So, are chickens Chinese or Indian?

The gloriously plumed peacock is the official national bird of India and a constant artistic inspiration. But its cousin, the chicken — numbering 50 billion worldwide — is most certainly close competition in the popularity stakes in India, albeit for a different reason.

The consequent anointment of tandoori chicken as India’s unofficial national bird even had historical merit, given that no less than Charles Darwin had concluded that poultry worldwide had descended from the red jungle fowl, a native of the subcontinent.

So much so, the bird has even been cited by some as a signature export of the ancient Harappans to contemporary civilisations.

Given the current state of India’s relations with China, however, a new study by researchers at the Kunming Institute of Zoology that avers chickens have a southern Chinese provenance could not have come at a more inappropriate time.

Though after mapping the bird’s genome, those Chinese researchers also concede that Southeast Asian nations bordering southern China could also have been where the chicken was domesticated, Indians will certainly suspect fowl play.

As genomes of modern chickens only offer partial clues about their ancestry and there is no archaeological evidence to flesh out China’s contention, India must not chicken out of countering this attempted coop d’état.