Kivisild, et al. (Current Biology, vol 9 pp.1331-1334):

"A commonly held hypothesis, albeit not the only one, suggests a massive Indo-Aryan invasion to India some 4,000 years ago [1]. Recent limited analysis of maternally inherited mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) of Indian populations has been interpreted as supporting this concept [2 and 3]. Here, this interpretation is questioned. We found an extensive deep late Pleistocene genetic link between contemporary Europeans and Indians, provided by the mtDNA haplogroup U, which encompasses roughly a fifth of mtDNA lineages of both populations.Our estimate for this split is close to the suggested time for the peopling of Asia and the first expansion of anatomically modern humans in Eurasia [4, 5, 6, 7 and 8] and likely pre-dates their spread to Europe. Only a small fraction of the �Caucasoid-specific� mtDNA lineages found in Indian populations can be ascribed to a relatively recent admixture...Thus, we have shown that the overwhelming majority of the so-called western-Eurasian-specific mtDNA lineages in Indian populations, estimated here to be carried by more than a hundred million contemporary Indians, belong in fact to an Indian-specific variety of haplogroup U of a late Pleistocene origin. The latter exhibits a direct common phylogenetic origin with its sister groups found in western Eurasia (Figure 1), but it should not be interpreted in terms of a recent admixture of western Caucasoids with Indians caused by a putative Indo-Aryan invasion 3,000 �4,000 years BP. From the deep time depth of the split between the predominant Indian and European haplogroup U varieties, it could be speculated that haplogroup U arose in neither of the two regions. This split could have already happened in Africa, for example, in Ethiopia, where haplogroup U was recently described [21]."

The full paper of Kivisild et al (1999) is available at http://evolutsioon.ut.ee/publications/Kivisild1999a.pdf

Deep common ancestry of Indian and western-Eurasianmitochondrial DNA lineages by T. Kivisild*, M.J. Bamshad† , K. Kaldma*, M. Metspalu*, E. Metspalu*,M. Reidla*, S. Laos*, J. Parik*, W.S. Watkins†, M.E. Dixon† , S.S. Papiha‡,S.S. Mastana§, M.R. Mir¶ , V. Ferak¥ and R. Villems* (Current Biology, 199, 9:1331-1334).

See also: Deka, R. Papiha, SS Kluwer, eds., 1999, Genomic Diversity, Academic/Plenum Publishers, Toomas Kivisild et al, The place of the Indian mtDNA variants in the Global Network of Maternal lineages and the peopling of the old world,  pp.133-152. http://evolutsioon.ut.ee/publications/Kivisild1999b.pdf 

8. Genetic studies by University of Cambridge (November 2005) 

Early Humans Settled India Before Europe, Study Suggests

Brian Vastag for National Geographic News

November 14, 2005 

Modern humans migrated out of Africa and into India much earlier than once believed, driving older hominids in present-day India to extinction and creating some of the earliest art and architecture, a new study suggests.  

The research places modern humans in India tens of thousands of years before their arrival in Europe.  

University of Cambridge researchers Michael Petraglia and Hannah James developed the new theory after analyzing decades' worth of existing fieldwork in India. They outline their research in the journal Current Anthropology.  

"He's putting all the pieces together, which no one has done before," Sheela Athreya, an anthropologist at Texas A&M University, said of Petraglia.  

Modern humans arrived in Europe around 40,000 years ago, leaving behind cave paintings, jewelry, and evidence that they drove the Neandertals to extinction.  

Petraglia and James argue that similar events took place in India when modern humans arrived there about 70,000 years ago.  

The Indian subcontinent was once home to Homo heidelbergensis, a hominid species that left Africa about 800,000 years ago, Petraglia explained.  

"I realized that, my god, modern humans might have wiped out Homo heidelbergensis in India," he said. "Modern humans may have been responsible for wiping out all sorts of ancestors around the world."  

"Our model of India is talking about that entire wave of dispersal," he added. "[T]hat's a huge implication for paleoanthropology and human evolution."  

A New Model  

Petraglia and James reached their conclusions by pulling together fossils, artifacts, and genetic data.  

The evidence points to an early human migration through the Middle East and into India, arriving in Australia by 45,000 to 60,000 years ago, they say...  

The new theory posits that as much as 70,000 years ago, a group of these modern humans migrated east, arriving in India with technology comparable to that developed by Homo heidelbergensis.  

"The tools were not so different," Petraglia says. "The technology that the moderns had wasn't of a great advantage over what [Homo heidelbergensis] were using."  

But modern humans outcompeted the natives, slowly but inexorably driving them to extinction, Petraglia says. "It's just like the story in Western Europe, where [modern humans] drove Neandertals to extinction," he says.  

The modern humans who colonized India may also have been responsible for the disappearance of the so-called Hobbits, whose fossilized bones were discovered recently on the Indonesian island of Flores. .. 

Early Art

Petraglia and James's report presents evidence of creativity and culture in India starting about 45,000 years ago. Sophisticated stone blades arrive first, along with rudimentary stone architecture.  

Beads, red ochre paint, ostrich shell jewelry, and perhaps even shrines to long-lost gods—the hallmarks of an early symbolic culture—appear by 28,500 years ago. This slow change is in contrast to what many scientists believe played out in Europe. Modern humans blew through the continent like a storm about 40,000 years ago, and Neandertals quickly disappeared.  

The switch happened so rapidly—as evidenced by the sudden arrival of advanced stone tools and an explosion of cave painting and other art—that anthropologists call it the "human revolution."  

"What we have is a much patchier, very slow and gradual accumulation of what we call modern human behavior in South Asia," Petraglia says.  

"And that just simply means that culture developed in a slightly different way in South Asia than it did in Western Europe." A dearth of fossils and artifacts in India makes Petraglia and James's research even more valuable, writes Robin Dennell, professor of archeology at the University of Sheffield, in a comment accompanying the study.  

The subcontinent has produced just one set of early Homo sapiens fossils, found in a cave in Sri Lanka and dated to about 36,000 years ago.  

Despite this, Petraglia hopes his analysis throws new light onto early human history in India.

"We're trying to give a wake up call to anthropologists … saying that we have to be looking at all parts of the world," he says.  

"If we really want to tell the story of human evolution we've got to bring all parts of the world into the story." http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/11/1114_051114_india_2.html

9. Global conspiracy against Harvard U., Michael Witzel and his 46 co-signatories (November 2005) 

The conspirators have successfully confounded the issue by using difficult-to-comprehend, intimidating technical terms related to DNA and genetic studies, thus attempting to derail the ‘scholarly’ efforts of ‘international academics’ spearheaded by the Harvard University. 

Indian Statistical Institute and Stanford University are now part of the conspiracy hatched by Hindus and faculty members at several universities around the world.  American Journal of Human Genetics has also joined the conspiracy as reported briefly in earlier sections 

New paper on Indian Y-chromosome variation  

A new paper on Y-chromosome variation in India has become available as an unedited preprint in the AJHG site. This is a huge study which covered linguistic/caste groups from the entire country and used 69 binary markers and 10 microsatellites to create a very thorough sampling of Indian Y-chromosomal variation. It will take some time to digest all the new information, plus the supplemental materials of the paper that remain to be put online. I will blog more about this soon. In bullet form, some findings of the paper which caught my attention:

R1a1's molecular variance is highest in NW India and its age is substantial

R1a1's variance is high in tribals

The phylogeny of J2 has been refined and it is now split into two newly discovered clades, called J2a and J2b.

J2 is almost entirely absent from tribals and is represented at a higher frequency in upper castes than middle castes than lower castes. 

UPDATE:

The samples:

High-resolution assessment of Y-chromosome binary haplogroup composition was conducted on 728 Indian samples representing 36 populations, including 17 tribal populations, from six geographic regions and different social and linguistic categories. They comprise (Austro-Asiatic) Ho, Lodha, Santal, (Tibeto-Burman) Chakma, Jamatia, Mog, Mizo, Tripuri, (Dravidian) Irula, Koya Dora, Kamar, Kota, Konda Reddy, Kurumba, Muria, Toda (Indo-European) Halba. The 18 castes include (Dravidian) Iyer, Iyengar, Ambalakarar, Vanniyar, Vellalar, Pallan and (Indo-European) Koknasth Brahmin, Uttar Pradhesh Brahmin, West BengalBrahmin, Rajput, Agharia, Gaud, Mahishya, Maratha, Bagdi, Chamar, Nav Buddha, Tanti. With exception of the Koya Dora and Konda Reddy groups, these samples have been previously described (Basu et al. 2003)… 

The widespread geographic distribution of haplogroup R1a1-M17 across Eurasia and the current absence of informative subdivisions defined by binary markers leave its geographic origin uncertain. However the contour map of R1a1-M17 variance shows the highest variance in the northwest region of India (Figure 3).
...
In haplogroups R1a1 and R2 the associated mean microsatellite variance is highest in tribes (Table 8), not castes. This is a clear contradiction to what would be expected from an explanation involving a model of recent occasional admixture.
...
Specifically, they could have actually arrived in southern India from southwest Asian source region multiple times with some episodes being considerably earlier than others.  

Considerable archeological evidence exists regarding the presence of Mesolithic peoples in India (Kennedy 2000), some of whom could have entered the subcontinent from the northwest during the late Pleistocene period. The high variance of R1a1 in India (Table 8), the spatial frequency distribution of R1a1 microsatellite variance (Figure 3) clines and expansion time (Table 7) support this view. 

Clustering of R1a1 haplotypes:

The ages of the Y-microsatellite variation (Table 7) for R1a1 and R2 in India suggest that the pre-historical context of these haplogroups will likely be complex. A PC plot of R1a1-M17 Y-microsatellite data (Figure 4) shows several interesting features: (a) one tight population cluster comprising S. Pakistan, Turkey, Greece, Oman and West Europe, (b) one loose cluster comprising all the Indian tribal and caste populations, with the tribal populations occupying an edge of this cluster, and (c) Central Asia and Turkey occupy intermediate positions. The upper and lower bounds of the divergence time between the two clusters is 12 kya and 8 kya, respectively. The pattern of clustering does not support the model that the primary source of the R1a1-M17 chromosomes in India was Central Asia or the Indus valley via Indo-European speakers. 

The spread of J2a: 

Figure 2 demonstrates the eastward expansion of J2a-M410 to Iraq, Iran and Central Asia coincident with painted pottery and ceramic figurines, well documented in the Neolithic archeological record (Cauvin 2000). Near the Indus valley, the Neolithic site of Mehrgarh beginning around 5000 BCE (Kenoyer 1998) displays the presence of these types of material culture correlated with the spread J2a-M410 in Pakistan. While the association of agriculture with J2a-M410 is recognized, it is not necessarily the only explanation for its history. Despite an apparent exogenous frequency spread pattern of hg J2a towards North and Central India from the west (Figure 2), it is premature to attribute it to a simplistic demic expansion of early agriculturalists and pastoralists from the Middle East. It reflects the overall net process of spread that may contain numerous as yet unrevealed movements embedded within the general pattern. It may also reflect a combination of elements of earlier prehistoric Holocene epi-paleolithic peoples from the Middle East, subsequent Bronze Age Harappans of uncertain provenance and succeeding Iron Age Indo-Aryans from Central Asia (Kennedy 2000). Further, the relative position of the Indian tribals (Fig. 4), the high microsatellite variance among them (Table 8), the estimated age (14 kya) of microsatellite variation within R1a1 (Table 7) and the variance peak in the west (Fig. 3) are entirely inconsistent with a model of recent gene flow from castes to tribes and a large genetic impact of the Indo-Europeans on the autochthonous gene pool of India. Instead, our overall inference is that an early Holocene expansion in NW India (including the Indus) contributed R1a1-M17 chromosomes both to the Central Asian and S Asian tribes prior to the arrival of the Indo-Europeans. 

J2a in upper caste Indians:

The J2 clade is nearly absent among Indian tribals, except among Austro-Asiatic speaking tribals (11%). Among the Austro-Asiatic tribals, the predominant J2b2 hg occurs only in the Lodha.
...

Haplogroup J2a-M410 is confined to upper caste Dravidian and Indo-European speakers, with little occurrence in the middle and lower castes. This absence of even modest admixture of J2a in south Indian tribes and middle and lower castes is inconsistent with the L1 data. Overall, therefore, our data provide overwhelming support to an Indian origin of Dravidian speakers. 

10. BBC brands Aryan Invasion/Migration/Influx/Trickle-in Theory as a racist ploy and a dangerous theory 

The roots of this dangerous report by BBC internationalizing the conspiracy are to be found in articles such as the ones by Sankrant Sanu on Beliefnet.com:  Sankrant Sanu, U.S. Hinduism Studies: A Question of Shoddy Scholarship http://www.beliefnet.com/story/146/story_14684_1.html  

The Aryan Invasion Theory
One of the most controversial ideas about Hindu history is the Aryan invasion theory.

This theory, originally devised by F. Max Muller in 1848, traces the history of Hinduism to the invasion of India's indigenous people by lighter skinned Aryans around 1500 BCE.

The theory was reinforced by other research over the next 120 years, and became the accepted history of Hinduism, not only in the West but in India.

There is now ample evidence to show that Muller, and those who followed him, were wrong.

Why is the theory no longer accepted?

The Aryan invasion theory was based on archaeological, linguistic and ethnological evidence.

Later research has either discredited this evidence, or provided new evidence that combined with the earlier evidence makes other explanations more likely.

Modern historians of the area no longer believe that such invasions had such great influence on Indian history. It's now generally accepted that Indian history shows a continuity of progress from the earliest times to today.

The changes brought to India by other cultures are not denied by modern historians, but they are no longer thought to be a major ingredient in the development of Hinduism.

Dangers of the theory

The Aryan invasion theory denies the Indian origin of India's predominant culture, but gives the credit for Indian culture to invaders from elsewhere.

It even teaches that some of the most revered books of Hindu scripture are not actually Indian, and it devalues India's culture by portraying it as less ancient than it actually is.

The theory was not just wrong, it included unacceptably racist ideas: 

• it suggested that Indian culture was not a culture in its own right, but a synthesis of elements from other cultures
• it implied that Hinduism was not an authentically Indian religion but the result of cultural imperialism
• it suggested that Indian culture was static, and only changed under outside influences
• it suggested that the dark-skinned Dravidian people of the South of India had got their faith from light-skinned Aryan invaders
• it implied that indigenous people were incapable of creatively developing their faith
• it suggested that indigenous peoples could only acquire new religious and cultural ideas from other races, by invasion or other processes
• it accepted that race was a biologically based concept (rather than, at least in part, a social construct) that provided a sensible way of ranking people in a hierarchy, which provided a partial basis for the caste system
• it provided a basis for racism in the Imperial context by suggesting that the peoples of Northern India were descended from invaders from Europe and so racially closer to the British Raj
• it gave a historical precedent to justify the role and status of the British Raj, who could argue that they were transforming India for the better in the same way that the Aryans had done thousands of years earlier
• it downgraded the intellectual status of India and its people by giving a falsely late date to elements of Indian science and culture

http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/Hinduism/history/history5.shtml See Vishal Agarwal’s essay: What is Aryan Migration Theory (2001) http://www.omilosmeleton.gr/english/agarwal.html See Kalyanaraman and Kelkar, Proto-vedic Continuity Theory proposing that Indian languages are of indigenous origin since the Veda were documented orally on the banks of River Sarasvati, now discovered and being revived. http://www.Hindunet.org/saraswati See Proto-vedic Continuity Theory at http://protovedic.blogspot.com  

The author is Director, Sarasvati Research Centre. Email:  kalyan97@gmail.com

Dr. S. Kalyanaraman

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