The paper examines the impact of genetic research on the religious identity of the Bene Israel Indian Jewish community and the Lemba Judaising group of southern Africa. It demonstrates how DNA tests which happened to support the possibility of the communities' legends of origin affected their self-perception, the way they are viewed by their neighbors, and their image in the West. It is argued that in both cases what accounted most for the Bene Israel and Lemba responses to the tests was the way the results were portrayed in the mass media, the history of the development of Judaism in their communities, and the local realities.

The article explores how the relationship between genetics and history is performed in genetics studies that aim to reconstruct human migrations. It focuses on two case studies: research on the nature of genetic diversity of South Asian populations and on the genetic history of different Jewish communities. Analysis is based on a close reading of 16 articles on the genetic history of Jewish and South Asian populations and on in-depth interviews with eight geneticists who played a key role in either or both types of studies and with 20 historians with expertise in the issues examined in the genetic studies under survey. The paper discusses the way geneticists construct their contribution to historical debates and the way this contribution is perceived by historians. It will be demonstrated that geneticists and historians are keen on demarcating their disciplines from each other with geneticists insisting on keeping some distance from historical evidence for the sake of maintaining 'objectivity', and historians questioning the epistemological validity of genetic interventions into their field. It will be argued that what accounts for this lack of engagement with each other's discipline is the sociocultural norms associated with academic practice in the natural sciences and humanities and a tendency towards monodisciplinary peer-review.Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, one of the founding fathers of population genetics, asserts on the cover text of his book Genes, Peoples and Languages (2000):Historians relying on written records can tell us nothing about the 99.9 per cent of human evolution which preceded the invention of writing. It is the study of genetic variation, backed up by language and archaeology, which provides concrete evidence about the spread of cultural innovation, the movements of peoples y the precise links between races' (Bivins, 2008: p. 16).Geneticists Mary-Claire King and Arno Motulsky explain that 'the DNA of modern humans contains a record of the travels and encounters of our ancestors' and that '[b]y sampling genotypes from people across the globe, geneticists have reconstructed the major features of our history: our ancient African origin, migrations out of Africa, movements and settlements r

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This paper explores the historical and social context of population genetic research conducted in India by focusing on a study by Reich et al which aimed to reconstruct Indian population history. The paper addresses two themes. First, it considers the agendas and modes of thinking about Indian populations and the caste system on which this study appears to be based. Second, it reflects on the medical implications of this study as they were presented in Reich et al's findings. I suggest that while genetic mapping of Indian populations appears to have inherited many of the problems characteristic of population genetic research conducted in the USA and globally, the specificity of this research in India involves a peculiar interplay of the postcolonial pursuit of genomic sovereignty, desire by the Indian state to become a player in the global realm of biotechnology, and age-old discourses naturalising caste and regional differences. My argument is that, although the study has offered conceptual space for a wide range of interpretations, it has a strong potential not just for naturalising caste and regional differences in India, but also for pathologising them without necessarily bringing tangible healthcare benefits in the foreseeable future.

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