Source: TW
This is a topic I have commented a lot on, nevertheless: “same DNA” thing +++(Mohan Bhagawat of RSS: “Muslims have same DNA as Hindus”)+++ is what in America goes under the name racism. Race & religion are topics that evoke great passion & there is nothing surprising about it. But people need to have an objective look at it.
Theory accurately predicts that organisms will favor kin. In visual animals like humans this will involve looking for people who appear similar. They are likely to be kin – nothing peculiar. Hence, there is an innate tendency to favor those who look like you against those who dont.
However, in biology the conflicts span many levels. As some culture had a proverb - “me against my brother; my brother & me against my cousin; my bro+cousins against tribe, tribe against other tribes etc.” or something like that. It is conceivable that groups of people who look more similar within the group are more cohesive than those who tend to look more different. The latter might be the situation with Indians.
Hence, other markers of ingroup identity become more important. These may include “extended phenotypes” like ushnIsha-s, language & religion. Indeed,examples across biology indicate simple kin markers of appearance can be breached by “cheaters” adopting various types of mimicry & subterfuge. Hence, usually 2 factor or more authentications have developed for ingroup recognition. Some groups use a combination of race + religion.
In India the tendency for local diversification among the “Son of the soil” types has mean that macro-religion has had a smaller role in identity than the other 2-factor authentication markers like desha language & local scripts. However, both race & language are bad authentication tokens. Cheaters can easily breach them. For e.g. historically Mongols called on the Kipchaq Turks to betray their Rus allies citing racial similarity - Thus breaching their defenses they destroyed both the Rus & Kipchaqs. In India we see how easily language & ethnicity (micro-race) is broken through by enemies: pA~nchanada, chera, andhra, va~Nga. Moreover the dharma was brought from outside by the Arya-s & after the Arya-s several invaders have contributed solidly to the dharma. Hence, we posit that too much focus on race, desha-bhAShA & script are ultimately bad for the H. Likewise dharma was taken outside from India to East (& west where it was destroyed by pretAdi). By making “same DNA” claims nothing useful can be achieved – where are you going to cut the tree?
Hence, we have actively cultivate the macro-religious marker, while keeping race (macro & micro) primarily an object of academic study. Likewise desha language & script need to be downplayed. Of course this is easier said than done because those marker hit more primordial hard-coded circuits which act quite automatically & they intersect with mate-finding. Thus, it is not easy for H but this is something the H leadership needs to consider rather than peddle contrafactual ideas for those will ultimately sink the H edifice like a house built on dry lake bed.