Do Indians consider themselves Middle Eastern or Asian?

[Tractor]

Indian/Pakistani/Bengali/Sri Lankan/Nepalese are all South Asians.

Just like Chinese/Japanese/Korean are all East Asians.

Nepalese is a mixed one belong with the others.

 

[ChineseTiger1986]

Nepalese is a mixed one belong with the others.

But they are still more leaning toward the South Asian than East Asian.

 

[ChineseTiger1986]

Aryan may come from India and Iran, but the term Aryan does not equate to Proto-Indo-European.

Aryan itself might be a mixture of several different groups before it is linguistically formed.

 

[cybertron]

asian> south.asian> indian> mallu

of the lot i would like to be called an indian first rather than anything else.

b/w i have no idea where middle-east came from.

 

[LaBong]

See your visitor message

Replied...

 

[Joe Shearer]

Aryan may come from India and Iran, but the term Aryan does not equate to Proto-Indo-European.

Aryan itself might be a mixture of several different groups before it is linguistically formed.

These are not irreconcilable.

Aryan was a language category, one which was used to describe a third- or fourth-generation derivative of Proto-Indo-European. As we all know, PIE itself was a re-discovered language. We think it was spoken; nobody knows for sure. We even derived the language by back-extrapolation from later derivatives, which we think were derivatives.

Neither Proto-Indo-European nor Aryan was a racial or ethnic category. Both PIE and Indo-Aryan, not Aryan, were originally language/ linguistic categories; today's practice in India is to distinguish between those languages derived from Indo-Aryan and those derived from proto-Dravidian, including Kol/Mundari, and to call them Aryan and Dravidian.

Discussions on Aryan and Dravidian are difficult and sensitive in the extreme, for both a European and a South Asian reason.

The European reason was the deranged racism which culminated in Hitler's anti-Jewish pogroms. This had a very, very long history, going back to the persecutions of the Jews from the earliest times in Europe, far less so in Asia. However, the impetus this anti-Semitic persecution got in the 18th and 19th centuries, and to some extent in the 20th century, was the application of totally distorted and misunderstood genetic theories based on a master-race. It was considered that tall, fair, blue-eyed, blonde, white folks were the master race, the Aryans, a hilarious displacement of a name across centuries and across thousands of kilometres.

This theory was used to justify the elimination of other inferior races, such as the Jews; ironically, proportioinately less Jews were murdered than Romani, the Gypsies of Europe, who had a far greater right than the tall, fair, and all the rest of it Caucasians to call themselves Aryan.

It may be objected that technically, the Romani were not necessarily Aryan in the south Asian sense; Aryan was a social category among the immigrants into South Asia, consisting of the king, the nobility, the warriors in general, and the priests; others, even of the same tribe, even marrying into these other families, and living in the same habitations, were not. But in Iran, the people in general considered themselves the Aryan people, not just a ruling class and its adjuncts. Considering that the Gypsies were descendants of the prisoners taken in India by Mahmud of Ghazni and subsequent invaders (they appear in Italy from Egypt, and the earliest traces are after the 11th century), and that they had a number of years in the Middle East, this fits very well. Incidentally the Roma in France call themselves Manush, other groups call themselves Dom; very familiar to South Asian readers.

The South Asian reason is far more dangerous. It has to do with Brahminism and the caste structure. the Brahmins have assiduously fanned the flames of the myth that there were ethnic distinctions between the early/original inhabitants of south Asia and the later migrants, and that these distinctions show up in the facial and physiognomical differences between different peoples. This is utterly false and has been conclusively disproved by scientific genetic study, and it is time that the use of Aryan as a code word for purity of race or descent was eliminated altogether.

Part of this myth-building, which took place over nearly two thousand years, leading to its being rooted in the minds and the sensitivities of most south Asians, was the further myth of a certain cachet of immigration; migrants were the great ones, the pure ones, 'sent' or summoned to purify either religious practices, or the race. There was a complete and inhuman domination of south India by the 2% of the population that this single caste represented, marked by practices that don't really warrant re-telling. The direct result was a deep-seated animosity that will take years of democratic living together as equals to cleanse and remove.

A few points in conclusion:

1. The Aryans were not a race, and are not distinct from the rest of the population in racial or in genetic terms;
2. As has just been said in an immediately earlier post, Aryans were thoroughly mixed in ethnic terms. We have indirect evidence; their kinfolk among the other Aryans, the ones who went to Iran or stayed back on the steppes, the Scythians, spoke east Iranian and were by all reports thoroughly mixed. They were far from exclusive ethnic stock, and were mixed races occupying the steppe lands from the Aral Sea to near the European river systems;
3. The term was used to specify a certain class among immigrant tribes, and should correctly be used only in that historical context in social matters;
4. It was, and is also used to distinguish many south Asian languages from the north of the sub-continent, from the languages in the south of the sub-continent. The southern languages are Tamizh, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam. In addition, there are several other smaller language groups belonging to the Dravidian, including, it is thought, the Kol-Mundari group.
5. There was a spread of Indo-Aryan languages throughout the three northern and western river basins, the Indus, the Ganges and the Narmada. This was accompanied by the thorough and complete assimilation of the immigrating people into the vastly greater indigenous population that they found already in residence.
6. There were migrations from North to South, but migrations of individuals only and not tribes; perhaps, at best, several families at a time may have travelled together.
7. The Brahmins originated this theory of re-population of the south by some select social leaders, and managed to get others to subscribe to it also; you will therefore find some others also insistent on a migrant status, and its wholly mythical aura of exclusivity;
8. Brahmin exclusivity was a myth, assiduously pushed by the hoped-for beneficiary.

Regarding the ethnic and racial relations between different sets of immigrants sweeping in and out of the sub-continent, it is emerging slowly, although much more work is needed to validate this hypothesis, that

• There was an existing population of very significant size from the Palaeolithic Age onwards;
• Languages spoken by this population are unknown;
• The Dravidian-speaking immigrants came in from south-east Asia and the Indonesian archipelago in pre-historic times and settled across the whole land-mass of India, including in parts of Baluchistan and Seistan;
• They have left traces of their presence behind, in the form of the Brahui language;
• Their relationship to the IVC is unproven at this point of time, but some very exciting work was done in Chennai (ironically, by non-Tamilians, by Bengalis, actually) on mathematical pattern-matching of the IVC symbols with letters and patterns used by different Indian languages, when the electrifying discovery was made that the closest match was with Tamizh;
• These immigrants contributed their language to the existing population: if Kol-Mundari are Dravidian languages, then their penetration was right across the top of the peninsula, as Kol-Mundari speech is found very far east on the sub-continent;
• The domination of the Dravidian languages diminished with the coming of the Indo-Aryan languages, and remained only in the shape of the Kol-Mundari spoken by certain shy forest and hill-dwelling segments of society in North India; they are extensively distributed over south India, from Telugu and Kannada in the north, to Tamizh and its recent descendant, Malayalam;
• The genetic pattern remained undisturbed, as it had been undisturbed when Dravidian came into the country several centuries earlier;
• These languages are important but those who speak them cannot be described as belonging to this or to that ethnic origin.

I hope this is helpful.

 

[Hafizzz]

Just curious.

I could see both ways but I would much rather hear from an Indian himself.

I found the following message from another message forum :

Is the "white" title overused or misused by many?
https://xxx/soc.culture.indian/brow...89ea4/a40409e623eaba05?hl=en#a40409e623eaba05

I ask because I see so many calling themselves white and they either are not or European origins, do not look white at all, or are mixed and look more like the other race. The main culprits as the half Asian half whites people. Also the half white with native American. Of course there is the half white and half various hispanics. There are also those who are from the so-called middle east who call themselves white. Mainly Syrian, Jordanian, Lebanese and Iranians.

The question would be, if everyone can be white, then what meaning does that title have? If everyone who is anyone else does whatever they can to be white and live by that title, simply for it's social privileges, then where does that leave everyone else, which would be not too many...?

I was also reading on some white power site (the white power people are very liberal now) about how East Indians were indeed Caucasian because no matter the shade, if they have kids with whites, the kids always come out white. Clearly this must have been written by an Indian (A D'Nesh D'Souza type?) because I have seen these kids and they look just like you regular half black, half white offspring, give or take a few features. Now a African black and an Asian black have kids (the Indians try to stay away as much as possible as the white man has divided all black peoples of the earth) the kids look black or Indian. I have seen that they look Indian, but that is black. This is why there is no name for such kids.

Just some thoughts. It seems as if those who are called Caucasians by whites, seem to be on a mission to hold the white man to it! In that sense, I don't blame them one bit. If the white man said that they are whites, then they should expect that white treatment.

One other thing. It seems as if this country is becoming more an more a pisspot for the rest of the world, what will people do when the white ceases to be in control? I admit that I feel like a foreigner in the US.

 

[Water Car Engineer]

We dont really think of ourself anthing else but Indian-(religion)-(Statehood,lanuage),

 

[KS]

[*]The Dravidian-speaking immigrants came in from south-east Asia and the Indonesian archipelago in pre-historic times and settled across the whole land-mass of India, including in parts of Baluchistan and Seistan;

[*]Their relationship to the IVC is unproven at this point of time, but some very exciting work was done in Chennai (ironically, by non-Tamilians, by Bengalis, actually) on mathematical pattern-matching of the IVC symbols with letters and patterns used by different Indian languages, when the electrifying discovery was made that the closest match was with Tamizh;

Can you provide the material for this two point ?

Thanks

 

[Joe Shearer]

Can you provide the material for this two point ?

sThanks

Yes, certainly, I'll hunt around and give you the references. may take me a couple of days; don't remember where they are, maybe in my preserved journals. Let me check .

 

[IamINDIA]

I live in scotland and whenever some asks me where i am from,i always almost immediately say im from india,i dont think about it

i have never in life told any body that im from asia,I have always said'I am from india which is in asia'

 

[tallboy123]

We r not any asian or middle east or such things..
Every type of people are there in india...


India is a itself as world in this world..

Our religion is spread in the east asian countries....

We are just Hindustani,that's all

Till now i have visited many places,but every one identifies me as a Indian not any Asian or east Asian...

 

[kamakazi attack]

according to DNA charts

man came out of africa, one group settle in northern india, from that group some went to south china,

so do chinese consider themselves south asians?

 

[Sinnerman108]

=Sohni Dharti;1423791Originally Posted by Tractor View Post
In my view and all people know,there are two kinds of people,"round-eye people"&"line-eye people".East Asian are "line-eye people",others are "round-eye people".
Ah, the binary theory of human diversity: the ones (sideways) and the zeroes.

You did not pay attention to what he said ...

Trust me, it is binary, there are round eyed and line eyes people,
and i can think of another source where it is mentioned about the same as " people whose eyes don't have protection from sun"

 

[GareebNawaz]

I am indian and i consider my self middle eastern......

---------- Post added at 03:29 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:29 PM ----------

just joking