Various attempts have been made, under the

British Raj The British Raj (; from Hindi ''rāj'': kingdom, realm, state, or empire) was the rule of the British Crown on the Indian subcontinent; * * it is also called Crown rule in India, * * * * or Direct rule in India, * Quote: "Mill, who was him ...

and since, to classify the population of India according to a racial typology. After

independence Independence is a condition of a person, nation, country, or state in which residents and population, or some portion thereof, exercise self-government, and usually sovereignty, over its territory. The opposite of independence is the statu ...

, in pursuance of the

government A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a state. In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature, executive, and judiciary. Government is ...

's policy to discourage distinctions between communities based on

race Race, RACE or "The Race" may refer to: * Race (biology), an informal taxonomic classification within a species, generally within a sub-species * Race (human categorization), classification of humans into groups based on physical traits, and/or s ...

, the

1951 Census of India The 1951 Census of India was the ninth in a series of censuses held in India every decade since 1872. It is also the first census after independence and Partition of India. 1951 census was also the first census to be conducted under 1948 Census ...

did away with racial classifications. Today, the national Census of independent India does not recognise any racial groups in India.Kumar, Jayant
Indian Census
2001. September 4, 2006. Some scholars of the colonial epoch attempted to find a method to classify the various groups of India according to the predominant racial theories popular at that time in

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located entirel ...

. This scheme of racial classification was used by the British census of India, which was often integrated with caste system considerations.

Great races

The Races of Mankind Before European Expansion

Scientific racism Scientific racism, sometimes termed biological racism, is the pseudoscience, pseudoscientific belief that empirical evidence exists to support or justify racism (racial discrimination), racial inferiority, or racial superiority.. "Few tragedies ...

of the late 19th and early 20th centuries divided humans into three races based on "common physical characteristics":

Caucasoid The Caucasian race (also Caucasoid or Europid, Europoid) is an obsolete racial classification of human beings based on a now-disproven theory of biological race. The ''Caucasian race'' was historically regarded as a biological taxon which, de ...

Mongoloid Mongoloid () is an obsolete racial grouping of various peoples indigenous to large parts of Asia, the Americas, and some regions in Europe and Oceania. The term is derived from a now-disproven theory of biological race. In the past, other terms ...

, and

Negroid Negroid (less commonly called Congoid) is an obsolete racial grouping of various people indigenous to Africa south of the area which stretched from the southern Sahara desert in the west to the African Great Lakes in the southeast, but also to i ...

. American anthropologist Carleton S. Coon wrote that "India is the easternmost outpost of the Caucasian racial region" and defined the Indid race that occupies the Indian subcontinent as beginning in the Khyber Pass. John Montgomery Cooper, an American ethnologist and

Roman Catholic Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy * Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD * Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *'' Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a let ...

priest, on 26 April 1945 in a hearing before the

United States Senate The United States Senate is the upper chamber of the United States Congress, with the House of Representatives being the lower chamber. Together they compose the national bicameral legislature of the United States. The composition and pow ...

"To Permit all people from India residing in the United States to be Naturalised" recorded: The theory propounded by German comparative philologists in the 1840s and 1850s "maintained that the speakers of Indo-European languages in India, Persia, and Europe were of the same culture and race." This led to a distinction between the

Indo-Aryan peoples Indo-Aryan peoples are a diverse collection of Indo-European peoples speaking Indo-Aryan languages in the Indian subcontinent. Historically, Aryan were the Indo-European pastoralists who migrated from Central Asia into South Asia and int ...

of northern India and the Dravidian peoples, located mostly in

southern India South India, also known as Dakshina Bharata or Peninsular India, consists of the peninsular southern part of India. It encompasses the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Telangana, as well as the union territ ...

with pockets in the

Baluchistan Province Balochistan (; bal, بلۏچستان; ) is one of the four provinces of Pakistan. Located in the southwestern region of the country, Balochistan is the largest province of Pakistan by land area but is the least populated one. It shares land ...

in the northwest and in the eastern corner of the

Bihar Province Bihar Province was a province of British India, created in 1936 by the partition of the Bihar and Orissa Province. History In 1756, Bihar was part of Bengal. On 14 October 1803, Orissa was occupied by the British Raj. On 22 March 1912, both Biha ...

. Although anthropologists classify Dravidians as Caucasoid with the "Mediterranean-Caucasoid" type being the most predominant, the racial status of the

Dravidians The Dravidian peoples, or Dravidians, are an ethnolinguistic and cultural group living in South Asia who predominantly speak any of the Dravidian languages. There are around 250 million native speakers of Dravidian languages. Dravidian sp ...

was initially disputed. In 1898,

ethnographer Ethnography (from Greek ''ethnos'' "folk, people, nation" and ''grapho'' "I write") is a branch of anthropology and the systematic study of individual cultures. Ethnography explores cultural phenomena from the point of view of the subject o ...

Friedrich Ratzel Friedrich Ratzel (August 30, 1844 – August 9, 1904) was a German geographer and ethnographer, notable for first using the term ''Lebensraum'' ("living space") in the sense that the National Socialists later would. Life Ratzel's father was th ...

remarked about the "Mongolian features" of Dravidians, resulting in what he described as his "hypothesis of their ravidiansclose connection with the population of Tibet", whom he adds "Tibetans may be decidedly reckoned in the Mongol race".Ratzel, Freidrich. The History of Mankind. Macmillan and Co.:New York, 1898. p.358 In 1899, ''

Science Science is a systematic endeavor that Scientific method, builds and organizes knowledge in the form of Testability, testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earli ...

'' summarised Ratzel's findings over India with,

Edgar Thurston Edgar Thurston CIE (1855– 12 October 1935) was the British Superintendent at the Madras Government Museum from 1885 to 1908 who contributed to research studies in the fields of zoology, ethnology and botany of India, and later also publish ...

named what he called ''Homo Dravida'' and described it close to Australoids, with Caucasoid ( Indo-Aryan) admixture. As evidence, he adduced the use of the

boomerang A boomerang () is a thrown tool, typically constructed with aerofoil sections and designed to spin about an axis perpendicular to the direction of its flight. A returning boomerang is designed to return to the thrower, while a non-returning ...

by Kallar and

Maravar Maravar (also known as Maravan and Marava) are a Tamil community in the state of Tamil Nadu. These people are one of the three branches of the Mukkulathor confederacy. Members of the Maravar community often use the honorific title '' Thevar''. T ...

warriors and the proficiency at tree-climbing among both the Kadirs of the

Anamalai The Anamala or Anaimalai, also known as the Elephant Mountains, are a range of mountains in the southern Western Ghats of central Kerala ( Idukki district, Ernakulam district, Palakkad district, Thrissur district) and span the border of west ...

hills and the

Dayaks The Dayak (; older spelling: Dajak) or Dyak or Dayuh are one of the native groups of Borneo. It is a loose term for over 200 riverine and hill-dwelling ethnic groups, located principally in the central and southern interior of Borneo, each w ...

Borneo Borneo (; id, Kalimantan) is the third-largest island in the world and the largest in Asia. At the geographic centre of Maritime Southeast Asia, in relation to major Indonesian islands, it is located north of Java, west of Sulawesi, and ea ...

. In 1900, anthropologist

Joseph Deniker Joseph Deniker (russian: Иосиф Егорович Деникер, ''Yosif Yegorovich Deniker''; 6 March 1852, in Astrakhan – 18 March 1918, in Paris) was a Russian and French naturalist and anthropologist, known primarily for his attempts t ...

said, Deniker grouped Dravidians as a "subrace" under "Curly or Wavy Hair Dark Skin" in which he also includes the

Ethiopian Ethiopians are the native inhabitants of Ethiopia, as well as the global diaspora of Ethiopia. Ethiopians constitute several component ethnic groups, many of which are closely related to ethnic groups in neighboring Eritrea and other parts of ...

and Australian. Also, Deniker mentions that the "Indian race has its typical representatives among the Afghans, the Rajputs, the Brahmins and most of North India but it has undergone numerous alterations as a consequence with crosses with Assyriod, Dravidian, Mongol, Turkish, Arab and other elements." In 1915,

Arnold Wright Arnold Wright (1858–1941) was from 1888 to 1900 the London editor of the ''Yorkshire Post''. He was trained for journalism under his father, and in 1879 he went to India to take work on the ''Times of India ''The Times of India'', also know ...

said, Wright also mentions that

Richard Lydekker Richard Lydekker (; 25 July 1849 – 16 April 1915) was an English naturalist, geologist and writer of numerous books on natural history. Biography Richard Lydekker was born at Tavistock Square in London. His father was Gerard Wolfe Lydekker, ...

and Flowers classified Dravidians as Caucasian. Later, Carleton S. Coon, in his book '' The Races of Europe'' (1939), reaffirmed this assessment and classified the Dravidians as Caucasoid due to their "Caucasoid skull structure" and other physical traits such as noses, eyes and hair, and 20th century anthropologists classified Dravidians as Caucasoid with the "Mediterranean-Caucasoid" type being the most predominant.

Brahmans

Brahmans Brahmin (; sa, ब्राह्मण, brāhmaṇa) is a varna as well as a caste within Hindu society. The Brahmins are designated as the priestly class as they serve as priests (purohit, pandit, or pujari) and religious teachers (guru o ...

were described as 'the oldest of the martial classes'. Brahmans were recruited by

Indian Army The Indian Army is the land-based branch and the largest component of the Indian Armed Forces. The President of India is the Supreme Commander of the Indian Army, and its professional head is the Chief of Army Staff (COAS), who is a four- ...

in a different guise long before their sudden rediscovery by

Claude Auchinleck Field Marshal Sir Claude John Eyre Auchinleck, (21 June 1884 – 23 March 1981), was a British Army commander during the Second World War. He was a career soldier who spent much of his military career in India, where he rose to become Commander ...

as 'the oldest of the martial classes'. In the past having two of the oldest regiments, the

1st Brahmans The 1st Brahmans was an infantry regiment of the British Indian Army. It was raised at Oudh by Captain T Naylor in 1776 for service in the army of Nawab Wazir of Oudh, and was known as the Nawab Wazir's Regiment. It was transferred to the East Ind ...

and

3rd Brahmans The 3rd Brahmans were an infantry regiment of the British Indian Army. They could trace their origins to 1798, when they were the 1st Battalion, 16th Bengal Native Infantry. Over the years they were known by a number of different names. The 32nd B ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Historical Definitions Of Races In India

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

British Empire Indigenous peoples of South Asia Scientific racism

Great races

Brahmans

See also

References