The Ministry of Culture has started procuring an array of DNA profiling kits and associated state-of-the-art machines for establishing the genetic history and “trace the purity of races in India”, reports Indian Express.
Sources said the acquisition process began recently following a meeting that Ministry of Culture Secretary Govind Mohan held with well-known archaeologist Professor Vasant S Shinde and senior scientists and scholars of the Lucknow-based Birbal Sahani Institute of Paleosciences (BSIP) in Hyderabad two months ago.
Shinde is the director of the Rakhigarhi Research Project and an adjunct professor at Bangalore’s National Institute of Advanced Study. Prof Shinde, the founder of the Society of South Asian Archaeology, is credited with “DNA analysis and cranial reconstruction of Harappan People.”
Prof Shinde said that the devices were in the process of being acquired when contacted by phone. “We want to study how mutation and gene mixing have occurred in the Indian population over the last 10,000 years,” he explained. The amount of contact between populations and the length of time it takes for genetic mutation to occur are also factors. The genetic history will then be very evident to us.
The Anthropological Survey of India (ANSI) in Kolkata, which has “of late” voiced “disinclination” to proceed with the exercise to identify the genetic origins of early Indians because the topic is “politically fraught,” is also a part of this initiative, which was developed in 2019. According to sources, a budget of ’10 crore has been set aside for the purchase of DNA profilers and other associated scientific equipment. “Develop a repository of cell lines and DNA samples that may be used to study DNA sequence polymorphism in contemporary Indian populations,” according to the ANSI.
More importantly, the ANSI aims to “establish (India’s) role in the dispersal of modern humans out of Africa,” because “modern humans could have taken the’southern route of dispersal,’ using coastlines to travel from Africa, through Arabia, across the Indian subcontinent, into South-East Asia, and finally into Australia.”
Second, the ANSI intends to use direct re-sequencing of haploid genomes to better understand the genetic diversity of Indian populations among various ethnic groups in various parts of India. According to the ANSI, 75 localities were researched as part of this experiment, with 7,807 blood samples collected from around the country. Jarawa, Nicobarese, Andh, Kathodi, Madia, Malpaharia, Munda, Bhoi Khasi, Nihal, Toto, Dirang Monpa, Paitei, Lepcha, and a host of other communities are among them.
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