Finding My Roots.
September 19, 2018
The theory of our origin has baffled us for many years and especially in Manipur where we seems to be unnecessarily divided on the basis of the land we occupy and the not so different cultures and traditions we embodied.
Personally as my father decided to pack-up and leave us, I never knew much about him and what he was like. My brother and me grew up as our mum singlehandedly forged to build a family and provided the opportunity to be educated. Much of our childhood we had to live with other kids commenting on our absent dad and the fact that he was from the Meitei community didn’t make it any easier. So I grew up building a wall between others and me and tried many ways to deal with this issue. My society dictates that I have a father and everywhere I go, they would ask me whom my dad is. Mum never spoke about it and it wasn’t easy for her so we left it at that. People didn’t stop asking and we didn’t stop living. As tough as it used to be, we devised a coping mechanism around this rather sensitive issue and we did a pretty damn job.
As I grew older and even as I was on my way to Delhi University to do my further studies I thought people would stop asking and I can slide away quietly from this fact.
How wrong was I? The questions never ceased and now the same question is accompanied by what is his name and which tribe or community does he belong to. So the question of identity was an issue that needed to be dealt with at some point.
So dad was Meitei and mum was Gangte -This is important for the purpose of my article. Growing up in Manipur, which is a melting pot for different communities, discussions about identity, dominates many conversations in our society and beyond. Sometimes our conversations leads to arguments and in some unfortunate occasions it has led even to killing each other. We love playing the race card whenever we confront each other and hurl racial abuse and hurt each other leaving scars which stays with us longer than needed. On a personal note, having a mix parent was very confusing for me as a child. I grew up among the tribal community of Kanggui and I consider myself one of them and I am one of them. So I used to get really embarrassed when I was teased for having a Meitei father. He was my biological father and that’s where it started and ended unfortunately. I grew up a Gangte and I am very proud about it. However, having the guts to talk about my paternal background came to me very late and it hasn’t been long that I am comfortable talking about this. Needless to say, I have always been very intrigued about my background, my ancestors and where I am from. So I decided to discover my ancestral origins and trace my lineage with a personalized analysis of my DNA.
My results didn’t come as a shock at all. However to read through some of the results was exciting, educational and changed my mind-sets on several levels. So, here’s the overview of my results:
1. I am 90.2% East Asian and Native American
2. 8.5% South Asian
3. 0.1% Sub-Saharan African
4. 0.1% European
5. 1.3% unassigned.
Another interesting find was the difference between my Paternal and my maternal haplogroup.
My Maternal(Gangte mother,a kuki-chin=mizo) haplogroup is A4c.
Now my maternal haplogroup can reveal the path followed by the women of my maternal line. Maternal haplogroup, A4c, traces back to a woman who lived approximately 12,000 years ago. That’s nearly 480 generations ago! The common ancestor of haplogroup A was a woman who lived approximately 25,000 years ago, perhaps in the northern reaches of East Asia. Members of haplogroup A are widespread in Asia today, where they generally make up less than 10% of their populations. The haplogroup reaches higher concentrations in some parts of China, Korea and Japan. In some ethnic Chinese populations, such as the Dong and the Yi, nearly 30% of people belong to haplogroup A. One branch of the haplogroup, A4, reaches levels of more than 15% among people who were tested in the city of Wuhan in central China.
Moreover my paternal (Meetei father)haplogroup is O-Page23.
A paternal haplogroup is a family of Y chromosomesdefined by a particular set of genetic variants. Your paternal haplogroup tells you about your paternal-line ancestors, from your father to his father and beyond.
O-Page23 is a subgroup of O-M122, 30,000 to 35,000 years old from Eastern Asia. O-M122 is a branch of the major haplogroup O, which was carried to Eastern Asia roughly 35,000 years ago.
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Ytree of 0-Page 23
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Going by genetics,they are people with origin North East ,not south Archipelago like the south east Asians .
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