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Vaishnavi Chandrasekhar writes in the Times of India of 31st August 2025.
Endogamy is the custom of marrying only within the limits of local community, clan or tribe. Endogamy means you could inherit the same piece of DNA from your parents, because there are relationships on both sides of your family. In a recent study of 2700 supposedly unrelated Indians, every individual had at least one, fourth degree cousin. It is like consanguinity but at a longer time scale. When the relationship is within three or four generations it is called consanguinity. If it is deeper in time it is called founder events.
Research suggests, ancient Indians transformed themselves from a freely mixing population - a brew of indigenous hunter gatherers, farmers from present day Iran, and Steppe pastoralists (Steppe pastrolists were nomadic groups who lived on Eurasian steppe) - to a more endogamous one, marrying within communities and castes. Over time, this reduced genetic diversity of groups with a small number of founders, raising the chance of rare disorders.
Our genetic health risks are shaped by our identity. We all carry two copies of each gene, one from each parent. Alone, it may have no impact - it remains 'recessive' (expressed in offspring only) or hidden. But if both parents carry the mutation, the child has a one - in - four chance of inheriting both copies and developing the disease. Most people know that marrying close relatives, or consanguinity, can increase recessive risks in the offspring. But endogamy can do the same, especially in smaller communities.
When people are made aware of their predisposition, their disorders could be diagnosed and treated quickly and even its early onset could be delayed by the doctors.
It has been observed that in certain South Indian communities, some new borns do not live beyond a few months due to rare genetic disorders. The disease remains hidden because no one knows such a disease is there as the children do not survive.
There is hope, as screening the whole community for such disease carrying variants had helped a pregnant woman who had lost two babies, give birth to a normal baby free of the disease carrying variant.
All it needs is spreading the awareness in such communities so that the occurence of rare genetic diseases could be eliminated.
