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NEW
DELHI, Aug 29 (IPS) - New genetic evidence that caste originated
in race discounts the Indian government's protestations that caste
is not race and therefore ought not be discussed at the U.N. conference
on racism that starts at Durban, South Africa on Friday .
A
group of scientists led by Michael Bamshad of the Eccles Institute
of Human Genetics, Utah in the United States establishes clearly
that the Eurasian racial admixture is high in the upper-caste Hindu
population and reduces proportionately in the lower-caste strata.
Caste
is a distinctive feature of India's ancient Hindu religion, which
divides society into four groups -- priests, warriors, traders and
workers and those born outside these categories who are regarded
as untouchables and called 'dalits'.
According
to Smita Narula of the international group Human Rights Watch (HRW),
caste-based discrimination was in fact ''hidden apartheid'' and
affected more than 250 million people in India, Nepal, Sri Lanka,
Bangladesh, Pakistan and Japan.
But
Narula's definition has been opposed by the Indian establishment.
For instance, India's Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh expressed regret
that ''an attempt was being made to ascribe racial connotations
to caste''.
India's
ambassador to the United Nations at Geneva, Savitri Kunadi, agreed
at the preparatory committee ahead of the racism meeting in May
that caste could be included under ''discrimination on the basis
of work and descent'' while not equating caste with racial apartheid.
'Dalit'
organisations reacted by accusing India's overwhelmingly upper-caste
officialdom of trying to monopolise the dialogue and keeping out
of the Durban conference those who were really affected by caste
discrimination and oppression.
''The
issue of caste-based discrimination cannot be considered as the
sole concern of one section of the population,'' said Martin Macwan,
convenor of the National Campaign for Dalit Human Rights.
Hindu
fundamentalist leaders closely associated with the Bharatiya Janata
Party (BJP) of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee added fuel to
the fire by declaring that caste was a part of India's ancient traditions
- and could not be discussed at international fora
''It
is a violation of human rights to abolish caste,'' said Acharya
Giriraj Kishore, leader of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) or World
Hindu Forum, which is considered a wing of the BJP. Kishore has
denied that caste has anything to do with either race or apartheid.
Leading
intellectuals too have supported the Indian government's position.
Sociologist and Delhi University don Andre Beteille has even accused
the United Nations of trying to ''revive and expand the idea of
race, ostensibly to combat the many forms of social and political
discrimination prevalent in the world''.
Beteille
is among those who argue that caste has nothing to do with race
and that it is erroneous to include caste in a discussion on race.
But
Bamshad's genetic study of different caste strata in the bustling
port city of Visakhapatnam in southern Andhra Pradesh state confirms
what earlier studies have already shown -- that the lower castes
are closer to the East Asian and South-east populations while the
upper castes are of Eurasian stock.
Interestingly,
the study showed that Indian women were closer to Asian rather than
Eurasian stock and this was true even of upper-caste women -- possibly
the result of the fact that the caste system allowed women to marry
into a caste immediately higher up than her own.
According
to Prabir Purkayastha of the independent Delhi Science Forum, the
findings have exploded the argument of Hindu fundamentalists who
say caste was originally based not on birth but on the ''nature''
of individuals.
''It
is now clear that the castes were a reflection, very early on, of
existing stratification and that men could not marry up the caste
ladder though women could,'' Purkayastha said.
It
is also proof that the presence of the Indo-European language family
in India is the result of a Eurasian influx as most serious studies
have shown, but which Hindu fundamentalists seek to deny in their
insistence that Vedic culture is of indigenous origin.
Not
surprisingly, the Bamshad study has come under virulent attack from
the Hindu fundamentalist lobby. The 'Organiser' publication, the
mouthpiece of the BJP, dismissed it as the result of imperialists,
Marxists and Dravidians (South Indians) coming together.
''The
issue is not race but civilisation. But the Marxist and Western
Indological (colonial) claim is that Indian civilisation is mainly
of foreign origin. This simply has no support,'' the BJP ideologue
Raja Ram wrote in the 'Organiser'. (END/IPS/AP/HD/IP/RDR/JS/01)
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