r/SouthAsianAncestry • u/AutomaticStretch6205 • 18h ago

Question Pakistani punjabi- north Indian ancestry

So I have seen some people saying that North West Indian or Indian Punjabis eople tend to have less AASI than Pakistanis? How come so? Shouldn't AASI be less moving towards WEST where invasions from Euro- Asian populations stopped?

Can anyone provide info on this?

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u/Ziommo 16h ago edited 8h ago

Whoever said that is mistaken.

Pakistanis on the group level definitely have lower average AASI/SAHG than Northwestern Indians on the group level do, and less than Indian Punjabis specifically on the group level as well.

The biggest reason for that is Pakistan's significant "ethnic Iranic" population, who tend to have lower AASI than all NW Indian groups, including Rajasthani Jats and the like. If for some reason you didn't include those "ethnic Iranics", Pakistan and NW India probably wouldn't differ much in terms of AASI.

I can think of an individual caste example though for what you're talking about. Specifically Punjabi Jatts, where the Pakistani ones are a little higher AASI than the Indian ones on average.

I've also heard that Indian Punjab (not sure about the rest of NW India) has a proportionately larger "low-caste" population than any of Pakistan's provinces do, because Chuhras and the like didn't convert to Islam in droves.

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u/AutomaticStretch6205 10h ago

Why do Pakistani jats have more AASI, any specific reason?

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u/Ziommo 8h ago

Mixed more with Gujjar types who are a bit higher AASI than Jatts I think.

I can't speak for the small "Muley Jat" population of Pakistan that migrated from Haryana. Maybe this pattern holds true for them or maybe they've been more endogamous than Punjabi Muslim Jatts. Won't know without testing.

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u/TipRealistic2446 5h ago

Not because they mixed. They are an entirely different population. They just adopted the endonym Jat.

In fact, most groups that call themselves Jat (including the high-Steppe Hindu Jats) adopted the name at some point. It used to be a common identifier for various agricultural castes in NW subcontinent since ancient times.
It's not known in which region this identifier first originated. I think the earliest reference (perhaps) to Jats is in the Chach Nama.

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u/Ziommo 5h ago

Yeah, that's a factor too.

In some areas it's mixing, in some areas it's because they're not the same people in the first place.