Re: "Desi" , A very Confusing Word for me
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I’m sure you know more about the Rohillas than I do, however when we contextualize it within the history of Pakhtun military entry into India, there was a definite gender misbalance, highly skewed towards males. It was only after the Rohilla kingdom was firmly established that we see families migrating from Pakhtun areas of what is now Pakistan/Afghanistan. So it is very reasonable to expect intermarriages with other groups both during the early stages of the empire and at a much later period. I speak in broad terms but you get my drift.
I agree that is pretty tricky when people talk about their background – are they referring to a maternal grandmother who was Pakhtun? Or is the linkage stronger than that? Again I mention the Rohillas because that is one community (despite all the intermarriages and Indianization) that has still maintained the Pakhtun identity.
I may have read a similar article on Arab genes prevalence in Spain but I question 2 major issues (I am a banker not a geneticist): 1. Are they truly Arab genes or are they Berber? Because Berbers (pre-Islam) were found on both sides of the Mediterranean (Spain and the Maghreb). 2. Perhaps historians have underestimated the rate of conversion by the Muslim Arabs during the Inquisition where the DNA imprint is much more significant than what we had previously thought, bearing in mind the same situation as the Rohilla case, where the Muslim Arabs who were mostly male married Christian/converted Spanish women…their progeny returning to the Catholic faith. Interesting circumstances indeed.
I think the claims made by many Pakistanis and Indian Muslims might be a mix of truths, false mythology, and misinformation. For example, many Desi people think that Khan automatically makes you Pakhtun, when it is actually a Central Asian (Turkic in origin) term. Similarly, I think that there are far too many Syeds in the Subcontinent than we can account for. This thread is pretty timely because Pakistanis are very much confused in their background/orientation with the denial of Pakistan’s pre-Islamic heritage.