Where did they come from?

In De Souza Prabhu Goan poet Eunice de Souza tells the story of a Brahmin Catholic womanNo Irsquom not going to delve deep down and discover Irsquom really de Souza Prabhu even if Prabhu was no fool and got the best of both worlds Catholic Brahmin I can hear his fat chuckle stillInterestingly a new study too connects Konkan Roman Catholics to the Brahmin heritageTitled Dissecting the genetic history of the Roman Catholic populations of West Coast India the study was conducted by scientists from the CSIRCentre for Cellular and Molecular Biology CCMB Hyderabad Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeosciences BSIP in Lucknow Mangalore University Canadian Institute for Jewish Research and Institute of Advanced Materials Sweden According to authors of the paper which was published in Human Genetics on August 23 till date no genetic study has been done on the Roman Catholics from three different locations of the West Coast of IndiamdashGoa Kumta and MangaloreRoman Catholic fete Cathedral Bassein Bombay India 19th Century PicGetty ImagesChief scientist of CSIRCCMB Kumaraswamy Thangaraj shares ldquoHistorically a lot of information on Roman Catholics in the Konkan region was not proven with the help of genetics So we decided to begin our investigation almost seven years ago We have analysed the DNA of 110 individuals from the Roman Catholic community of Goa Kumta and MangalorerdquoThe results are intriguing In this first throughput story the team found that the Roman Catholics of Goa Kumta and Mangalore regions are close to very early lineages of the Brahmin community of India ldquoOur aim to study this population group was not just due to lack of their Konkan Roman Catholics genetic history but because of the different hypotheses given by historians over time According to some historians Roman Catholics were Konkani speakers of the Gaud Saraswat communityAlso Read Arre baba dis is OrlemAfter the arrival of the Portuguese most of them forcefully converted to Christianity and a few groups escaped towards the South especially Kumta and Mangalore and mixed with the local communityrdquo explains Niraj Rai senior scientist at BSIPNiraj Rai and Kumaraswamy ThangarajAlthough most of the written records of the origin and culture of the groups converted to Roman Catholicism were destroyed during Portuguese rule especially in the 16th century oral tradition along with cultural and linguistic affinity of this community relates its origin from the Gaud Saraswat Brahmins whose origin in turn according to some schools of thought is near the mythical Saraswathi river region the study statesThey compared the genetic information of the Roman Catholic group with previously published DNA data from India and West Eurasia They put this information alongside archaeological linguistic and historical records Rai continues ldquoWe matched Roman Catholic genetic data with the published database from India and found that Roman Catholics have a maximum match with the Brahmin groups of North and North West of India The present extensive genetic analysis with uniparental markers and genomewide autosomal SNP markers suggest that the Roman Catholic group has malebiased admixture with the arrival of North West population carrying genetic composition typical of IndoEuropean populations on the Indian cline which holds true with all of the populations with more affinity with priestly groups on ANIASI cline in IndiardquoInterestingly they also found that Roman Catholics have IndoEuropean genetic affinity along with cryptic Jewish admixture ldquoOne school of thought says that Gaud Saraswat Brahmins are the descendents of a very early tribe of Jews and they came to India about 2700 years ago as refugees Few historians believe that Gaud Saraswat Brahmins are descendents of those Jews who came to Kerala during King Solomonrsquos time about 2900 years ago and from Kerala they arrived in Mangalore and Goa So we wanted to check all possible hypotheses using cuttingedge DNA markersrdquo Rai addsMitochondrial DNA mtDNA analysis suggests that most of the Roman Catholics have aboriginal Indian maternal genetic ancestry while the Y chromosomal DNA analysis indicates high frequency of Rs 1a lineage which is predominant in groups with higher ancestral North Indian ANI component ldquoIn the end everybodyrsquos roots are traced to Africa But we donrsquot know how many years later the populations divurged into different religions languages and casterdquo Thangaraj explainsThe study further said the west coast of India has a rich diversity of various ethnolinguistic human population groups The Roman Catholic is one such distinct group whose origin is much debated When asked Dr Analabha Basu who has a PhD degree in Population and Statistical genetics from the Indian Statistical Institute and is currently associated with the National Institute of Biomedical Genomics says ldquoThis result published in Human Genetics has been shown multiple times before as well So indeed to a larger extent this conclusion was expected there maybe some affinity towards Brahmin lineage It is also true that Roman Catholics have similarities with the Jews Therefore this study has come at a relevant timerdquoHe however feels that the Roman Catholic population has been largely neglected and little research is done on their genetic history ldquoThis population is neglected in the mainstream discussion But it is also true that histories of many populations are not entirely known yet So I welcome the CSIRCCMB study However I donrsquot believe that this is the only truth possible We must explore other possibilities to conclude their Roman Catholic exact genetic historyrdquo Basu informsldquoThe origins of many population groups in India like the Jews and Parsis are not wellunderstood These are gradually unfolding with advances in modern and ancient population genetics Roman Catholics are one of them with much debated history of origin based on inferences of anthropologists and historiansrdquo Lomous Kumar first author of the paper said in a statementAlso Read Mumbai Christians fast pray for those hit by Covid19