Yanpvuo Kikon
Focus of debate & rational argument - Whether this Naga social institution of paternal inheritance should be strengthened by law as mooted in the Nagaland Legislative Assembly.
If a child is born to a non-indigenous father, should he/she inherit the lineage/identity(Eg. Scheduled Tribe) of the father or the mother? This has always been a very interesting worldwide debate, but unless we are able to arrive at a point of correlating sociology and genetic sciences, the moot point of this argument will always remain in uncertainty.
Genetic science reveals that “When a human child is born, women don’t have a Y chromosome because it is passed only from father to son. Men posses both X & Y chromosomes which enables men to genetically inherit both paternal and maternal lineage.”
This issue is NOT about women who by default inherit the identity of their father but the issue is about children - Whether these children should inherit the identity of his/her mother’s father or of his/her father.
Sociological perspective - This institution of paternal inheritance in our society has been established for hundreds of years and precedence has been set to this day wherein even our Naga womenfolk also inherit the identity(surnames/lineage) of their father, father’s father & forefathers (paternally) until marriage wherein her children will not inherit her father’s identity but her husband’s identity.
Genetic perspective - The basic fundamentals of biology(genetic sciences) reveal that Females have two X chromosomes, while males have one X and one Y chromosome. Women by nature do not get the Y chromosome.
Gene sequencing has determined that more than 95 percent of the Y chromosome is unique to males – known as the male - specific region of the Y or the MSY which is passed on without recombination. The DNA on that chromosome provides the genetic history of a man’s paternal ancestral line.
Genotyping is the scientific method of tracing your genes back to thousands of years and in reference to a Naga genetic scientist based in US wherein her genotyping could only trace her maternal lineage and not her paternal ancestry. This helps us understand a startling natural phenomenon that using the Y-line genotyping, human females can only trace their maternal lineage(Her mother’s mother, mother’s grandmother etc) and cannot trace her paternal lineage (Father’s father, grandfather forefathers etc) since females possess only the X chromosome and not both X & Y. However, human males can trace both his father’s lineage and mother’s lineage because a human male has both X & Y chromosomes.
This reveals that even biologically it is the male which inherits the paternal identity and has the ability to pass on both his father’s and mother’s lineages/identities in the form of X & Y chromosomes to the siblings. (The identity in this context is not concerned with the physical appearance of the child but his ancestral lineage.)
Convergence of Sociology with Genetics - So even if a Naga woman marries a non-local Naga; genetically by nature, she cannot pass her father’s lineage/identity(Eg. surname or tribe status) onto the child. The woman can only pass on her maternal (mother’s lineage) mapping to the child. The child even if he/she likes it or not has been biologically given by nature, the IDENTITY/LINEAGE of the father. This child if male, will further pass on his father’s Y chromosomes unto his generations.
If in any case, a woman gives her son the lineage (Eg. surname or tribe status) of her father and not her husband, then this defies natural laws because her son received the Y chromosome of her husband’s and not her father’s and this is the scientific point of argument based on genetic sciences to support our sociological institution of paternal inheritance.
Our Naga social institutions are inline with the laws of nature and would require legislation to strengthen our existing social institution before further dilution of it’s value & significance.
Even if a Naga mother married to a non-indigenous person gives her father’s surname to her son; the son’s DNA will not have the identity/lineage of his mother’s father but only carry the non-indigenous mapping (Y chromosome) of his father and his father’s ancestral lineage.
Until a time comes when panhumanism is significantly achieved due to rapid global interaction, intermingling and a single human identity with a pan-global Government starts taking form; social institutions to ensure protection, continuity and progress of these groups of human communities such as our indigenous Naga tribes is important; not for domination and supression of one group by the other but for the progress & contribution of this group for the overall sustainable progress of mankind on this planet.
