Beyond the fingerprints: From biometric to genetics
10.7340/anuac2239-625X-3989
A fianco allo screening demografico condotto nel programma Aadhaar in India, un interesse di ricerca più profondo può essere osservato sul piano bio-genetico. Agenzie governative e consorzi universitari conducono da tempo studi bio-storici sulla rete filogenetica di classificazione dei gruppi etnici e linguisitici. Due grandi ceppi (ANI, Ancestral North Indians, e ASI, Ancestral South Indians) sarebbero all’origine dell’intero mosaico etnico indiano. In questa immagine, l’autoctocnia e l’autenticità sono strettamente connesse. Gli Adivasi rappresentano lo strato originario, in base a criteri sia culturali ed etnici, sia bio-genetici. Ma una teoria divergente coesiste con questa, una teoria che indica nella somiglianza stretta fra i profili genetici delle caste alte indiane e delle popolazioni europee il tratto decisivo della autentica identità Hindu. L’aplotipo R1a1, dal cromosoma Y, diventa l’insegna biologica della identità suprema, tipicamente brahmanica, e insieme, il nucleo eminente dell’identità nazionale.
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Beyond the fingerprints: From biometric to genetics
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Beyond the fingerprints: From biometric to genetics
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                                        2020 | ANUAC. VOL. 9, N° 2, DICEMBRE 2020: 121-139




                                                                                  SAGGI

Beyond the fingerprints
From biometric to genetics
Pier Giorgio SOLINAS



ABSTRACT: Aside to the demographic screening, a deeper biosocial interest in India can
be observed on the scale of groups and subpopulations. Several agencies (university
consortia, departments of human forensic genetics), are pursuing the inspection of
population bio-history, and genotyping. Most of the results concern the genetic
structure, and admixtures, in a phylogenetic net connecting clades and sub-clades. Two
large ancestral stocks are supposed at the origin of the demographic mosaic. The first of
these, Ancestral North Indians (ANI) had its centre in a western Euro-Asian area, and the
Middle East. The second, called ASI, Ancestral South Indians, centred in the Andaman
Islands, but prevalent in South India. Under this perspective, the authenticity is
associated, with autochthony: the “true” Indians are those who first populated the
territory. Thus, adivasis label (aboriginals) designates the “originals”. Their roots, both
on the bio-genetic and cultural level, belong to the deepest layer of the variegated Pan-
Indian scenario. This simplified version coexists with a divergent theory linked to
modernized frames of the classic hierarchical background. In a seminal study M.
Bamshad showed as the social pyramid corresponded to a distribution the Y
chromosome heritage. The highest rate of markers of haplogroup R1a1 was found
among the top castes, and lowest in the Shudras and outcastes. The supporters of Hindu
supremacy wear the R1a1 brand as a symbol of identity that confirms the Vedic myth in
which society is depicted as a body (where the limbs represent the different classes),
supporting a renewed image of national solidarity.

KEYWORDS: BIOMETRICS; ETHNICITY; CASTE AND ANCESTRY; CENSUS OF INDIA.




This work is licensed under the Creative Commons © Pier Giorgio Solinas
Beyond the fingerprints: From biometric to genetics
2020 | ANUAC. VOL. 9, N° 2, DICEMBRE 2020: 121-139.
ISSN: 2239-625X – DOI: 10.7340/anuac2239-625X-3989
122                                                                     PIER GIORGIO SOLINAS




   The Aadhaar program – a hi-tech register of the adult population of India
that stocks in a central computerized database the essential personal
numeric and biometric data for the residents in the Country – is now
complete. Implemented by the Governmental Unique Identification
Authority of India (from now on UIDAI) since 2009 it is conceived as a
supreme source of a singular identity, to be assigned to each individual
through some coded parameters of uniqueness: an exclusive identity digital
code, along with some basic demographic and biometric details, photo,
fingerprints, and iris scan.
   It took almost ten years to accomplish this gigantic data repository, the
largest in the world, hyper-connected in real-time through an electronic
system of data sharing, matching control, and remote authentication (from
the center to the periphery, from every single office, bank, shop selling
subsided goods to the national data center). A great invisible machine that
scans, or should scan, the authentic identity of each cardholder, of every
applicant who gets his Aadhaar card and number by the government UID and
demands any service to agency, office, bank: borrowed money, basic
necessities, a job, a grant, a pension a driving license, a reserved quota of
service, ration card, assistance and facility. The slogan “Anytime, anywhere,
anyhow” authentication (Noy 2014) clarifies the impetuous program that the
inclusion strategy proposes in the social and symbolic space.
   The present article does not directly address this imposing program of
biometric filing, but approaches other, relatively distinct dimensions, which
are nonetheless culturally and politically linked with the debate on “Indian
identity” and on ethnic authenticity1.

                                            *****

   Within the demographic screening of the population database, beyond the
level of the individual, a major, and deeper field of biosocial interest in India
can be observed on the macroscopic scale of groups, classes, and sub-
populations. A plethora of research teams, laboratories, demographic and


1. I would like to thank Bruce Lincoln, Giovanni Destro Bisol and Anuac anonymous
reviewers for their patience and willingness to offer comments and suggestions on an earlier
draft of this essay.


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anthropologic agencies (University departments and consortia, anthropological
surveys, forensic scientists, as well as private companies) are more and more
investing their resources to bio-genetic enquiries on the phylogenetic
structure of the present populations in the Country, the subcontinent and
the whole south Asian area.
   Undoubtedly, the purest scientific interest, and a rigorous methodological
discipline appears to be assumed as a prerequisite that informs the research
no less than the language and epistemic categories used in it. Most of the
research reports, and studies published in a number of prestigious reviews,
not only in India, but in international journals specify the experimental
procedures, their samples’ origins and statistical treatments, along with, of
course, the specific laboratory tests, the DNA sequencing technologies,
markers choice and chronology estimates linked to the phylogenetic
dynamics regarding the clusters and demographic units considered: ethnic
communities, linguistic areas and branches, status hierarchy degrees and so
on.
   All such diffused, engaging, and tenacious production of genetic
screening, analyses and interpretations aim to shed light on the remotest
history of migrations, segmentations, mixtures and genetic flows among
different ancestral identities within the extremely complex mosaic of Indian
populations. The crucial parameter of “distance” – genetic, structural, and
classificatory distances in the genomic cartography – as well as the grades of
“likeness” between the multitude of peoples, castes and tribes, resonates
todays as a silent criterion of identity. Like an intimate source of
acknowledgment, a repository of truth authored by the natural code of life,
the DNA genomic chart of the self, individual as well as collective, embodies
the deepest memory of a long history of generations, admixtures,
encounters, stratifications. Hence, a bio-history transcending personal
consciousness, printed in the scripts of the bio-chemical genetic code, and
connecting the “DNA-Lineages” saturates a dense network of global
phylogenetics.
   The term so frequently adopted among scientists, “lineage” – genetic
lineage, mitochondrial lineage, Y chromosome DNA lineages – requires
some comment. As everybody knows, the same term, with its long career in
anthropological studies, was strictly interwoven with the inner structure of
social groups: as a corporate unity of genealogical solidarity, as a descent
group, not less than socially shared principle of identity, the “lineage”
principle, or logic, was assumed for long time as the paramount axiom of
anthropological comprehension as well as an objective rule embedded in the
very structure of traditional societies and cultures.

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    In India, the equivalent entity, the gotra, with its firm rules, its pervasive
effects on ritual contexts, familial life, its extensive codes of obligations,
solidarity, formal respect, and hierarchy, still maintains an explicit validity.
Genealogical practices and know-how, formerly reserved to specialized
communities like the panjikars, the pandit genealogists, are practiced at
different levels: like a sort of domestic cult, an amateurs’ and devoted
practice of ancestral memory. Not only the classic written sources (mainly
t h e pandits and brahmans’ registers on vamsa, the descent chains of the
families, the marriage records etc.), but also the modern tools of digital
recording, informatic files and databases nourish the gotras’ identity.
Pedigrees and family trees are often present as a sort of symbolic heritage
and a space of cult. A number of ritual occasions require the invocation of
ancestors’ names and symbolic homage to their memory, especially during
t h e shraddha funerary ceremonies where purifications of the dead are
performed and the whole kinship network (sapinda) gathers to celebrate
their common devotion to the descent clusters.
    As the status and prestige of a lineage increase, so does the intangible
quantum of value that varies with the depth of its ancestral roots, especially
in the case of the higher castes, brahmans and kshatriyas. One can easily
understand, thus, how welcome “scientific” evidence would be that might
confirm a lineage’s longstanding position of superiority in the hierarchical
play of Indian society.
    Indeed, what was once a formal structure of deference, dependence,
subjection, as in the traditional caste system, nowadays has ceased to
impose its detestable rules and codes of conduct. Caste discrimination is
now illegal and the custom itself is more and more disapproved and
contended. Yet, some practices of value-oriented attitudes inherited by the
ancient caste psychology continue to inspire cultural and social practices.
Above all, the matrimonial market shows the prominent influence of social
rank differences and pretentions. A deeply rooted ideal of value, of “purity”,
in the significance of unmixed, excellent and uncontaminated, directs the
search for a partner, and consequently the strategies of reproduction.
Nevertheless, the whole framework of the status hierarchy appears seriously
weakened, not only under the pressure of a new democratic mentality, but
by the ongoing evolution of professional statuses, with the emergence of
middle classes and an urban way of life. Thus, although caste culture is not
extinct, multiple factors make the contemporary criteria of ranked identities
scanning more uncertain.



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   The essential and elementary questions: “Who are we?”, “What are we?”,
as a collective subject that includes the past, present, and future in a
persistent sameness, are looking for a renovated idiom, and a new screen, a
public screen of expression.
   To some extent, the single lineage, and lineage clusters of shared origins
and historical autarchy (endogamy, inclusive cohesion, blood communion
and even physical likeness…) supply a comfortable answer. And it gains a
surplus of proficiency by opposition, in a negative dialectics, since our “us-
identity” obtains much of its energy by its specular relation with the “non-us
identities”. Nonetheless, neither the micro-scale of kinship area, nor the
corporate communities of descent and affinity can embrace the range of the
most inclusive macro-identities. It cannot satisfy the extended demand of an
encompassing recognition, a collective reference to the super-personal “us”,
to a collective ego, unless this is supplied by a sort of external authority, a
supreme source of revelation, a scientific judge that has the ability to
ascertain the intimate “true nature” of the people.
   The naturalization of identity is an old, perverse attitude of a scientistic
approach that seeks to classify human “nature” through obsessive practices
of measuring, typing, selecting that were regularly linked to census and
surveys directed by governmental agencies (Trautmann 1997; Dirks 2001).
Although the embarrassing heredity of such ethnographic naturalization has
been soundly rejected, new spaces and methods have opened fresh
perspectives of enquiry for demographic, ethno-demographic and physical
anthropology as far as the picture of the “Indian People”, “Indian Nation”
and their numerous articulations are concerned.

Ethnogenesis and molecular screening
   Ethnic divisions and origins, linguistic affiliations, local and regional
differences, religious distances and ritual specificities still affect the social
traffic of relations, as well as ranked classes and style of life, not to say
professional affinities, client groups and networks. Does this intricate
landscape of diverse humanities offer some useful foothold for the work of
bio-anthropologists or a meaningful comparison between the socio-cultural
and bio-genetic approaches?
   As we shall see, the state agencies, from the Anthropologic Survey of India2
to inter-university consortiums and departments interested in human
genetic variation, from forensic genetic database to The Indian Genome

2. See DNA Polymorphism in Contemporary Indian Population and Ancient Skeletal Remains,
Anthropological Survey of India, Ministry of Culture, Government of India, https://ansi.gov.in/-
dna-polymorphism-in-contemporary-indian-population-and-ancient-skeletal-remains/, accessed
on 17/08/2020.

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Variation Consortium and its Indian Genome Variation database (IGVdb) 3, to
mention only some of the principal poles of research and recording in the
field, are actively pursuing the systematic inspection of population
characteristics, demographic vital statistics and genotyping. More than
extemporaneous programs of data collection: bio-molecular tests and
analyses of genetic flows among single demographic unities that identify
similarities and clines of genomic differentiations are ongoing over a large
scale of areal distributions.
   Most of the results that emerge from the research concern the genetic
structure, stratifications and admixtures, which are frequently represented
as a phylogenetic texture connecting the populations and sub-populations in
a given area. In that way, the inclusive network takes the shape of a genetic
tree, a sort of universal, or pan-Indian genealogy of peoples and groups,
where the ethnic segments are the branches, and sub-branches. Often, the
scale is extended to the sub-continental level and the super-tree of
connected identities suggesting the idea of a totally connected ancestral
coalescence, an original “sameness” encompassing different degrees of
cohesive likeness within different phases of segmentation, scission,
convergences, immigration over the millennia.
   Some crucial points must be recalled before entering the crowded field of
phylogenetics (or even “phylogenethnics”) in contemporary Indian bio-
molecular typing and classifying.
   First: two main genetic markers are used for lineage definition: the
mitochondrial DNA heritage, and the YDNA heritage, female-and male-
transmitted, respectively (although a small portion of Y, the pseudo-
autosomal region, may recombine with X chromosome). Based on some
small, almost insignificant variations on some specific locus of the genomic
sequence, it is possible to follow a specific trait, either along the maternal
descent, or the paternal. The selected markers, as peculiar signs of ancestral
identity, non-combining and sex-specific, thus become infallible detectors
of distinct clusters of ancestral groups. The modal haplotype of a deeply
rooted tree of descent, or “haplogroup”, designates what the biologists call a
DNA lineage.
   Second, the chronology of a specific haplogroup, its “age”, can be
determined (an estimated date of origin, based on the frequency of the
characteristic mutation linked to its profile). Consequently, the inaugural
ancestor of the assumed genealogical cluster (MRCA) may be set in a
retrospective chronology, so that all descendants of the hypothetical founder
are accorded a distinct space in the global catalogue of genetic lineages.

3. See the Consortium homepage, www.igvdb.res.in, accessed on 01/12/2020


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   Within the last two decades of paleo-genetic and micro-biological
researches on extant and extinct groups, a general scheme of demographic
and ethnic stratigraphy has been established, a comprehensive landscape of
the main components of the Indian mosaic based on a dual ancestral
polarity.
   Two large stocks of ancestral populations are now said to be at the origin
of the entire demographic mosaic of the subcontinent. The first of these
original strains, Ancestral North Indians (ANI) had its center of diffusion in a
western Euro-Asian area, and the Middle East. The second, now called ASI by
convention, Ancestral South Indians, would be reflected in the Andaman
Islands, but is prevalently found in South India (Moorjani et alii 2013).
   There would be nothing new, at first sight, in the image of the two layers
of population and culture. The two great linguistic families, Indo-European
in the North, Dravidian in the South, in which the numerous languages
spoken in the Subcontinent are still usually classified, at least most of them,
constitute a sort of elementary atlas of ethno-cultural order, often implicit,
but widespread among scholars. In this overall geography, the disciplinary
boundaries move congruous elasticity. Since its appearance, in the late-
eighteenth century, the theory of the Arya invasion (Indo-Europeans versus
pre-Arya natives or Paleo-Indians) prospered alongside and due to the
hypothesis of a common origin of Sanskrit, Greek, Latin and many other
Eurasian languages. Peoples were soon associated with languages, and races
with peoples. The language tree had to correspond to a homologous
phylogenetic network of cultures, and the cultures, with the languages and
the people who incorporated their inheritance, were one with the physical
characters, with the inheritance of blood that conveyed them continuity up
to our time.

Bio-historical appraisals
   The “representants” of the first populations, as the extant witnesses of a
purportedly primordial cultural stage and original carriers of the most
archaic identity, are supposed to have preserved and transmitted a primeval
genetic heritage under the multiple strata of historically successive
migration waves, conquests, colonizations, demographic flows that
saturated the peninsula. That’s why generally the researchers assemble in a
sort of primordial gallery a cluster of three pre-Arya components located on
the marginal areas of more recent hinduisation of the continent. First, the
“tribal” groups of the south, on the bottom of the peninsula farthest from
the source of Vedic culture and Indo-European hegemony (and more
obscure, for the skin of its inhabitants, and for the esoteric, “animistic”

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character of its cults). And once more, the linguistic families irreducible to
the Indo-European and Sanskritic heritage: Austrasiatic, Dravidian. The
conclusions of a paradigmatic article (not only for what it says, but for those
who say it, a large group of researchers who report to the Anthropologic
Survey of India) summarize this point:
      Our results suggest that tribes of southern and eastern region along with
      Dravidian and Austro-Asiatic speakers of central India are the modern
      representatives of earliest settlers of subcontinent. The Last Glacial Maximum
      aridity and post LGM population growth mechanised some sort of homogeneity
      and redistribution of earliest settlers’ component in India. The demic diffusion
      of agriculture and associated technologies around 3 kyBP, which might have
      marginalized hunter-gatherer, is coincidental with the decline of earliest
      settlers’ population during this period (Kumar et alii 2008).

   Among the best known, and perhaps the most authoritative researches we
can mention is an essay by Toomas Kivisild and many others (Kivisild et alii
2003), but among the authors figure names of weight, first of all Luigi Luca
Cavalli Sforza, and Peter Underhill. A research that dates back fifteen years,
which most recent studies have expanded, and in many ways exceeded, but
remains exemplary for its approach, a reading of the origins founded on
genetic profiles presumed to be latent in the most isolated indigenous
communities, like precious deposits in the residual niches of the oldest
population.
   The central object of the investigation was two marginal groups, officially
labeled as tribal, which inhabited two rather isolated areas of Andhra
Pradesh. Different in their demographic consistency, the two populations,
the Chenchu and the Koyas (respectively about seventeen thousand the first,
more than three hundred thousand the second), had all the requirements to
appear on the list of adivasi communities, still recognized in the official
censuses as non-Hindu ethnic minorities. As in many adivasi communities,
especially in the remote regions, largely covered by tropical forest, their
economy was based on subsistence agriculture, at least traditionally, if not
on itinerant agriculture, as well as (especially the Chenchu) on hunting and
gathering. Of Dravidian language, polytheistic-animist religion (a rather
stale but still current term), and “Australoid” morphology (another pearl of
the colonial period vocabulary, “Chenchu are described as an Australoid
population, when physical anthropological features are used as criteria”): in
short, a concentrated living ideal of primitiveness offered for biogenetic
inspection. And then, duly accompanied by the informed consent forms,
eighteen hundred samples of DNA arrive in the laboratory, in the form of
blood samples taken from as many donors, all in good health and declaring


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to be unrelated to each other. To this database are then added other stocks
of samples: from donors of different caste in West Bengal, from Brahmins of
Bombay (at the time not yet completely Mumbai), from Gujarat, from
Punjab, to Sri Lanka: A wide variety of mitochondrial haplotypes that helps
to compare and possibly connect the ramifications in the mosaic of the
genotypic identities that cross the two tribal groups. At the end of the work,
six main lines emerge from the mass of comparisons, six mitochondrial
lineages that make up a sort of constellation of elements, all connected to
each other, partly of exclusively indigenous origin, in part propagations of
large lineages extended between Asia and Europe. The first, the most
branched one, is the “M” lineage, well known to paleogenetic scholars. It is a
species of great primigenium trunk: if not its first progenitor, a very deep-
rooted stem, close to the great passage from Africa to Asia. In prehistoric
India, this primary vector is a crucial step, an irradiation node from which
stem secondary segments of M that detach themselves from the matrix
lineage during the long phylogenetic history.
   Kivisild and his collaborators estimate a coalescence time for this zero
node around sixty-two thousand years, plus or minus twelve thousand. This
does not mean, of course, that the two ethnic groups, the Koyas and the
Chenchus, exist as such are observed today since that date, or that their
genetic complexion has remained unchanged for the tens of millennia that
separate us from the Pleistocene, while around them other flows of people
colonized the physical and demographic space. What comes to light, rather,
is a densely branched tree of genetic marks (secondary mutations) that are
transmitted from one generation to another, from mother to daughter, and
which continue to cover the biological fabric of the tribal population,
splitting and giving origin to new sub-clades (sub-lineages), in turn
designated with specific abbreviations (the M2, M3, M6, M2a. M2b). The
temporal span that can be read in this long process of mitochondrial
branching crosses the entire South Asian prehistory. Between forty and
twenty thousand years ago, across the upper Paleolithic, and the Mesolithic,
new cladistic segments appear (the haplogroups N, R, and others derived
from the first M), reflecting perhaps an accelerated demographic rise that
accompanied the development of the first societies and the “economies of
the stone age”, up to the spread of agriculture, whose outposts began to
appear in the Indus valley around the ninth millennium BC.
   This first reference axis, which we will designate (with some hesitation) as
ethnicity, or rather of ethnic depth, relies on the relationship between the
phases of demographic evolution and bio-genetic inheritance. It is on this
assumption that the definition of adivasis (aboriginals) is intended to expand

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its meaning to include both bio-genetic and cultural factors. According to
this perspective, the chrism of authenticity may be associated, if not
identified, with autochthony: the “true” Indians are those who first
populated the territory, those who have their roots in the deepest common
layer of the variegated Pan-Indian scenario.
   Yet, as we shall see soon, the connection between antecedence of
settlement and identity supremacy does not get the role of a cardinal
principle, neither on the level of cultural competition, nor on that of genetic
“legitimacy”. Adivasis’ DNA can certainly be the oldest, the most original,
but it is not construed as the repository of the most genuine Indian identity.
Rather, its traces are theorized only as residual veins in the extraordinary
amalgam of ethnic variety that the Indian nation exhibits.
   As everyone knows, in fact, the “genuine” Indian identity, the one that
claims to incorporate ethnic groups, castes, communities, as well as the
traditional customs and law (dharma), like a basic ethos infused into a
cohesive body of belonging, claims its roots in a ritual fabric of customs and
characters, in a civilization complex which is called “Hinduism”. The
Brahmanic dominance over this immense heritage of “origins” obviously
pushes its roots in religion and ideology, but in parallel, a specific genomic
dimension has come to be seen as intertwined with the social, ritual and
demographic history of caste hegemony, a centuries-old hegemony and,
according to the self-image it produced, utterly full and pervasive. But,
unavoidably, such a compact cohesion as the dharmic order imposes on its
subjects, demands a connective, a glue that does not tie together the various
parts of the social body by a reciprocal integration between equally valued
components; it is rather the body metaphor, with its organic hierarchy of
roles and functions that dictates the whole framework.

Genethnics
   A third axis of reference, therefore, the status hierarchy, appears in our
review, also on two levels (or two registers): that of social value and that of
genomic distinction. This intersection, it should be pointed out, demands
particularly subtle attention, because it raises two crucial questions. The
first concerns the biological nature of the distinction: in particular, the
inheritance of special qualities that it is customary to attribute (or rather to
self-attribute) to higher castes. Can we identify markers in the DNA pool of
this or that category or class that are exclusively transmitted within its
ancestral chain? The question is strengthened, even in the eyes of
researchers, by the fact that caste endogamy seems to have ensured for many


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generations a sort of eugenic selection, an identity self-sufficiency that
tends to avoid any mixing between heterogeneous lineages. Here, the moral
and spiritual “purity” merges with the purity of blood: the similar
reproduces itself with the similar and tends to resist allogenic interference.
   The second question, even more troubling, concerns the possible social
origin of selection: can we look at Hindu India as a great genetic laboratory
in which a rigorous system of control over mating produced (or stiffened) a
number of “natural” classes of identity, so that, in short, the social hierarchy
has generated a genetic hierarchy?
   Nothing allows us to imagine that a perspective of this kind is the order of
the day, but significant research conducted over many years, shows
important correlations between the genetic typology and the hierarchical
structure inherited from the caste system. Twenty years have passed since
Michael Bamshad published a team study in which he showed with abundant
bio-statistic surveys that the status curve in the Indian social pyramid
corresponded to a precisely graduated distribution of some markers of the Y
chromosome. In a nutshell, from the observation of Y-chromosomal DNA
samples in a remarkable collection of records, showing that the highest
concentration of markers typical of haplogroup R1a1 was found in the
samples collected among the top castes (brahmans and kshatriya), while it
was much less present among the outcastes and the Shudras. Since then
supporters of Hindu supremacy and uniqueness have rallied around the R1a1
bio-molecular brand as a symbol of identity that confirms the Vedic origin
myth in which society is depicted as a body (where the arms, legs, chest,
head represented the different classes and different “natures”, jati),
supporting a renewed language of national solidarity and hierarchy.
   The correlation between status hierarchy and genetic distinction did not
stop at the markers in the DNA of the Y chromosome. The data that
Bamshad reported brought to light other aspects, no less relevant. First, the
profound similarity between the most frequent genetic profiles in high
castes and those characteristic of lineages in the West, in Europe. Second,
but in close connection, the different distribution between the mito-
chondrial inheritance and the Y one; in simpler words, the divergent impact
of maternal and paternal contributions in the composition of the genetic
identity of the Indian population.
   These two aspects deserve a slightly more careful comment. We must
start by saying that the markers the scientists deal with when they identify a
“genetic lineage” have nothing to do with substantial aspects: they are not
genes that synthesize proteins or command phenotypic characters, physical
or psychic. They are minuscule variants that are completely irrelevant and

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generally confused in a mass of residual nucleotide sequences. But since
they function as markers of continuity from one generation to another and
do not recombine in unilinear polymorphisms of mtDNA and Y chromosome,
they serve perfectly to trace identity lines through many, many generations.
   These two traits, parallel and complementary, gave the biogenetic history
of Indian demography, and even more, the ethnic or genethnic map, if the
neologism is allowed, a rather precise configuration. The upper classes,
social and biological elites at the same time, appeared mainly based on a
patrilineal hegemony (“male driven” according the formula coined by
molecular biologists), tendentially allochthonous and extremely closed. The
lower classes, on the contrary, were more anchored to the native origins,
subordinate, or genetically colonized by the more powerful and “noble” part
of the population. The mitochondrial component, however, had to be
considered as the fecund and generalized humus that lay at the base of all or
almost all parts of the population. The profile defined by the mitochondrial,
maternal markers, the haplotype “M” observed in all the samples, appeared
from one end of the scale to the other, albeit in different proportions, and
inverse with respect to the hierarchical gradient. Simplifying the framework,
and reducing it to a perhaps too elementary scheme, the result would be
more or less this: the entire demographic “body” of the Indian population is
like a large cone, at the base of which are social and genetic categories,
inferior carriers of the most ancient, indigenous and tributary mitochondrial
inheritance (maternal). At the top, on the other hand, was the dynamic,
fertilizing component of “Indo-European” origin, the bearer of highly
selected genetic pools protected by an intransigent endogamic strategy.
   This would be the official part of the story, however. The less official one,
in a certain sense removed, leaves many pores open in the osmotic barrier
between high and low castes: the very fact that the maternal part of native
origin is widely diffused also towards the upper castes indicates that in the
long history of the population a constant flow of hypergamy, women moving
from bottom to top, silently accompanied the reproduction of the entire
system.
   The contradiction between the reproductive closure of the Hindu elite and
indigenous hypergamy is not easy to resolve. Nevertheless, much evidence
supports the hypothesis that, together with the exclusive continuity of a
genetic inheritance linked to the most illustrious Brahmanic lineages (R1a1),
a flow of fertile women from below available as secondary partners has
constantly supplied the system of reproductive energies. In essence, we
would thus have a complex of antinomies: autochthonous/ allochthonous;



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status superiority/inferiority; patri-linear/matri-linear inheritance,
functional antinomies that integrate each other to give life to a cohesive,
vertical body, a well-ordered, selective “organism” based on a double
hegemony, social- and sex-oriented.
   In recent years, however, the hypothesis of the allochthonia has faded
away, to the advantage of a theory that attributes the origin of the Vedic-
Hindu roots, of the most distant founding lineages, to native sources
(Sharma et alii 2009). The great controversy surrounding the question of the
“Arya Invasion” also passes through these complicated alternatives
involving not only historical research, comparative linguistics, prehistory,
but, as we can see, the exploration of biogenetic traces in the deepest
recesses of the ancestral inheritance. Such drastic alternatives are more
concerned with the question of the primacy and authenticity or, to be
clearer, the monopoly of the “Hindu” brand, hindutva, than of the historical
precedence, of the roots. Just think of the cases of some illustrious and
powerful Brahmanic descent corporations, now enlarged as great
communities, extended and branched, like that of the Chitpavans. This
famous cluster of lineages, which was able to influence the history of the
country like few others, and to occupy a decisive hegemonic role in political
and social life, is proud of its genomic identity, given that it can boast its
complex of markers R1a1 ... almost like an archetype of deep Indianness.
   Certainly, neither Bamshad nor other authors of ethno-genetic inquiries
would accept the reading that we, rather boldly, have proposed. The interest
of bio-cellular, genetic-molecular reviews does not go beyond statistical
recognitions and diachronic reconstructions of large flows. For the scholars,
what is of interest is to investigate the times of coalescence, the
phylogenetic networks in which the large population groups are distributed,
the migrations. There is no essentialist implication in these programs. The
fact remains that around their discoveries, and the hypotheses that derive
from it, a complex of currents and passions is stirred up.

Yper-biometrics… towards the columns of Hercules
   The research landscape we have briefly mentioned is certainly much more
extensive and richer in interest. We must, however, stop the review here,
necessarily, because in the space that remains available, we will devote our
attention to other areas of study and programs. Programs that are closer to
the field of sample databases, almost typological censuses, promoted by
Indian institutes and consortia that have produced and recorded relevant
collections of biological materials in recent years, including numerous
panels of DNA samples that they make available to laboratories and research

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centers. The existence of these data repositories gives us the opportunity to
look, so to speak, at the borders of the Aadhaar operation, given that, since
the initial stages of the UIDAI program, the issue of collecting genetic
profiles has been ventilated, and feared, from many parts.
   A precise indication in this sense is captured, very explicitly, in the words
of Pam Dixon (2017):
      Biometric data in The Aadhaar Act is defined as: ‘biometric information’ means
      photograph, fingerprint, Iris scan, or such other biological attributes of an
      individual as may be specified by regulations. Should the government of India
      decide in the future to begin linking DNA information to the Aadhaar system
      under The Aadhaar Act, the language of this definition would allow for it under
      t h e phrase Bother bio-logical attributes. Given the broad access of the
      government to the Aadhaar database, including for law enforcement purposes,
      and the ability of the Indian government to link DNA data to the card at a
      future data, combined with the lack of privacy protections in The Aadhaar Act,
      it is regrettable that the National Identification Authority of India Bill 2010 –
      which contained privacy provisions – was quietly withdrawn from Parliament
      after the passage of The Aadhaar Act, thus making it even more difficult for the
      Indian government to debate and pass a privacy bill for Aadhaar.

   The fear of this militant author, known in the United States for her
campaigns in defense of the protection of privacy and against the
exploitation of personal biometric data, does not seem unfounded when one
looks at the recent positions taken by the judiciary in India, which, in fact,
several times wondered about the limits of protection for bio-genetic
information and the risk that the various databases, the completed Aadhaar,
and the biodata collected from research institutes or medical files, can
communicate with each other. More still, if the law that establishes and
regulates the collection of biometric data for the Aadhaar card, does not
leave an explicit gap open to the acquisition of information on the subjects’
DNA4.

4. However, a decree of the High Court, pronounced in a session in April 2018, by a five-
judge constitution bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra, opens an unequivocal legal
passage to the acquisition of bio-genetic data (“biological attributes”): “The bench
meanwhile has said ‘biological attributes’ are open-ended and the authorities may
expand and include some more biometric features in the Aadhaar scheme in future and
asked whether it would not amount to ‘excessive delegation of powers’ by Parliament.
Blood, urine, DNA may be added, but that will be subject to examination by the courts,
just like right now the court is examining whether collection of fingerprints and Iris
scans are a violation of privacy […] The power of UIDAI to decide what is ‘biological
attributes’ and the method of collecting it has to meet the test of proportionality, the
bench said”. See The New Indian Express, 4 April 2018, www.newindianexpress.com/nation/-
2018/apr/04/possibility-of-aadhaar-getting-more-biometric-features-like-dna-would-give-
ex cessive-power-to-parlia-1797003.html, accessed on 17/08/2020.


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   An exhaustive review of the many databases of a genetic nature, collected
today by researchers, or by screening agencies, not to mention the archives
of DNA samples controlled by forensic or police institutes, on sub-
populations, on location or other parameters, would certainly show a dense
patchwork of filing cabinets, inventories, and bio-molecular catalogues. In
most cases, the identity of the donors is, or should be, protected by
anonymity, but this certainly does not guarantee perfect protection. More
important, however, is the fact that the plans on which these researches are
developed and the one on which the completed UIDAI repertoire extends are
very different and very difficult to communicate. A few references to the
more properly scientific methods and programs will help to better define
these two different realities.
   The IGV (Indian Genome Variation Consortium) classifies the populations
of the subcontinent, or better, of the country, according to the four usual
memberships for linguistic family: Indo-European, Dravidic, Tibeto-
Burmese, Austrasiatic. Complementary to the distribution by language, a
second system of classification orders the Indian population on the basis of a
rough “morphological” typology:
      All the four major morphological types – Caucasoid, Mongoloid, Australoid and
      Negrito, are present in the Indian population (Malhotra 1978). The “Caucasoid”
      a n d “Mongoloid” populations are mainly concentrated in the north and
      northeastern parts of the country. The “Australoids” are mostly confined to the
      central, western and southern India, while the “Negritos” are restricted to the
      Andaman Islands (IGVC 2005: 3).

   Apparently the typology makes reference to racial criteria that today have
very little anthropological value, positing a correspondence to linguistic
categories (Caucasoids>>Indo-Europeans; Australoids>>Dravidians...), and
geographical loci: Caucasoids in the North and North-west, Australoid-
Dravidian in the South and Southeast, Mongoloids in the North-east. The
objectives that the project IGVdb (Genomic Map of India Database) aims to
pursue are mainly of a medical and epidemiological order: to identify a series
of polymorphisms and to elaborate a database of amplitude extended to the
whole of India, to build haplotype maps based on multi-generational family
and parental complexes. With the aim of acquiring the profiles of fifteen
thousand individuals, perhaps in the wake of what the international HapMap
project launched in the early 2000s, the Consortium essentially proposes to
trace the genetic profile of the whole nation, extracting from its survey the
characteristic genotypes for every single group, caste or ethnicity. A project
that, at the time the program was launched, saw the participation of
research centers, laboratories and government institutions in every part of
the country. A vast platform of records opens to consultation, offered and

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still offers the possibility of inserting samples and observing on chromosome
maps, allelic variants contained in the database and exploring mutations
related to pathological, pharmacological, metabolic, etc. characters.
   It is not the only, nor the most challenging of the extensive screening
programs that exist in India. We have mentioned in a previous note the
program of the Anthropological Survey of India, a government institution of
ancient presence and diverse activities throughout the country. Several
cultural commitments characterize this complex of research centers:
ethnography, paleo-ethnology, statistical studies, event promotion, etc. Its
DNA Polymorphism program in Contemporary Indian Population and Skeletal
Remains represents today, at least in its intentions, another line of
exploration in what the specialists call “Molecular anthropology”. The
Survey, according to the initial platform of its research project, “begins to
develop a resource cell lines and DNA samples to study DNA sequences in
contemporary Indian Populations”, to define the “phylogenetic
architecture” and the population’s genomic diversity in the lines traced
through both the mitochondrial and Y-DNA markers 5. An ambitious
program, which, among other things, was projected onto an extended
diachronic distance: the vast osteological collection deposited at the
Institute allows the comparison of current DNA samples (acquired in large
numbers by living donors, in the form of blood samples) with the most
ancient genomic profiles in a sort of time travel through the phylogenetic
history of Indian identity. An open and searchable, centralized database
would have allowed the scientific community to access India’s most
important bio-repository.
   The current state of the stock of bio-genetic samples and cellular records
dispersed in a myriad of centers and laboratories, not to mention the clinical
institutions or archives of forensic medicine, cannot be traced through a
banal review of places and agencies. The Icelandic model is perhaps far
away, and it cannot be said that it can ever be applied. A complete cataloging
model of the entire population, its family genealogies and related genomic
profiles, on which important pharmaceutical companies have invested
capital and experimental activities (Pálsson 2007). Nonetheless, the
potentially available space for the flow of bio-data now open in a country of

5. “Currently, Anthropological survey of India has studied 75 communities comprising 7,807
blood samples from different parts of the country under this project”, see DNA Polymorphism
in Contemporary Indian Population and Ancient Skeletal Remains, Anthropological Survey of
India, Ministry of Culture, Government of India, https://ansi.gov.in/dna-polymorphism-in-
contemporary-indian-population-and-ancient-skeletal-remains/ (accessed on 17/08/2020).


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one billion and two hundred million inhabitants, is so boundless that it
certainly cannot escape the market and research actors. Imagining this as a
“resource”, as an extraordinary source of biological capital, and of scientific
investment is something that is part of the globalized game of competition,
health policies, scientific progress. To quote an incisive critical commentary
by Yulia Egorova (2013: 298):
      As Sunder Rajan has observed, various Indian actors, such as clinical research
      organisations (CROs), the pharmaceutical industry and various regulatory and
      educational agents envisage India as a major experimental site in international
      clinical trials and welcome more and more global clinical trial activity into the
      country (2010). […] The story of clinical trials in India is thus much more
      complicated than that of Western entrepreneurs exploiting Indian populations,
      and requires analyzing the efforts that the Indian state itself makes to turn the
      country into a global experimental site. However, as Sunder Rajan has
      demonstrated, though Indian actors strive to surround clinical research with
      capacity-building initiatives and ethical safeguards, their efforts fail to mitigate
      the structural violence that clinical trials involve in Third World contexts,
      where due to structural inequalities, there are more ‘bioavailable’ (Cohen 2001,
      2005) bodies ready to act as experimental subjects (Sunder Rajan 2010).

   No one can say today that the Aadhaar program, the latest and most
sophisticated expression of the centuries-old history of censuses and
classifications that India has known, is predisposed to merge with the
scattered networks of biogenetic information. Indeed, both the law and
technology applied in the formation of the UIDAI database seem prepared to
avert these risks. Nevertheless, the intrinsic strength of the communicative
machine, as well as the inexorable logic of the systems of conservation,
expansion and control of databases, are not such as to allow themselves to
be contained, or to be governed by the ethical management clauses that
governments, judges or ethics of the scientists right now want to publicly
ensure.




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 Pier Giorgio SOLINAS has taught Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology for many
 years at the University of Siena, and in several universities abroad. He has carried
 out ethnographic fieldwork in Italy and India focusing on issues related to kinship,
 social structures, demography, and cultural identities. Among his recent publications
 a r e : Spazi di alleanza. Aree di matrimonialità nella Toscana meridionale (with
 Simonetta Grilli, CISU, 2002), L’acqua strangia. Il declino della parentela nella
 società complessa (Angeli, 2004), La famiglia. Un’antropologia delle relazioni
 primarie (Carocci, 2010), Ancestry. Parentele elettroniche e lignaggi genetici (Ed.it
 press, 2015), Lettere dagli antenati. Famiglie, genti, identità (Rosenberg & Sellier,
 2020) and several journal articles and chapters in books.
 piergiosolinas@gmail.com




This work is licensed under the Creative Commons © Pier Giorgio Solinas
Beyond the fingerprints: From biometric to genetics
2020 | ANUAC. VOL. 9, N° 2, DICEMBRE 2020: 121-139.
ISSN: 2239-625X – DOI: 10.7340/anuac2239-625X-3989
