DNA Files

Recently Robert Gates, Jr., a well known Black History professor from Harvard, started a television program in which he tracks peoples DNA and tries to find if there was ever a common ancestors between a very diverse set of audience. Latest advances in the DNA mapping and identification of certain strains has greatly increased the accuracy of these predictions.

But this program has set me thinking how curiously interesting and at the same time embarrassing to some it will be if this technique could be used to find blood relation between mortal enemies, race haters or for that matter leaders of different religious sects competing and hating each other.

Imagine what a difference it would make on the war on terror if it was revealed that Osama Bin Laden and George Bush had a common ancestor a couple of century back. Definitely would cause major red faces both in the Taliban camp and in the Pentagon. Also post such a revelation Osama will certainly find it very difficult to motivate the ‘Jihadis’. More or less the problem of Osama will be solved with the cult vanishing overnight.

Taking this a bit back if on the night of the Bolshevik revolution in erstwhile Russia it was revealed that Lenin and Tsar Nicholas II are distant cousins with each sharing one of the DNA strands which governs their political thought the world would surely have been a different place  and the Romanov dynasty might have survived for some more time.

And what would have been the reaction of the Knight Templars if they would have found out before the night of their great battle with Salauddin that Richard the Lion Heart had Muslim roots and shared his lineage with the Salauddin. The entire journey from Europe to the Holy Land for all those crusaders would have gone waste. Maybe also once they had decided not to fight the erstwhile enemies, would have buried the hatchet to share a delicious mouthwatering meal of Kebabs and Curry dished out by the best cooks in the Muslim court and when this culinary style would have been imported to Europe we would all have been saved from the depressing blandness of the current day continental cuisine.

More recently there has been a heated controversy in India between one Mr Bal Thackrey ( a self appointed authority of patriotism in India and Hindu right wing political leader) and the current reigning superstar of Bollywood Shahrukh Khan involving conflicting religious beliefs and certain comments made. Personally my most amusing moment would be when these two are thrown under the same family tree with blood lines criss crossing a couple of generations upwards. Oh what red faces for Shiv Sena (Thackrey’s political party), surely redder than the blood they spill in the name of religion.