KHAP PANCHAYTS AND SCIENTIFIC TRUTH

Khap and Genetics These days genetics comes quite handy for the khap supporters to demand ban on the same gotra marriage by amending the Hindu Marriage Act. Many khap elders can be seen these days talking like experts on genetics. They argue that any kind of sexual relation between two sexes in a particular khap is rightly treated as incest as the offspring of such an alliance would have genetic disorders. The khap lineage implies flowing of the same blood in the veins of the khap descendents and purity of blood must be maintained by avoiding cohabitation between male and female members of the khap concerned. Thus, the serious science of khap has been reduced to the level of the banal. It looks quite farcical when critics of the khap functioning are accused of promoting marriage between brother and sister. Genetics is a science of heredity or inheritance. “ The science of genetics tells us the exact possibilities of common heredity between consanguineal relatives of each degree. A person can be expected, on the average, exactly half of the hereditary factors or genes of any consanguineal relative. He inherits half of those possessed by his father and half of those carried by his mother. He transmits approximately half of his own to each son or daughter. With each brother and sister (except identical twins) he is likely to share fifty per cent of the half inherited from the father plus fifty per cent of the half inherited from the mother, or half of the total heredity of the sibling”. Human cells contain 23 pairs of chromosomes( long, stringy aggregates of genes that carry heredity information) for a total of 46. When a child is conceived, male and female contribute half the chromosomes each. However, in a male dominated society child’s gotra is known after the father and mother’s contribution is ignored. In a patriarchal set up, even the role of a female in biological function on which humans have no control, is not taken note of. To quote a scientist: “ Gotra is known after the male only. When a man marries a woman, the offspring would inherit half the blood from each of the parents. Marriage in the next generation takes place in the third gotra leading to mixing of blood of one more gotra. In this situation, the initial blood of mother and father remains only 25 per cent. In the succeeding generations this is reduced to about 5 per cent. ……In this way there is little possibility of genetic disorder in the same ngotra marriage…..From scientific point of view, it can be stated that gotra is a social identity marker and not a genetic entity”. (free translation from Hindi). The khap votaries treat the genetic code as something static and frozen as if it travels from one generation to another in its pristine purity. It seems, taking their argument seriously, that nature keeps the seed of a male ancestor in a sort of bank vault from where it is injected automatically in the descendents from generation to generation for thousands of years and the purity of blood is maintained automatically. Any body who contravenes this eternal law of nature by having sexual relation with a member of the same family line which enlarges with a passage of time to envelop a number of villages in the form of a khap, commits incest and must be punished for committing the sin. This is nothing but a caricature of a serious and complex science of genetics. Inheritance of genes is hereditary. Richard Dawkins, a well known genetist, is of the view that Our genes are doled out to us at conception, and there is nothing that we can do about this. Dawkins, who has been accused of genetics determinism, also admits the role of culture in life. “ Most of what is unusual about man can be summed up in one word ‘culture’……Cultural transmission is analogous to genetic transmission in that, although basically conservative, it can give rise to a form of evolution”. Thus besides, genes, factors like culture, environment, climate and a host of social factors play significant role in life. “ Environmental factors are presumed to be involved in the development of aggressiveness…..Unfavourable social conditions such as frustration in personal accomplishment and taunting from associates may encourage physical aggression as a means of adaptation”. “ Furthermore, behavioral characteristics of an animal develop under the joint tightly entwined effects of heredity and environment…..Environmental factors are interwoven with inheritance mechanisms at every point in development”. Thus, a host of environmental and social factors have a significant role in life and they may induce change in genes also. Even one’s actions may have a role. “ The genes can be induced to change by,voluntary, free-willed, conscious action”. . “The biological and socioecological are mutually inextricably entangled. Consequently. our fate is neither written in the stars nor in our genes, for we are active participants of the evolutionary drama”. Thus, the khap ideologues’ notion of genetic code being a fixed entity traversing from generation to generation is a fiction as research in the field of genetics shows. Their idea of incest relating to common lineage, if taken back indefinitely in the past, leads to the conclusion that whole of mankind is linked with common genealogy and any kind of marital relation is incestuous as homo sapiens, as search in genetics shows, are derived from a common family tree somewhere in Africa. According to a new research, modern humans may have interbred with a now extinct lineage of humanity before leaving Africa 65,000 years ago after the emergence of modern humans 200,000 years ago. Offspring known by the gotra of their male parent is illogical from the viewpoint of genetics as female parent too makes an equal contribution. If a male with Gotra A married a girl with gotra B, their son will have AB gotra. After he marries a female with Gotra C after avoiding the gotra of parents, his progeny would have gotra ABC along with gotra of his wife’s mother and so on. A senior medico and a civil engineer have done an elaborate joint exercise on this which is quite enlightening. They takes us two hundred years back. Let us assume that one boy named Bhim Boora married a girl Chandro Hooda and they were blessed with a son Sarju. He should be known as Sarju Boora Hooda. At the same juncture of time there was one Lal Chand Punia who married Rajo Sheoran and the couple was blessed with girl named Ramkali. She, by gotra, is Ramkali Punia Sheoran. In the Course of time (say after 25 years ) Sarju Boora-Hooda got married to Ramkai Punia-Sheoran and they gave birth to a daughter named Sita, who, by gotra, was Sita Boora-Hooda-Punia-Sheoran. In the same period one young man of Sangwan gotra married one young woman of Dahiya gotra and gave birth to a daughter named Bimla with gotra Sangwan-Dahiya and on attaining proper age married a young man Harpal Malik-Jakhar. The couple gave birth to a male child named Rajmal who, by gottra, was Rajmal Sangwan-Dahiya-Malik-Jakhar. After another 25 years Sita Boora-Hooda-Punia-Sheoran got married to Rajmal Sangwan-Dahiya-Malik-Jakhar and gave birth to a daughter named Khajani who, by gotra, was Khajani Boora-Hooda-Punia-Sheoran-Sangwan-Dahiya-Malik-Jakhar. Around the same period of time there was one male child born to other parents with different grant parents and different great grand parents and was, by gotra, Harphool Rana-Fogat-Gahot-Kadian-Nain-Lohan-Jaglan. Khajani and Harphool were married and gave birth to sons and daughters. What will be the gotra of their offspring? It will be inordinately long. Their surname will be Rana-Fogat-Deswal-Gahlot-Kadian-Nain-Lohan-Jaglan-Boora-Hooda-Punia-Sheoran-Sangwan-Dahiya-Malik-Jakhar.Thus, the third generation children will have 16 surnames if we have to go by the laws of genetics. Summarising, by blood the first patriarch/matriarch must have had blood mix of at least two gotra; one gotra from his /her father and another from his/her mother. The next generation, say after 25 years, will have blood mix of four gotra, the third generation, say after 50 years from the start, will have blood mix of eight gotra, 16 gotras after 75 years, 32 gotras after 100 years, 64 gotras after 175 years and 512 gotras after 150 years, 256 gotras after 200 years from the start. Thus, a Jat must have the blood of hundreds of gotras running into his/her veins centuries after the community came into existence. There has been so much of intermixing that to talk of purity of blood anywhere in the world these days is irrational and unscientific. In ancient times a number of ethnic groups came into Haryana region- Greeks, Shakas, Scythians, Parthians, Huns, Kushans etc. Some of them settled here. In medieval times it was a gateway to Agra and Delhi for a variety of foreign invaders and they must have mixed up with the local population. In this backdrop purity of blood for any community is a fiction. Jats of Haryana and their counterparts in Punjab come from the same ethnic stock and they have many common gotras. Sikh Jats are more liberal on account of the emancipatory ethos of Sikh gurus and several reform movements. There are instances of same gotra marriage in case of some large gotras like Virk, Dihlllon, Grewal, Chahal etc. Most glaring is the marital relationship between two leading Jat political families of Punjab- Pratap Singh Kairon and Prakash Singh Badal ( Kairon’s grand son married Badal’s daughter) while they both have Dhillon gotra. There is no report of any genetic infirmity in case of their children. Khap leaders now invoke science in their advocacy for a ban on intra-gotra marriages. However, there is no scientific basis of their demand as gotra is a social construct. The Hindu Marriagiage Act bans marriage on grounds of Sapindas, unless permitted by custom. Sapinda refers to the third generation of ascendants on the mother’s side and fifth on the father’s side and bans marriage between two persons if one is a descendants of the other within these limits. In many parts of the country, especially in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, marriage between first cousin is quite common. According to Dr. Satyajit Rath, a scientist at the institute of Immunology, New Delhi, there are strong societal and cultural reasons to ban such marriages but it has no basis in science.Gotra, asserts Dr. Rath, is no science at all. Khap zealots has created so much of din on their demand of ban on same gotra marriage as if this kind of marriage is mushrooming in society and thus has become a serious social problem. Far from it. The study commissioned by the National Commission for Women found that 72 % out of the 326 cases of honour crimes surveyed related to inter caste marriages while the same gotra marriages accounted for only 3 % . Marriages within the caste were 15 % while only 1 % were inter-religious marriages. Khap ideologues accuse those who disagree with them of standing for the same-gotra marriage, stretching it to the argument that they would like to promote marriage between brother and sister. This is canard, pure and simple, and has no basis in reality. They, including this writer, have always conceded that khap people have democratic right to demand ban on same-gotra marriage peacefully by amending the Hindu Marriage Act but they should relax other restrictions which have become impractical in modern age. However, if some one happens to violate these norms, there should be no killing and persecution of the family concerned. Moreover, same-gotra marriage is not such a big problem as it is made out to be, more so in Haryana. There has been only such case relating to Manoj-Babli of Kaithal district. So many other cases relate to marital alliance between boys and girls with different gotras, different villages and different khaps. Still they became targets of the caste panchayat fury on account of some violation of a plethora of marital taboos. Khap leaders should change their world view in tune with the changing times and concentrate on larger social issues like the crisis in agriculture, mounting corruption, galloping inflation, growing unemployment feoticide and such other problems if they wish to acquire legitimacy in society.