Genetic study on Brahmins and other castes of
The Indian origin of paternal haplogroup R1a1* substantiates the autochthonous origin of Brahmins and the caste system by Swarkar Sharma et al., Journal of Human Genetics (2009) 54, 47-55
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A compilation of a host of genetic studies done on the origins of the people of Bharath varsha can be read here:-
http://sites.google.com/site/kalyan97/palaeolithic
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A genetic study that might be of interest:-
North Indian Muslims: enclaves of foreign DNA or Hindu converts?
Terreros MC, Rowold D, Luis JR, Khan F, Agrawal S, Herrera RJ.
Department of Biological Sciences,
The mtDNA composition of two Muslim sects from the northern Indian province of Uttar Pradesh, the Sunni and Shia, have been delineated using sequence information from hypervariable regions 1 and 2 (HVI and HVII, respectively) as well as coding region polymorphisms. A comparison of this data to that from Middle Eastern, Central Asian, North East African, and other Indian groups reveals that, at the mtDNA haplogroup level, both of these Indo-Sunni and Indo-Shia populations are more similar to each other and other Indian groups than to those from the other regions. In addition, these two Muslim sects exhibit a conspicuous absence of West Asian mtDNA haplogroups suggesting that their maternal lineages are of Indian origin. Furthermore, it is noteworthy that the maternal lineage data indicates differences between the Sunni and Shia collections of Uttar Pradesh with respect to the relative distributions of Indian-specific M sub-haplogroups (Indo Shia > Indo Sunni) and the R haplogroup (Indo Sunni > Indo Shia), a disparity that does not appear to be related to social status or geographic regions within
PMID: 17427927 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
