There is something almost comforting about the old, schoolbook version of human origins. It had a single ancestral population, a neat beginning, and a tidy lineage that branched politely and predictably into the present. It is the kind of story our politicians would approve of; a story that is clear, linear, reassuring, and above all, easy to narrate on a stage with a microphone and a slogan. But then science, with its irritating habit of refusing to flatter simplicity, has come along and ruined the script. A 2023 study in Nature magazine suggests that human evolution was not a disciplined parade from one ancestral source, but a sprawling, unruly network of populations scattered across a continent, mingling, then separating, or recombining into something visible. If one were to be uncharitable, this sounds less like a biological revelation and more like the internal structure of a modern political party.
Take the latest big-name defector Raghav Chadha, formerly of AAP and now BJP’s. The dramatic version says he “left” one party and “joined” another, as if he jumped from one clean branch to a completely different one. In reality, AAP and the BJP operate in overlapping ecosystems. They speak to similar voters. They borrow similar language around governance, corruption, delivery, and nationalism. Which means, they share a political DNA. What Chadha’s walk represents is not a dramatic break but something closer to exchanging usable traits. His move (and those of others around him) is not an isolated mutation. It is a coordinated gene-flow event. In genetics, when a block of individuals migrates together, they carry a package of traits that can immediately alter the receiving population’s profile. Translated, this means media fluency, urban appeal, and legislative experience: traits Chadha cultivated in AAP’s ecosystem. Overnight, he looked slightly different, not because he swapped “species,” but because he absorbed a working module from a neighbouring political population. But what about ideology, that sacred word politicians utter like a family name? Under one coalition, a leader expresses secularism. Under another it is ‘governance’; and under a third it is ‘muscular nationalism’. The underlying “genome” hasn’t been replaced, but is being differentially expressed.
When a group of politicians migrate together, they carry similar habits, messaging styles, networks and instincts. The timing tells you even more. When conditions get harsh, human populations move toward safer or more resource-rich zones. In politics, elections, ED raids, and ticket uncertainty create that pressure. Leaders don’t suddenly discover new beliefs; they reveal ones they were always flexible about. The irony sharpens when you remember that Chadha had earlier argued for stricter anti-defection rules. That isn’t a contradiction in evolutionary terms; it is adaptation equalling using the system’s own rules to survive inside it. Evolution rewards strategic fits. The politician, that curious specimen of adaptive behaviour, presents himself as the direct descendant of a singular ideological ancestor. “We stand for this,” he declares, as if “this” has not been borrowed, diluted, rebranded, or occasionally stolen from rival factions or a forgotten manifesto. In reality, the political class resembles that newer model of human evolution far more closely than it would ever admit. What appears from a distance as a coherent party ideology is often the temporary alignment of multiple, loosely related ambitions that have agreed, for the moment, to stop quarrelling in public. And just as the DNA study suggests that differences between early human groups took long to become genetically visible, the distinctions between political actors are often performative than real. For years, they will sound indistinguishable by intoning the same phrases about development, justice, growth, the future; until suddenly, a faction splits or a leader “realigns.” It is at this point that a cross-the-floor politician will insist loudly and with great indignation that he represents a decisive break, a new direction, and a clean departure from the muddled past. The tangled web is redrawn as a bold, straight line, with himself at the tip.
One is reminded of how the older model of human origins persisted for so long: it was easier to teach, easier to believe, and far more flattering to our desire for narrative clarity. Politicians, too, rely on this instinct. They simplify their actions because complexity invites questions, and questions are inconvenient things that tend to linger longer than campaign promises. Yet the truth, whether in genetics or governance, is messier. Continuity masquerades as change. Hybridity pretends to be purity. The new science tells us that mankind’s origins are rarely singular and that identities are rarely stable. But while scientists present this as a humbling insight into the nature of our species, politicians have long treated instability as a professional technique. They have, in other words, been evolving this way all along, only with far less honesty about the process.
