Indian Jewish Population:Unique Blend of Indian and Middle Eastern Ancestry

CCMB has been conducting high quality basic research in frontier areas of modern biology and as a part of it engaged in finding out the genetic links of several populations under one of its research programmes Population Genetics. The origin and migration of ‘Jewish diaspora’ has been curious among people across the world.

Although the genetic studies on European Jewish have traced to Middle East, the exact parental population group and time of dispersal of Indian Jewish has remained disputed. The Jewish communities are distributed throughout the world, however, of all the Jewish Diaspora community, Indian Jewish are among the least studied.

In the absence of archaeological evidence and with the availability of only scanty historical documentation of the Indian Jewish, the international team of scientists led by Dr Kumarasamy Thangaraj from the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology Hyderabad; involving scientists from Estonian Biocentre, Tratu, Estonia;Amala Institute of Medical Sciences, Thrissur, India, University of Kolkata, India and Genome Foundation, Hyderabad have traced the founder of the Indian Jewish populations, using genetic data. This study has just been published in the recent issue of the Nature’s online journal Scientific Reports (PDF Attached).

There are three main distinct Jewish groups living in India- the Jews of Cochin in Kerala, South India; the Bene Israel in Mumbai, West India; and Baghdadi Jews in Kolkata, East India. Each of these communities are socially linked to their neighbours than one another. There are several legendry stories about their migrations to India, but because of lack of written records and inscriptions the origin and migrations of Indian Jewish remain shrouded in legends.

“To trace the origin and mixture of Indian Jewish populations the researchers have analysed the DNA of Indian Jewish using high resolution genetic markers and compared them with native Indian populations and people from rest of the world”, said Dr. Ch. Mohan Rao, Director, CCMB.

The analysis suggests that the Indian Jewish possesses traces of Middle Eastern ancestry together with more likely unidirectional gene-flow from their contemporary Indian populations. Interestingly, the Indian Jewish carry overwhelmingly South Asian ancestry and the proportion of Middle Eastern genetic ancestry was minor. The analyses of autosomal data revealed a high level of heterogeneity among the Indian Jewish groups and their closeness with the local neighbours.

However, sharing of specific maternally inherited mtDNA and paternally inherited Y-chromosomal haplogroups between all the studied Indian Jewish and lack of them among other local Indian populations can be seen as a remnant of a shared ancestry with Middle Eastern populations. The team also estimated that the first migrant Jewish entered to Indian subcontinent (Cochin) about 1500 years ago.

“The expansion of the Indian Jewish from Middle East was followed by extensive admixture and assimilation with the local populations; nevertheless the rooted ancestry to their ancestral place can be testified because of a higher proportion of genetic lineages of Middle East origin” said Dr Thangaraj.

“The initial admixture with local Indian populations followed by strict endogamy has made Indian Jewish a unique populations and studying their genomes will be useful in disease mapping” said Dr Gyaneshwer Chaubey, a member of the research team.