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YEREVAN, JUNE 24, ARMENPRESS: Indian English broadsheet daily dna published an article aboutcenturies-old Indo-Armenian ties.“Armenpress” introduces the article in particular:
"So,Britain’s Prince William is Indian. Okay, he’s at least 1/256th Indian from his mother’s side, as reports said last week. For those hiding under a rock when the news broke, researchers have traced Lady Diana’s family line back six generations to a woman named Eliza Kewark, whose father was an Armenian trader and whose mother may have been Indian.
In 1812, Kewark gave birth to Prince William’s great, great, great, great grandmother Katharine Scott Forbes in Gujarat. Tests reveal that the Duke of Cambridge carries Kewark’s mitochondrial DNA that is only inherited from mothers. That DNA has previously only been found in 13 Indians and one Nepali.
As the British and Indian media dissect this royal connection, there is much discussion on how interracial affairs were common at that time. Armenians and Indians have ties that can be traced to the Mughal empire. Besides his better-known Hindu and Muslim wives, Emperor Akbar had an Armenian wife, Mariam Zamani Begum, as well as an Armenian doctor and chief justice. This has been documented in Armenians in India by Mesrovb J Seth.
Armenians started migrating to India not just from the land of their origin, but also from the Middle East during the 16th and 17th centuries. Today, unofficial counts put their population here at 150. But that doesn’t mean our ties are weakening. The Indian-Armenian Friendship (IAF), an organisation devoted to inter-cultural ties, notes that there are Armenian-Indian marriages still taking place in India. The numbers are not spectacular, but for a community so tiny, it is
remarkable.
Delhi-based businessman Rananjay Anand first met Armenian theologist Ruzanna Ashughyan in 2009. By 2011, when Anand made his first visit to Armenia, they had decided to get married. Their wedding in Yerevan last year was a big affair — the entire Indian community was present, including the then Indian ambassador to Armenia and his wife. The duo live in Delhi.
They interact with the sparse Indian-Armenian community via a Facebook group that Anand started. “The community is scattered but there’s greater people-to-people interaction. We have found out that there are a number of Armenian girls married in India,” he says. These women are the brides of Indians who have studied medicine in Armenia, fallen in love there and brought their brides back home".