The genetic mutation in the DNA of the San bushmen in Africa—who are considered the direct descendants of early man—was discovered in the blood of the Aborigines of Australia as well. This meant that the Australian Aborigines had inherited the ancient genetic mutation NRY HG C-M130, which can be traced back around 60,000 years ago to the African bushmen. The bushmen, though, have no trace of the Australian aboriginal mutations in their blood, which indicates that the migration was one way only: from Africa to Australia. While this discovery was spectacular, we still did not know how they got there. There was no evidence—archaeological or through DNA—of this human journey.
Professor Pitchappan agreed to help Wells with the DNA research. Immediately, he flew down to meet him in Madurai, and that was the starting point of the laborious process of sampling the blood of thousands of Indians across autochthonous communities in India.
After two years of arduous research, the genetic mutation NRY HG C-M130 appeared in the DNA of Virumandi, a man in his late twenties who lived in the Jothimanickam village of Tamil Nadu. This discovery completely turned on its head our earlier understanding of the origins of man. It demonstrated that the earliest man had arrived in India and expanded his family line in the Indian subcontinent thousands of years before setting foot in Europe, the Americas, or Central and East Asia. Virumandi was a direct descendant of the earliest man who had left Africa 60,000 years ago. Even more mind-boggling was the subsequent discovery that Virumandi’s entire community carried the NRY HG C-M130 mutation.
This discovery is fascinating, as much for its unexpectedness as for the feat of the survival of the strain. This smallest and most ancient marker of human existence could have been eradicated by an endless number of events—migrations, caste wars, invasions. How could its continuation be explained, that too in a land that has consistently received as many travellers and traders as invaders, more than anywhere else in the world?
The fascinating survival stories of communities in the subcontinent are as compelling as the endurance of the idea of India itself. Is it by providence that the political boundaries of Chandragupta Maurya’s India of 300 BC are remarkably much the same as that of modern India? Several stories that some Indians wanted to tell were composed into the 24,000 verses of the Ramayana and the 200,000 verses of the Mahabharata around 500 BC, and both epics don’t just exist today; they are best-sellers. Ancient religions like Hinduism and Buddhism were born in this land and did not die—instead, they are the world’s third and fourth largest religions today. I studied various accounts of the Indian subcontinent written by ancient travellers. Even the most ancient travelogues contain a glimpse of India as it is today.12
The character of India is a mix of the various cultures of the people who landed here. Over 3000 years ago, the Aryans, Turks, Afghans and Mughals arrived from the north to conquer the land. Despite the loot and plunder, they became part of our diversity, creating a hybrid Indo-Islamic civilization with languages such as Deccani and Urdu, which mixed the Sanskrit-derived vernaculars with Turkish, Persian and Arabic. The Europeans, meanwhile, started arriving in India from the end of the fifteenth century, and did not mingle with us. Instead, they remained aloof, ruled ruthlessly and prospered immensely. Subsequently, India’s long and painful freedom struggle was as much about ousting the last of the imperial powers—the British and the Portuguese—as it was about ensuring that each of the disparate historical and cultural influences on the subcontinent would be part of the nation that was born in 1947.
So, at the time of Independence, there were an estimated 554 kingdoms in all that had to be integrated into a country. Each Indian kingdom was different, with its own unique social, ethnic and religious community. Opposers of Independence like Winston Churchill and supporters like Franklin D. Roosevelt had both been sceptical that a nation as fissiparous as India would be able to adopt a universal franchise.13 But they were proved wrong.
Even in August 1947, when the British finally left after 200 years in India, it was decided that the subcontinent would be partitioned into two independent nation states—Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan. But the complication still continued (as it does even today) with Kashmir. The consequentially rough partition left everyone unhappy, and the Indian subcontinent imploded in violence caused by religious differences. Thereafter began one of the goriest migrations in human history, as Muslims trekked west and east, while Hindus and Sikhs headed in the opposite direction. In the process, villages were set afire and around 75,000 women were raped, kidnapped, abducted and forcibly impregnated.14
By 1948, between one and two million were dead.15 Soon after, the nation was swayed by movements based on language. When this was sorted out by separating distinct linguistic groups into administrative units or states, India’s unity was once again endangered by the Naga insurgency. In the 1960s, there were anti-Hindi protests in Tamil Nadu, while Naxal violence began in West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh. In the 1970s, India had to deal with the Emergency, followed by separatist movements in Assam and Punjab. In the 1990s, there were conflicts and bloodshed over caste and religious identities, which still continue. In the next decade, the bloodbath in Gujarat occurred, along with a rise in right-wing nationalist and religious sentiment, which grew in many other parts of the country as well. Perhaps it would take a miracle for the idea
