Dhaka, March 13 -- At first sight, the question seems unnecessary. Aren't we all Bengalis, those who speak this tongue, that great language of Bengal called Bangla? Language is considered our identity and history is measured from there.

However, history says, people of this region have been here for a very long time, much longer than the Indo-Aryans from whom the language sort of evolved. So Indo-Aryan wasn't the first language of the region. But then was there one region and one people at any time?

So where is history then if not in our culturally claimed Indo-Aryan roots from which Bangla evolved over centuries? If there were earlier people before the Indo-Aryan migration and who were they. How do we know all that?

If we go by DNA da...