Vasant Shinde

[6] Initially working together with Seoul National University College of Medicine,[7] Shinde was the main author on the long-awaited[web 8] 2019 paper "An Ancient Harappan Genome Lacks Ancestry from Steppe Pastoralists or Iranian Farmers,"[1][6] co-authored by David Reich, and wearing his "unmistakable stamp.

[9][3][10][web 3] Shinde et al. (2019) concluded that the genome of researched individual "fits as a mixture of people related to ancient Iranians (the largest component) and Southeast Asian hunter-gatherers."

[web 10] At the press conference held at September 6, 2019 to explain the findings, Vasant Shinde and Niraj Rai publicly endorsed the Out of India theory, rejecting the idea that the Vedic people had migrated into South Asia at the time of the decline of the Harappan civilisation.

[web 12] In response, the Ministry of Culture issued a statement "refuting the report and said that it has no intention of conducting studies of racial purity in the country.

"[web 11] In an open letter, "[over] a 100 leading biologists, historians, anthropologists and intellectuals" protested against the plan, warning that the term "race" is a social construct with unwarranted implications.