Brahmins convert to Islam.

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A recent genetic study seems to suggest that converts in India were mostly Brahmins before adopting Islam as their faith.

http://www.radianceweekly.com/science_technology.php?content_id=407&issue_id=57

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Re: Brahmins convert to Islam.

Very interesting read. I read somewhere though that baldness comes from maternal gene X that is but the article attributes it as a male characteristic and thus a manifestation of Y chromosome. Oh well its a load off in a certain sense.

I never prescribed to the view that muslims of india were all invaders,enough of them were reverts however it is certainly news to me that most of them hail from brahmin parentage. This leads to another question however, arent brahmin and other castes related? I mean its strange that rajput and brahmins have genetic make up different to that of other castes. Back down in history they must have shared ancestors?

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Re: Brahmins convert to Islam.

hi croquet: According to population geneticists, such as Spencer Wells of National Geographic, all humanity descends from a single male ancestor that lived between 50 to 90 thousands years ago. This idea stems from the discovery that all human males carry a genetic mutation (known as the Adam mutation) that occurred in a single humanbeing 50-90 thousand years ago and is being passed on from father to son. Since all human males have that mutation, we must all be that man's descendants. So in that sense, yes we are all related. However, subsequent mutations among descendants of that proverbial Adam tells us about the different times when we came out of Africa, where we went and who we joined with to form tribes.

regards,

bob

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^^ pretty interesting

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Re: Brahmins convert to Islam.

Does the same apply to Pakistanis? Aside from those who came from India during partition, the rest of the Pakistani populus is more or less local to the area.
It can be assumed that Punjabis and Sindhis are very much related to Indian Hindus, but we always have to consider that this part of the Indian subcontinent, saw much invasion and influx from other regions... So its more likely to have foreign blood.
Offcourse, the Pasktuns and Balochi probably more West Asian then those on the Eastern side of the Indus.

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I think the author is 100% correctas to me, Brahmins, Indian Rajputs, Indian muslims and Dalits- all look dark and short. So, it's safe to assume they share genes..

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I think most studies support your view.

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In Pakistan, every village has someone who records your ancestory...
Its usually only the male ancestors only, so we dont know anything of the females line.
My ancestory is ALL Muslim though and goes back to about 1200-1300...
But I dont know who they married etc.
The village itself is strange because everyone in the village is related somehow, but we also had considerable Hindu population prior to partion. Question is, how did these Hindus get to this village, did they always live there, and if so, are the descendants of those of my ancestory that didnt convert?
I think Muslim ancestory in India has been really fiddled around with to suite certain groups, sad really...

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Re: Brahmins convert to Islam.

Since non autosomal Y dna material is transmitted directly from father to son, without mixing (dividing) with a mother's dna, its like every father directly faxes his male genetic history to his son. For this reason, for example, marrying Indian women, cannot hide Middle Eastern male origins.

As far as the relationship between pre-partition Hindus and muslims is concerned, it would be hard to determine unless we test both populations. However, it is possible to test muslim populations and compare them to Arab/ Turkish/ mongolian populations to determine genetic influence of these populations. Afterall, nearly 70% of Arab Bedouin belong to haplogroup J. Persians and Turks are nearly 40% Haplogroup J. Among Hindus, J is 5%. These populations also possess some E haplogroup, which is absent among Hindus. On the other hand haplogroup H, common among Indians, is absent in the Middle East. The Mughals were haplogroup subclade C3, which is absent among Hindus. So a high percentage of these haplogroups, low levels of R haplogroup and absence of H haplogroup would suggest middle eastern/ persian/ Turkish ancestry.

regards,

bob

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Re: Brahmins convert to Islam.

Interesting.. A very small amount of South-Asian Muslims are of foreign origins.. It’s easy to see why Brahmins would convert because they understand their scriptures best and their scriptures clearly prophesise the last, true, universal/international religion of Islam.. In places their scriptures teach monotheism and condemn idolworship and worshipping demi-gods and also prophesise the last Prophet, Muhammed :saw: as “the camel riding Rishi from Arabia”, “Antim Rishi” (Akhri Rasool), Narashansa (praisedworthy-man = Mhmd in Arabic), the Prophet with the 12 wives (number of prophet’s wives)… Muslims are prophesised as those that will circumcise, grow their beards, not have a tail on their heads (like hindu priests) , not eat swine etc.

South-Asian Muslims always say that they’re local converts but are put off when the Hindutva Brigade start their “Hindu Nation Vs. Muslim Nation” rants and try converting them telling them they were foricully converted …

Ancestory doesn’t matter though, we’re all from the same ancestor far back enough and we’re all Mongrels through and through, nobody is racially pure… Your nationality/ethnicity is simply the language you speak and the region you live in.

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Thanks bob...
I really hope there is some good DNA sampling done in Pakistan...
I really think Pakitans geography makes it unique in terms of it population in comparison to the rest of the Muslims in South Asia....I think we might have higher incidences of the non India Haplo groups considering Pakistan has been under so many more foreign influences... These include the Persians, whose empire extend to the Indus, the central Asian tribes, Afghans, aswell as Hindus. And considering the fact that the region that now makes up Pakistan has had a Muslim majority for so many centuries, it goes without saying that the Arab influence in this region of the subcontinent was far higher then in the rest . A lot of these influences either didnt extend into India, or didnt to the same extent. The Persians didnt go far beyond the Indus, and even Alexander stopped short of traveling deep into India, and if the Arabs had had gone deeper into India, there would have been a far higher Muslim population in India today, instead of being concentrated in Pakistan.
But I doubt there will ever be a comprehensive study of Pakistans population, because it could open up a political and social can of worms that I doubt anyone would be willing to deal with...

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Re: Brahmins convert to Islam.

Not again... Why is there such a fascination with fair complexion?

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Re: Brahmins convert to Islam.

Sometimes it is a question of degrees. Muslims of Pakistan and India, in general, possess a higher frequency of the middle eastern haplogroup J than Hindus. So, in that sense there is greater middle eastern influence on the muslim population. However, Pakistan's populations, in terms of haplogroup distribution, seems to resemble Indo European language speakers of India more than Arabs/ Persians/ Greeks and Turks. Sindh and Baluchistan seem to have the highest frequencies of haplogroup J in Pakistan. The stories about Pathans being Greek descendants of Alexander's army are not supported by genetic evidence. Neither does the notion that Pathans and Kashmiris are related to Israelites. The Greeks possess E3b haplogroup that is almost entirely missing in the Pathans. The Turks, Jews and Persians posses high levels of J2 that is very low among Pathans and Kashmiris. The Arabs possess high levels of subclade J1 that is also missing among the Pathans and Kashmiris.

regards,

bob.

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Re: Brahmins convert to Islam.

Do you have any links or sources regarding Pakistanis? I havent read anything beyond speculative studies through culture and Language.
As for Pathans and Kashmiris, I doubt they are off Jewish ancestory, but what of the Greeks...
As far as I know, the greek population living at the time of Alexander, may or may not be the ancestors of the Greeks of today. The population of Greece had changed considerably due to influx of people from different parts of the Roman empire, by European tribes and by many different people all through the centuries... So how homogenous is the greek population and can the lack of the Greek Haplogroup disqualify a group from claim descedancy from the ancient greeks? Or do all greeks share that one haplogroup which indicates that they are unique ethnic group and descendants of ancient greeks?

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If Pakistanis claim to be Arabs descendants, then we certainly wont be very fair at all:)

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nice discussion. i want to add something.its history that brahmins were forcibly converted to islam by aurengzeb in kashmir etc. like sir mohhamed iqbal's ancestors were brahmins etc.the policy was to spread ISLAM which can be done good if..priest class is converted so local people will follow. its not my personal views but views of sikh and hindus all. example is the mratrydom of guru teg bahadur.

secondly brahmins have 90 % white complexion in north india. no doubt the people who came from pakistab are tall and have white complexion and muslims share their ancestory from them only

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Brahmins are not fair complexioned.. look at Amitbah bachchan, Akshay Kumar, Vinod Khanna etc.. lower castes in Pakistan look like them :hehe: Pakistanis are tall and fair-complexioned because we have Arab blood in us.. and muslims from arab are usually tall and have sharp-features. Indians (and mahajir) have dravdian blood in them

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Bipasha Basu is fitter than allthe rest of her counterparts and is also 10 times darker. Who cares if shes a muslim or a hindu or a jalebi.

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Re: Brahmins convert to Islam.

Here we go again, you Hindus never tire of talking baseless rubbish.

You want to stop reading baloney-history by Hindu fascists like R.K. Parimu and Ram Nath Kak.

Iqbal’s gradfather embraced Islaam when Aurangzeb wasn’t around.

It is irrelevant to us whether we descended from Arabs or Hindus because in Islam there is no stigma attached to being descended from Non-Muslims, even the Prophet Muhammad Peace & Blessings of God be upon him was descended from some Non-Muslims. We'll show the same pride in Islaam and don't feel any affinity to our Non-Muslim ancestors regardless of whether they were Pagan-Arabs or Hindus because our religion which is beyond boundaries is our main identity.

Arabs and Non-Arabs are considered equal in Islaam. Islaam is a universal/multi-ethnic/international religion that sees everyone as being born equal, it is not as religion based on lineage, caste or race like Hinduism.

You Hindus are all the same, Indian/South-Asian nationalism equals Hinduism for you that's why you're never content with Muslims being of the same ethnicity but you're always playing the "Hindu ancestory" games trying to make them identify as Hindus, really we don't give two hoots about what religion our ancestors were, it's interesting to know these things but religions change and just because some misguided ancestor was a Pagan it wont change our loyalties..

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Re: Brahmins convert to Islam.

http://members.tripod.com/~tanmoy/bengal/races.html

Thus they find that the haplogroups H* and its subclades H1*, H1c, H1a and H2 form the most common (26.4%) haplogroup in their Indian sample followed by R1a1-M17 (15.8%), O2a-M95 (14.6%), R2-M124 (9.3%), J2-M172 (9.1%), O3e-M134 (8.0%), L1-M76 (6.3%), F*-M89 (5.2%) and others accounting for the rest 4.2%. Geographically, India lies between Pakistan (where they found R1a1-M17 which is predominant (24.4%), followed by L*-M20 (13.1%), J2-M172 (11.9%), R2-M124 (7.4%), R1b-P25 (7.4%), G-M201 (6.3%), C3-M217 (6.8%), H*-M69 (6.3%), L1-M76 (5.1%), and others, each less than 5%, accounting for the rest rest 16.4%) and East Asia (where O3e-M134 (15.4%), C3-M217(13.1%), N3-TAT (12.0%), O2a-M95 (10.9%), O3-M122(xO3e) (11%), N-M231(xN3) (6.3%) and R1b2-M73 (6.3%) are more than 5% and account for 75.4%). It is, however, in the study of diversity and divergence times that there are hints of disagreement with the standard model. The prevalence and diversity of H1, R1a1, and the R2 haplogroups peak in different regions. Overall, the Indoeuropean speaking groups are more similar to the Pakistani populations than to the East Asian populations, and than the Dravidian, Tibeto-Burman, and Austro-asiatic groups are to the Pakistani population. As to the origin of the haplotypes, they note that C5-M356, F*-M89, H*-M69 (including H1-M52 and H2-APT), R2-M124 and L1-M76 probably arose in India, and F*-M89 and H*-M69 may have shared demographic history. Similarly, J2a-M410 and J2b-M12 probably came through the Indus valley, whereas O2a-M95 and O3e-M134 came from SE Asia, the former probably through Orissa.

Here is a link to a study conducted by Dr. A Q Khan Labs in Pakistan:

Y-Chromosomal DNA Variation in Pakistan. Am. J. Hum. Genet. 70:1107 1124, 2002.

If the link doesnt work go to

http://www.historicalgenetics.com/articles.html and look for Y chromosome DNA variation in Pakistan in 2002.

I think the geneticists might be focusing on the fact that the Pathan population is also composed of the same haplogroups found among the greater Indian population and missing the same key Mediterranean European, Middle/ Near Eastern and North African haplogroups (E3b, J1 and J2) that the general Indian population is missing. This would suggest that the Pathan population may have come about at the same time as the Indian population, i.e. prior to E3b, J1 and J2 populations joining the R haplogroup population.

regards,

bob