Until now, all Sindhis were thought to have their origins in Pakistan’s Sindh. But a new study has shown that many Sindhis in India could be different from their Pakistani cousins – all thanks to their link to Mongolia.
The first high-throughput genetic study by Hyderabad’s Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR)-Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) examined the common ancestry, local assimilation, and past migration history of India’s Sindhi population. It found that the Sindhi population on the west coast of India has a genetic makeup that’s different from Pakistani Sindhis – thanks to the existence of a unique East Asian genetic component.
According to Dr Kumarasamy Thangaraj – a CSIR Bhatnagar Fellow at the CSIR (CCMB) and one of two authors of the study — the Sindhis in this part of the world show genetic affinities “toward the Burusho or Hazara-like group from Pakistan as well as recent genetic assimilation with local populations such as the Konkani”.
The results of this study were published on September 30 in the peer-reviewed science journal Human Genomics.
For this, researchers Thangaraj and his colleague Lomous Kumar generated genetic data of the Sindhi population using six lakh DNA markers and analysed them using advanced analytical and statistical methods.
Burusho and Hazara are two ethnic groups in present-day Pakistan that have some East Asian ancestry.
“The existence of a unique East Asian genetic component in Sindhis of the west coast, compared to Pakistani Sindhis can be attributed to minor admixtures occurring either directly through Mongolian migrations or with contacts through Burusho and Hazara-like groups in present-day Pakistan alternatively,” Dr Thangaraj said.
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The study also finds that the Indian Sindhi group has a small and unique genetic component from East Asia that might have incorporated much earlier in the history, “likely reflecting imprints of Iron Age or later migrations, possibly Mongols, in their genomes”, Dr Lomous Kumar, the other author of the study and a postdoctoral researcher at DST-Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeosciences (BSIP), Lucknowsaid.
“These findings conclusively demonstrate the demographic changes and population shifts in western India associated with multiple migrations. Some of these happened as early as the Iron or Middle Ages and some as recent as post-independence” Dr Vinay K. Nandicoori, director of CSIR-Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, said.
According to the study, the west coast of India is home to diverse human populations. This large region between the Arabian Sea and the Western Ghats has seen the movement of various West Eurasian groups, including the Portuguese, Middle Easterners, Jews, Parsees, and Christian missionaries.
According to CCMB, recent studies have focused on the genetic affinities of a few groups, such as Parsis, Jews, and Catholics. However, the origins and genetic relationships of many southwest coast groups, often seen as remnants of later migrations, remain largely unexplored.
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One such small community is the Indian Sindhis, who live on the west coast in Maharashtra. Due to the geographical proximity of the Sindh region in Pakistan, they have migrated to western India for centuries, but mass migration occurred during the Partition of India.
Although Pakistani Sindhis have been extensively studied, very limited genetic information is available about the Sindhis living on the west coast India, who are socio-culturally quite distinct on the Konkan coast, the CCMB said, adding this latest study has tried to trace the origin of Sindhis.
