Nanjundiah from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore biologist L.S.

The letter’s signatories include Partha Majumder, population-geneticist and former director of the National Institute of Biomedical Genomics, Kalyani ecologist Raghavendra Gadagkar and evolutionary biologist V. The letter says it is “dangerous because the notion of purity, in addition to being meaningless, carried with it the sense of some groups being less pure or more pure than others”. “It is absurd because the concept of biological races was discarded long ago.” “The notion of tracing ‘purity of races’, whether in India or elsewhere, is extremely worrisome,” the group’s letter to the ministry says. The culture ministry had tweeted on May 31 that the media reports were “misleading, mischievous, and contrary to facts”.īut the group said it had thought it fit to write to the ministry because there was no clarity yet on the objectives of the planned research project. Media reports had said that the culture ministry was acquiring DNA kits to study the genetic history of Indians and trace the purity of races in India. Asserted that science had abandoned the concept of biological races decades ago.

Racial purity