"Let us be very clear, there is nothing like racial purity as every population group has got admixed over centuries in South Asia. While there is sufficient archaeological evidence that the people of the Harappan civilisation have dispersed over hundreds of years across the country towards Rajasthan, Bengal, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and other places, there has been no genetic study of their mixing with the people of other regional cultures, which came up later," says archaeologist-scientist Vasant Shinde, now with the CSIR-Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) as the Bhatnagar Fellow.
At CCMB, the renowned archaeologist is going to take up study "for genetic mutations that have occurred over centuries among these two populations and trace the lineage". "Samples of the ancient DNA and modern-day samples collection will help us do comparative analysis to understand the population composition," explains professor Shinde, in an exclusive interaction recently at his lab.
He dismisses "controversy" over this study. "We are very clear about what we are doing. It is scientific and academic work and the evidence will be out in the public domain. There is bound to be debate when established notions about population migrations and genetic mixing are questioned, but statements should not be twisted," he avers.
