•Who Are the True Natives of India?•

These days, certain groups of people in India go about calling themselves the original inhabitants of the land. But are they truly natives, and are others truly foreigners? This question has become the subject of great debate in today's society. If we search into its history, we find that this theory of "native versus foreigner" was not born of any fundamental social thought, but was rather a deliberate product of colonial rule and political self-interest. So-called Western linguists and historians have, for the past 250 years, taught the Indian people nothing but this half-truth. They proved all the people of India to be foreigners, and their purpose in doing so was to suppress the feeling of belonging to one's own land that was taking root among the people. If everyone living in a country is proven to be a foreigner, then the feeling of "this is my own land" will never grow strong in that country, and the people of that country will not consider it so shameful to accept subjugation to a foreign power. Does someone whose father, grandfather, and fourteen generations of ancestors before him worked as a servant consider that hereditary occupation demeaning? Bearing this in mind, a deliberate strategy was adopted, and the history of India of that time was written accordingly. The Western scholars of that era conflated "language" with "human lineage," or genetics. It was believed then that every group speaking a different language belonged to a different race. Therefore, on the basis of various theories, an attempt was made to prove that all Indians were foreigners.

We know that the majority of India's population—about 78%—speak Indo-Aryan languages. About 20% of India's people speak languages of the Dravidian language family. The remaining roughly 2% speak languages mainly of the Austroasiatic (Munda), Tibeto-Burman (Sino-Tibetan), and other smaller language families.

Western scholars held the view that the people who spoke Indo-Aryan languages had come from Central Asia some 3,500 years ago. But it was later discovered that the ancestors of the Dravidians had also arrived, some 10,000 to 8,000 years ago, from the Zagros mountain range of West Asia (modern-day Iran) and mingled with India's original local inhabitants. The ancestors of the Munda-language-speaking Austroasiatic groups also entered from the direction of Southeast Asia—today's Indochina and southern China—about 4,000 to 3,500 years ago. Similarly, the original homeland of the Sino-Tibetan language family lies in the Yellow River basin of East Asia, or the northern China region. From there they advanced southwestward, passing through Tibet and Myanmar, and entered northeastern India and the Himalayan region. Their arrival did not happen all at once. Beginning around 4,000 to 3,000 years ago, Sino-Tibetan speakers began entering India in small groups, and this process continued for hundreds of years. Speakers of the Tai-Kadai language family came from southern China and Southeast Asia, chiefly from Myanmar (Burma).

Their arrival in India is, from a historical standpoint, comparatively recent. For example, the Tai-descended Ahom community entered Assam in the thirteenth century (1228 CE). Similarly, communities such as the Khamti and Phake arrived in India's Arunachal Pradesh and Assam from Myanmar toward the end of the eighteenth century, around 1775.

If all the speakers of the five language families spoken in the original landmass of India had come from abroad, then who lived in India before that? Did only tigers, bears, elephants, and langurs live in India 10,000 years ago, with no humans at all?

Today, through various pieces of evidence, we know that for hundreds of thousands of years, multiple human species of the genus Homo lived on the Indian subcontinent. Among them are Homo erectus, Homo heidelbergensis (or Narmada Man), Homo Denisovans, and Homo Neanderthals, and finally Homo sapiens. Evidence for this comes from fossils, stone tools, and the DNA of modern humans. This makes it clear that India was an ancient and important center of human evolution.

As for our own ancestors, the modern human species Homo sapiens, they left Africa and, passing through Asia, reached the Indian subcontinent about 65,000 to 50,000 years ago. In scientific terminology, these ancient Indians are called the Ancient Ancestral South Indians (AASI), or the "First Indians."

Modern DNA research has proven that today, in the body of every Indian—whether a Kashmiri Brahmin, an Odisha farmer, or an Andaman tribal—the DNA of these First Indian "AASI" people is present. The largest share of genes in Indians' bodies, roughly 50% to 65%, belongs to these original AASI inhabitants. This AASI gene itself tells us that in India, everyone is a native—no one is a foreigner—though alongside the First Indian "AASI" gene, everyone's body also carries, in relatively smaller measure, one or more genetic contributions from outside groups.

According to the research of renowned geneticists such as David Reich, Niraj Rai, and Vasant Shinde, three principal lineages exist among speakers of modern Indic languages. The First Indian "AASI" gene ranges regionally from 30% to 65%. Among speakers of Indo-Aryan languages such as Odia, Marathi, Bengali, and Hindi, in eastern India (Odisha, Bengal), central India, and among various Aryan tribal and backward-class communities, this proportion is highest—more than 50-65%. In northwestern India it is comparatively lower, at 20-30%.

Among Indo-Aryan-language speakers, the genes of the "ancient Iranian farmer" group are found to range regionally from about 30% to 60%. This group arrived about 10,000 years ago and, mixing with the "First Indians," built the Indus-Sarasvati civilization. This gene forms a large share in the body of Indians overall. In western and northern India its proportion is more than 50%. The genes of the small number of Steppe-group people who arrived appear among Indo-Aryan-language speakers at about 5% to 30%. This gene is found more in western and northern India. Moving toward southern and eastern India, its proportion progressively decreases (5-10%).

Similarly, among speakers of Dravidian-family languages, the First Indian "AASI" gene ranges from 40% to 70%. This percentage is highest in southern India, and especially among Dravidian tribal and lower-caste communities. Besides this, among Dravidian-speaking people, the ancient Iranian farmer gene is found at 20% to 40%—their second major genetic component. The Steppe-group gene, in very small amounts of 0% to 10%, is also found among Dravidian speakers.

Among India's Munda-language speakers, such as the Santal, Munda, and Ho, the First Indian "AASI" gene is found at 50% to 75%. The genes of the ancestors of these Munda-language speakers, who arrived from Indochina (Vietnam/Laos) about 4,000 years ago, constitute 15% to 30%. Beyond this, though in small, regionally variable amounts of 0% to 5%, the ancient Iranian farmer gene and the Steppe gene are also present among these Munda speakers. Among the Sino-Tibetan peoples living in northeastern India (Manipur, Nagaland, Mizoram) and the Himalayan region, "East Asian genes" are found regionally at 60% to 90%. Beyond this, among the Sino-Tibetan peoples of northeastern India, the First Indian "AASI" and other genes are found regionally at 10% to 30%. In regions such as Meghalaya, Assam, or Tripura, where people have mixed with the local, ancient AASI Indians, this proportion is somewhat higher. But in Arunachal Pradesh or Ladakh, it is almost absent. Similarly, in the DNA of Indians speaking Tai-Kadai family languages, Southeast/East Asian genes make up about 70% to 90%+, with the remaining percentage being AASI genes.

From the genetic analysis above, it becomes entirely clear that in the nineteenth century, Western historians and so-called linguists deliberately conflated "language" with "lineage" (race/genetics). From a scientific standpoint, this was an extreme folly. A community may change its language due to its own needs, trade, or the influence of a ruling class, but it can never change the genes in its own body. Just as the crores of Indians who speak English today have not thereby become English (Anglo-Saxon), so too, in the past, when three or four small foreign human groups had their languages adopted by the vast local "AASI"-majority society, the entire society did not thereby become foreign. This process, by which the language of a very small number of incoming people comes to influence a vast local population, is called in social science "Elite Dominance." Therefore, branding Indians as foreigners on the basis of language was a British political conspiracy—one that has today collapsed before the DNA-testing machine.

This research also proves India's greatest political division—the "Aryan versus Dravidian" theory—to be meaningless. The imaginary wall erected between North Indians and South Indians is baseless. For today's genetic science tells us that the same AASI and ancient Iranian genes present in the bodies of North Indians are also present in the bodies of South Indians—only the percentages differ somewhat.

About 5,000 to 2,000 years ago, India became a vast "melting pot." At that time, caste restrictions and marriage barriers in society were not as rigid. The First Indians (AASI), the ancient Iranians, the Steppe group, the Tibetans, and the Southeast Asians mixed freely with one another. It is as a result of this collective mixing that today's "modern Indian" has come into being. Every Indian is a genetic cocktail. Therefore, no Indian today can beat their chest and claim to be a "pure Aryan," a "pure Dravidian," or a "pure native."

From this extensive scientific and historical discussion, we arrive at a deeply beautiful and profound philosophical truth. What science teaches us matches, in a remarkable way, the Indian philosophical sentiment of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam—the world is one family. It becomes clear that among the speakers of nearly all of India's language families, that one ancient thread remains bound together. The gene of the ancient Homo sapiens, or "First Indian" (AASI), who came from Africa 60,000 years ago, is present, in greater or lesser measure, in every Indian—from Kashmir to Kanyakumari, and from Gujarat to Arunachal Pradesh. In the veins of people of every caste, creed, and class flows the blood of that most ancient local inhabitant. Seen from this angle, no group that came to India from outside completely annihilated the local people to establish its own empire (as the Europeans did in America or Australia). Rather, whoever came from outside merged with this original people. In other words, the ancestors of all Indians were natives of this land. This soil belongs to all of us.

But looked at more closely, an opposite truth also confronts us. In the genes of all Indians, alongside the native (AASI), the genes of different human groups that arrived at different times from abroad—from Iran, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, Tibet, and elsewhere—are also mingled. Even those whom we call the "First Indians," or natives (AASI), had themselves once left distant Africa alone and come to India, 60,000 years ago! Before that, they too were not from here. So from this perspective, it could be said that in India, no one is entirely "native."

We are all migrants. Every human being on this earth is a living poem of ceaseless movement, exploration, and loving union. India is not a country of one particular blood, race, or color. It is an ocean of human civilization. Whatever river has flowed in from whatever direction has lost its separate identity and dissolved into this vast sea of Indianness. Here, no one is a foreigner, and no one is a complete native either—we are all simply "Indian."

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SOURCES

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1. Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past — Reich, David (2018)

This book provides extensive scientific data, based on ancient DNA research, on the ancient foundations of the Indian population — particularly on the Ancestral North Indian (ANI), Ancestral South Indian (ASI), and the First Indian, Ancient Ancestral South Indian (AASI), lineages.

2.The formation of human populations in South and Central Asia.Science, 365(6457), eaat7487. — Narasimhan, V. M., Patterson, N., Moorjani, P., Rohland, N., Bernardos, R., Mallick, S., ... & Reich, D. (2019).

This is a major research paper on the formation of human populations in South and Central Asia. It documents the multi-layered migrations of the First Indian (AASI), the ancient Iranian farmer group, and the Central Asian Steppe group, and their genetic admixture.

3.An Ancient Harappan Genome Lacks Ancestry from Steppe Pastoralists or Iranian Farmers. Cell, 179(3), 729-735. — Shinde, V., Narasimhan, V. M., Rohland, N., Mallick, S., Mah, M., Lipson, M., ... & Reich, D. (2019).

This study is based on the DNA analysis of a skeleton from the Indus Civilization site of Rakhigarhi, Haryana. It proved that the people of the Indus Civilization carried AASI and ancient Iranian genes, but did not, at that time, carry genes from the Steppe group.

4.Early Indians: The Story of Our Ancestors and Where We Came From — Joseph, Tony (2018).

This book brings together genetics, archaeology, and linguistics to give a clear account of the four major migration processes into the Indian subcontinent and the history of Indians' ancestors.

5.Genetic evidence for recent population mixture in India.The American Journal of Human Genetics, 93(3), 422-438. — Moorjani, P., Thangaraj, K., Patterson, N., Lipson, M., Loh, P. R., Govindaraj, P., ... & Reich, D. (2013).

This research established that between roughly 4,200 and 1,900 years ago — before caste restrictions became rigid during the Gupta Empire period — extensive genetic mixing took place across India's different languages, regions, and communities.

6.Genomic analysis of Andamanese provides insights into ancient South Asian population history.Nature Genetics, 48(9), 1066-1010. — Mondal, M., Bergström, A., Seredych, J., Singh, P. P., Mishra, S., Javed, A., ... & Jarve, M. (2016).

Through genomic analysis of the Andaman Islands' tribal population, this paper reveals the deep connection between the ancient Indian (AASI) lineage and the ancient history of humankind in South Asia.

7.Population genetic structure in Indian Austroasiatic speakers: the impact of host genetics in the history of wildlife and human expansion.Molecular Biology and Evolution, 28(2), 1013-1024. — Chaubey, G., Metspalu, M., Choi, Y., Mägi, R., Romero, I. G., Soares, P., ... & Kivisild, T. (2011).

This paper examines the genetic structure of India's Austroasiatic (Munda) language-speaking groups (such as the Santal, Munda, and Ho), their connection to Southeast Asia, and their admixture with the local AASI population.

8.Languages of the Himalayas: An Ethnolinguistic Handbook of the Greater Himalayan Region.— Van Driem, George (2001).

This book contains authoritative material on the development of the Sino-Tibetan and Austroasiatic language families in the Himalayan and northeastern Indian regions, their migrations, and their linguistic-historical background.

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