The Chaser Report - Who Do You Think You Shah? | Sami Shah

Episode Date: September 4, 2022

Sami Shah finds out his ancestry and it's not what he's been told. Meanwhile Dom Knight considers finding out his in hopes he's anything but British. If you want a free ancestry test sign up to https://chaser.com.au/donations/support-us/ and we'll send you another link to an ancestry test. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gadigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report. Dom Knight with Sammy Shaw once again, Charles is travelling, but we'll join us remotely. He reckons, Sammy, that despite travelling around LA having power meetings with various people, he reckons he's going to make time to do the podcast. I mean, I'm sceptical. No, he is.

But I like that he at least tried to commit to he's going to do it. The next time we hear about Charles is going to be some tabloid article about some famous actor that he, actresses, he is sleeping with, Hollywood celebrity, and we'll see him on the red carpet for some event. And then, you know, two months after that, they'll find him out for a fraud and kick him back here. So, yes, you know, we're not going to hear shit from Charles for a while. I'm imagining, how did I if you remember the time that Australian comedian Scott Dooley managed to convince Charlie, who used to work on the Chaser, by the way, Dulls from Triple J and then from Nova. I didn't know that. Dool's used to work with us back in the day. He at one point somehow became Charlie Sheen's best friend during the time when Charlie Sheen was really going off the...

What? Really going off the rails and doing the Tiger Blood and all that stuff. Yeah, during that phase, Dules was his best friend. I remember that, like, Charlie would post things like, you know, Sheen and Dules epic forever. And it was a very strange period. I'm imagining Charles getting in that situation, only he's the Charlie Sheen. Yes. And we might have to send Dools in to save him.

I think Dools are still over there. Anyway, so you stay tuned for Charles. I don't know, there's probably a fringe Kardashian who can feature somewhere in the piece. We'll see how that goes. We'll get into things in just a second. The Chaser Report, news you know you can't trust. That was an hour break. You could have avoided by going to chaser.com.com.com.

If you've already done that, sorry for crapping on about it once again. Anyway, Sammy, you've just had some test results. which we should get into. Yes, so I did something. Have you ever done your DNA testing? You know that ancestry.com stuff? I never have because, I mean, the problem with me, Sammy, right? Is that my DNA almost certainly consists of different bits of the United Kingdom.

And specifically, actually, Great Britain, I don't have Ireland, which is the kind of lyrical, lovely bit of those islands. I'm talking about I've got Scottish, I've got Welsh. and I've got majority English and the more I've looked into it the more English I am and the less Scottish and Welsh I am and I thought that was the best bit of me really

so I don't want to know because unless the DNA test can somehow tell me that I don't know there's something else in the mix there I am very hairy so there's a theory that might be a bit of Spanish or something you know what I should do it

just in the hope of being slightly less boringly British because it's just the dullest culture you can possibly belong to like you know I mean you guys skim up with You guys came up with cricket and tea and spotted dick. But we didn't come up with tea.

We stole tea. Tea is a thing that the British are best known for, and they didn't even invent it. They just basically took it through their empire, right? But that's all cultures. I mean, the Italians stole pasta. They think it's theirs, but actually it came from China. Yeah, Marco Polo. They made it great.

Fair enough. Fair enough. All right, so we have tea, a way of making, you know, boring hot water, slightly more flavorsome. There you go. And the subcontinent then took it back with chai, which is far better than regular tea, because they add ginger and cardamom and, you know, other things that are not just tea leaves.

So, you know, well played, well played. Anyway, no, so my DNA test results are likely to be incredibly boring, but I should check just in case there's an X factor in there that makes me less white bread boring. There's always an X factor. Oh, yeah? Yeah, well, my X factor is what isn't there, I think. So basically, okay, so here's the thing.

So, you know, every family has their, you know, the ancestors, the relatives who are like, well, from our, your dad's side, you're this and from your mom's side of that. And so from my dad's side of the family, we've always been told that we are descended from the Prophet Muhammad. That basically, if you trace our ancestry back far enough, we go down to the Prophet Muhammad's cousin, his, like, his descendants. And we at one point, we were, you know, there's a king of Yemen who was one of ancestors. ancestors. Is that why you're a Shah? Because we know that the Shahs are the kings, right? Yeah, the Shah is from king and Sayyad means the descendant of the prophet. Right. So that's what we were always told. There's a whole genealogy and lineage trees, tracing it all back very accurately, and we've always been told this thing. From my mom's side of the family, I was told that we have,

we started off in Iran as Persians, and we were horse traders for a long time, and then we moved across to South India to Bangalore and then in the end ended up in Pakistan. So that's the end of my mom and dad's side. I mean, the mother's side sounds a little bit less likely to call its disappointment. Yes. If you go fishing around in your lineage,

it seems a little bit less likely that your mom's side's going to be the one where you go, wow, we've really been kidding ourselves for centuries. Yeah, so you basically picked up on what I'm foreshadowing subtly over here. So I got curious and I finally did my DNA test. I

I went to Ancestry.com and they send you a thing. You spit my cup. It's not that, yeah, it's not that different from getting a rat test these days. Give me one second. I got to shut the door because there's a crying baby and I don't need to hear about my descendants. Okay. It's not that I don't care about my child.

It's just that I care about podcasting more. You understand, Sammy. Anyway. Of course, as you should, as any reasonable parent should. And so we went and got the DNA, I went and got the DNA thing done. And the results came back. And so I am, I'm not. We're just going to tell you the full breakdown.

Right. 83% North Indian. 9% Central Asia and South Asia, which basically covers the region of Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and Pakistan. Right. 5% southern Indian. 2% Anatolia and the Caucasus, which is Turkey, Georgia, Armenia, and 1% Iranian Persian. Now, missing from all of this is anything even vaguely resembering the Arab regions. It doesn't have Saudi Arabia, it doesn't have Oman, it doesn't have Yemen, it doesn't have Kuwait, it doesn't have Syria, it doesn't have any of the places that my ancestors and my relatives have all been patting themselves on the back from being from.

So it turns out I am basically 98% Indian and a little bit of Iranian sprinkled. in or Persian sprinkled in on top of that, which is cool as shit, except now I don't want to be the one who tells my family. So I've had to keep stum about this because I don't want to break all their collective hearts. They already hate me for being a blasphemer.

I can't add to the things that they hate me for. But saying it on this podcast is a completely safe space, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. No one in my family's listening to the podcast. So basically it actually breaks it down by parent. From my dad's side, it is just Indian and Indian. From my mom's

side, it is, you know, a little bit of Indian, a little bit of Persian and Iranian, a little bit of Anatolia and the Caucasus, stuff like that. So the mom's side has been traveling around all over the place and picking up the odd extra gene pull along the way. Yes. Yes. And, you know, that just means the sexier on my mom's side, I guess. How much does this cost? What's the, what's the price of disappointing your forebears? Oh, what is the price of disappointing your forebears? I guess, I guess a re-evaluation of this sense of self-importance. I remember you saying that, you know, you were of royal lineage. Which is, when you do hear someone say that, I mean, generally speaking, you know,

if you're reading a new idea or whatever, you know, they definitely are not, right? That's just automatically assumed. But in your case, I was willing to, you know, give you the benefit of the doubt. I appreciate that greatly. I do think I was setting some of my friends in Pakistan about this. And they all said, they said, look, it makes. sense, if you were descended from the Prophet Muhammad, you would easily be the worst descendant that the founder of Islam could ever have hoped to have had. So it's probably

just as well that you aren't. I'm imagining that it's actually quite unusual. If you're 100% Indian on your dad's side, like it's actually not necessarily very common to have that an ambiguous result. I know. You know what it is. All it means is, what it means is that my ancestors were Indian, were Hindu Indian, and at some point they converted to Islam. And that was that. But it sounds like the ones who converted to Islam wanted to kind of big up themselves so I'm pretty confident. I'm no expert, but I'm pretty, my understanding is pretty much that the Prophet Muhammad did not have many Indian Hindu descendants. Is that true? It turns out that might be true. The Chaser report, less news, less on

often. So what has this done to you? Do you not know who you are anymore? No, you know what it's done? Do you feel differently about India, for instance? Okay, so I'm Pakistani. I was born in Pakistan and grew up in Pakistan. Pakistan didn't exist as a country until 1947. And, and, you know, and the distinction, like, you know, we obviously, India and the Pakistan speak the same language. They have the same music, the same food, the same everything. There's a political division. But that political division year by year, generation by generation grows wider. And nevertheless, the twain shall meet becomes more and more the attitude. But now, looking at this, it gives me that sense of understanding of, hey, my ancestors go back to the Indus Valley civilization, one of the

oldest civilizations in the world. And that's kind of cool, you know, that I come from this land of unbroken heritage and connection and dignity and all those things. And it just makes me more sad that I cannot visit India. Because I would like to go to. the places where my people originated and traveled through, you know, I've never been to Bangalore. I've never been to New Delhi or Mumbai. I've never been to London. Ironically, I've been to all those places as the least Indian person imaginable. And not only that's me, but I'm by virtue of having married an Indian woman, I'm eligible for the status of overseas citizen of India. I know. If I apply, you get a special, it's what you get that gives

you're permanent right of a boat at India. You can't own property and stuff. But basically any person who can trace their heritage back there has the right to that or their spouses, except for you who are literally an overseas citizen of India. No, because when you apply for visas, they're incredibly keen to make sure that you have no connection to Pakistan. They're much rather you come from Australia than from Pakistan. It's very sad. I remember reading the forms and thinking, are they really keeping everyone out from Pakistan?

This is quite tragic. Yeah, so because my, even, like, I have dual citizenship. I'm an Australian citizen and a Pakistani citizen. And so, but even if I give up my Pakistani citizenship tomorrow, my parents are still in Pakistan. I was born in Pakistan. I will never, like, at least until the government changes in India and goes back to the Congress Party, which isn't happening for a long time,

I just can't get access to it, which kind of sucks, because I would really like to see parts of India, I think. It's kind of, you know, would be cool to go there. That's an incredible show, man. I went to Varanasi, which is supposed to be, the oldest continuously Yeah, the oldest continuous Well look as some with a little bit of Indian experience

Sammy, I just want to just educate you about India It's supposedly the world's longest inhabited You know, continuously inhabited city On the banks of the Ganges there, people go there And you're supposed to go and die there If you go and die in Varanasi, you're pretty much guaranteed An excellent reincarnation And it's the only place I've ever had the opportunity

To smell burning corpse. Because what happens there, there's so much death in Varanasi, death tourism, that 24-7, they actually have cremations by the banks of the Ganges. So I've walked around as though at a communal barbecue, except that it was human flesh that was being burned in a fairly unforgettable experience. I never would have had the chance to smell burning human flesh had I not traveled to the beautiful place that is Varanasi. I don't know if you're a really good tourism ambassador for India. I think they can do better than you when it comes to the Incredible India campaign right now. I must say that the, I didn't want to rub it in too much, but we did the sunset cruise on the Ganges and the dawn cruise on the Gunges. It was beautiful, it was mystical.

I hope you get to see it. It's bizarre that someone with that heritage. Like, you should be able to show them the Ancestry.com thing. I know, right? And say, look, I'm barely Pakistani at this point in terms of my heritage. But yeah, I do like the fact that like some of this DNA stuff is interesting. because it just, and I know I get now why so many people are doing it, because it does give you this weird,

we live in such a world of now, the now, everything is the now, and the tomorrow, which is doomed. It is nice to pause and look back and have a sense of connection to what came before. Well, I must say, I'm at the point where I get to find out that I'm not entirely British, it might actually be worth, I'm just looking at it now, there's Father's Day sale, it's only $90, so 34% off apparently, to be able to establish that I'm not fully British. I mean, I would be so...

If I had just the tiniest shred of anything else in the mix, I would feel so much better about myself. Yeah, give it a go. I hate being British. It's an awful background to have. I hate to say, I don't know why this country was so absolutely caught up on being the same as Britain. Britain is objectively terrible.

If you want to feel worse about it, you should listen to the new podcast. It's called Empire. And it's by William Darryliple, who's an excellent historian of British colonialism, and Anita Anand, who's a ex-BBC journalist. I think she said this with the BBC. Excellent series, tracing basically the East India companies rise and fall in India.

And that shit will really make you frustrated with who you are. I read William Darwere book about India ones, actually. So that sounds very interesting. Now, it's certainly true that whenever I'm talking to my in-laws, that's just how the view of British colonialism is not, it's not a positive sense there's not there's not gratitude towards uh to britain for what they did then and it's and i'm kind of sitting there going yeah

yeah that's that's that's that's awkward that's my that's my ancestors being shit it must be funny being the being the british guy and the indian family get together every now and then because they're still grudges that are held maybe maybe for way too long but they are held yeah the great thing is that i don't speak tumul so when the conversation goes into Tamil. I'm assuming that jokes are being made about me or my heritage. And I'm just like have at it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're very welcome. All right. Interesting. All right. So,

what have we established? Sammy Shah is, he's only Pakistani by birth and, and identification. But everyone is Pakistani by birth, because it's 1947. Pakistan didn't exist before that. But yes, I am 100% Indian. Your heritage is not. But your heritage is not. Have you been to Iran? No. I haven't been. And now I definitely can't with all my. Prominent and popular blaspheming. Our gear is from Ride. We're part of the ACAST CRAID Network. Thank you very much, Sam.

If you want more, Sammy, check out News Weekly, Sammy's weekly podcast about the news. Thank you.