Prof. Vasant Shinde: An Archaeologist vs A Mischievous Media Trial And Letter Politics

Let us assume the following incident happening in the West.

A newspaper reporter comes up with a story of a 'world domination plan of a particular community based on a forgery like 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion''.

Then, a group of scientists and activists come up with a sentimental letter preaching the evils of world dominion and ask that the community issue a letter telling they not only had they not plotted world dominion in the present but would not do it in the future too.

What does it say of those scientists and activists?

Now let us see the parallel.

A project aims to study how the mutations and mixing of genes through millennia has shaped Indian populations. Such projects have been undertaken from time to time.

For example, scientists from the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) in Hyderabad and Harvard Medical School in Boston, US, had studied how the genetic composition of Indian population had evolved, in 2009 and 2013.

Recently there has been a lot of research on the ancestral DNA and the evolution of early Indian population. The most famous one being the 2019 published paper based on genome collected from the skeletons of Rakhigarhi, one of the largest sites of Indus Valley Civilization (IVC).

Its lead author, Vasant Shinde, is an internationally respected archaeologist, definitely a pride of Indian science.

Today, he finds himself is at the centre of a manufactured controversy.

One can note that even in the reported conversation, which was not even a definitive statement, what Prof Shinde is alleged to have said is not the purpose or intention of project.

Yet, when the report was published, this was the headline: 'Cultural Ministry to Study the Racial Purity of Indians'.

However, as if on cue, Rahul Gandhi took this story and tweeted it, condemning it by making a comparison to the pseudo-scientific concepts of Nazi racism. The The New Indian Express reporter who had written the story retweeted Gandhi.

So, what is the truth?

To understand this, Swarajya contacted Prof. Shinde and sent him questions on the issue. He was kind enough to send detailed answers to the queries.

Prof. Shinde categorically clarifies

The project he is working on right now is about 'the genetic history and diseases of the Indian population from the Harappan period onward.'

Yet the whole controversy centres around two words: 'racial purity'.

Did he use those words? To this also, his answer is categorical and pointed. Answering in the negative to the question he writes:

To attribute 'Nazi-like' intentions to such a professional is the worst insult one can conceive of for his work.

What does he think about these developments?

In India however there has been a gap between archaeological discoveries and the way they are integrated with historiography and finally, in history textbooks.

This reduces the public awareness of what happens in the field, which in turn gives rise to such mischievous reporting.

When asked about the future developments in this regard, he answered with optimism that of late 'Institutions like Archaeological Survey of India, all States Departments of Archaeology, research Intuitions, IITs and Universities' have increasingly started coming together in archaeological research. So he sees 'the future of archaeology' in India as being 'bright and safe in the hands of emerging scholarship.'

Further with the implementation of the 'New Education Policy 2020' the integration of archaeological discoveries into historiography will also get a boost, he says.

Clearly this is not only far removed from what the newspaper reported but it is very much antithetical to what the report says about 'racial purity' etc.

So now, the question is—why then did the group of 'eminent' scientists and activists engage letter politics?

The ruling party at the Centre adheres to Hindutva. Does Hindutva advocate any kind of racial purity? Does Hindutva get invalidated if it is proven that there had been an admixture of genetic material from outside India to Indian populations and vice-versa?

In reality, the Hindutvaites have strongly criticized the racial interpretation of Indian history. They have opposed the terms like 'Aryan invasion'. They have rejected the notion that the theoretical varna concept as well as the historical social hierarchies in India were race-based.

Nowhere have Hindutvaits claimed that the Indians were racially pure or that they were a single race.

For example, Swami Vivekananda ridiculed the British conception that all so-called Aryans were white-skinned and red-haired. Even if he were to accept the notion of the so-called white skinned Aryans, he famously pointed out that as an Indian if one owes to the 'white- skinned Aryan' then he or she owes '... more so to ... yellow- skinned Mongolian ancestors, and most of all to the black- skinned negroids'.

Cut to the present day, Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister of India repeatedly has emphasised the very ancient nature of Tamil language. He had stated that it was older than Sanskrit. While Sanskrit and Tamil as classic languages emerged almost simultaneously, linguistic evidence suggests that the Proto-Dravidian branch of languages emerging earlier than Proto-Indo-European.

While there are Hindutvaites who contest this, just as there may be non-Hindutvaite who may contest it, there are those who accept the conclusion. Clearly, Narendra Modi accepts this claim of Proto-Dravidian preceding Proto-Indo-European.

The present classic forms of both Sanskrit and Tamil may contain loan words from both the PD and PIE. This is inconsequential to Hindutva worldview. Or if anything, such an organic synthesi, rather than notions of linguistic or ethnic purity, may well be even the foundational basis of Hindutva.

So to attribute ideological vested interests to any study of the genetic admixing and evolution of ancient Indian population has no meaning whatever in Indian context.

Interestingly, the letter sent by the eminent scientists and activists has repeatedly quoted the geneticist Richard Lewontin (1929-2021). In fact, one Indian magazine that highlighted his contributions to science—particularly in disproving the biological validity of race—has been Swarajya.

The magazine brought out a three-part series exploring the legacy of Lewontin. At the same time we have also shown how Lewontin, despite being a brilliant scientist, allowed his Marxist ideology to dangerously cloud his science, at least his public science writing.

Perhaps this is an old trick that is being played again. The leftist academic hooliganism against socio-biology and genetics, even in the post-Lysenko era, made high voltage claims that socio-biology was genetic determinism and even racism.

Leftist propaganda of the twentieth century is perhaps the single largest destructive tool against science. It was this that created the Lysenko-Stalinist inquisition against geneticists. It was this propaganda that jailed, tortured and killed Vavilov by denying food to him - one of the greatest humanistic scientists who fought against famine all his life. It was this propaganda that organised students against the lectures of Richard Dawkins. It was this propaganda that physically attacked scientist E.O. Wilson.