For the first time in the history of Independent India, Rashtrapati Bhavan will have an occupant who is a direct descendent of a character mentioned in Ramayana. Ram Nath Kovind, the President-elect, belongs to a prominent tribe which finds mention in Ramayana.
The new President is the descendent of a tribe which is as old as Ramayana, according to a scientific study about which The Pioneer had reported on June 15, 2015. Seventy-one-year-old Kovind belongs to the Kol tribe which is also known as Koli.
A team of researchers drawn out from Estonian Bio Centre, Tatru, Estonia, Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad, Delhi University, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, and Institute of Scientific Research on Vedas and led by Dr Gyaneshwar Chaubey had found that tribes like Bhils, Gonds and Kols were descendants of characters featured in Ramayana, a chronicle of events believed to have taken place thousands of years ago.
Dr Chaubey, a genetic scientist who played a crucial role in disproving the Aryan-Invasion theory along with Kumarasamy Thangaraj of CCMB, checked the genetic traits of people in certain regions of Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh and found that the Kol tribe found in these places was the descendants of the Kol tribe mentioned in Ramayana.
Guhan, the chieftain of the Kols of Sringiverapuram was a friend of lord Rama. It was Guhan who helped lord Rama, Seeta and lakshman to cross the Ganga River in his boat in their journey to Dhandakaranya as part of their Vanvasa.
“Guhan is the ancestor of the present day Kol tribe. What we found is that the Kols along with other prominent tribes, Bhils and Gonds carry the basic indigenous genetic traits of India,” Dr Chaubey told The Pioneer. The Kols who were specialist hunters later switched over to weaving.
The peer-reviewed research paper authored by Dr Chaubey and his team had been published in PlOS ONE, a journal on genetic and medical studies. The study also found that there was no inflow into the genetic traits of these tribes from outside elements, Dr Chaubey had said.
Swami Sreenidhi, a Vedic scholar from the temple town of Kancheepuram said that incidents in Ramayana took place in tretha yuga (17 lakh years ago). “The locations, the ecology, the environment mentioned by Sage Valmiki are neither fiction nor imagination. There are places like Srigiverapuram, Ayodhya, Kandhahar, Dandakaranyam, Panchavadi, and characters like Guhan, the identity of which were established through study of science,” said Swamy Sreenidhi.
The Swamy said Kovind could be the first true and original person with Ramayana connection to be elected to the Rashtrapathi Bhavan.
Ram temple at Ayodhya may be away. But the country’s Rashtrapathi Bhavan could boast of a descendent of lord Rama, said Prof Thurvaoor Viswambharan, an Indologist. To make things easy, both lord Rama and the President-elect has similar dark complexion! Ramayana too could have played a significant role in the section of Kovind as the candidate for the top job.
