The Indid race is an obsolete term for the physical type most common among populations native to the

Indian subcontinent The Indian subcontinent is a list of the physiographic regions of the world, physiographical region in United Nations geoscheme for Asia#Southern Asia, Southern Asia. It is situated on the Indian Plate, projecting southwards into the Indian O ...

. The Indid type was classified as belonging to the greater

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 ...

race in 19th and 20th century anthropological literature.

Physiognomy

American anthropologist Carleton S. Coon described the Indid race as occupying the

, beginning from the Khyber Pass. Coon wrote that "India is the easternmost outpost of the Caucasian racial region."

Indologist Indology, also known as South Asian studies, is the academic study of the history and cultures, languages, and literature of the Indian subcontinent, and as such is a subset of Asian studies. The term ''Indology'' (in German, ''Indologie'') is ...

s, such as those in the All-India Oriental Conference, described in 1941 the Indid type to constitute a standard set of features: The Royal Society of Letters at Lund likewise stated in 1946 that the Indid type possessed a narrow forehead and large eye sockets. 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 Naturalized" recorded: German physical anthropologist

Egon Freiherr von Eickstedt Egon Freiherr von Eickstedt (April 10, 1892 – December 20, 1965) was a German physical anthropologist who classified humanity into races. His study in the classification of human races made him one of the leading racial theorists of Nazi Ge ...

(1892–1965) made two subdivisions of the Indid race: (1) the North Indid type, which he stated was typified by people such as the

Todas Toda people are a Dravidian ethnic group who live in the Indian states of Tamil Nadu. Before the 18th century and British colonisation, the Toda coexisted locally with other ethnic communities, including the Kota, Badaga and Kurumba, in a ...

of the

Nilgiri Mountains The Nilgiri Mountains form part of the Western Ghats in northwestern Tamil Nadu, Southern Karnataka, and eastern Kerala in India. They are located at the trijunction of three states and connect the Western Ghats with the Eastern Ghats. At le ...

and

Rajput Rajput (from Sanskrit ''raja-putra'' 'son of a king') is a large multi-component cluster of castes, kin bodies, and local groups, sharing social status and ideology of genealogical descent originating from the Indian subcontinent. The term Ra ...

s from

Rajasthan Rajasthan (; lit. 'Land of Kings') is a state in northern India. It covers or 10.4 per cent of India's total geographical area. It is the largest Indian state by area and the seventh largest by population. It is on India's northwestern s ...

; and (2) the Gracile Indid type, which he stated was represented by people such as the

Bengalis Bengalis (singular Bengali bn, বাঙ্গালী/বাঙালি ), also rendered as Bangalee or the Bengali people, are an Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group originating from and culturally affiliated with the Bengal region of ...

. The

Romani people The Romani (also spelled Romany or Rromani , ), colloquially known as the Roma, are an Indo-Aryan ethnic group, traditionally nomadic itinerants. They live in Europe and Anatolia, and have diaspora populations located worldwide, with sig ...

, being among the oldest members of the

Indian diaspora Overseas Indians (IAST: ), officially Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) and Overseas Citizens of India (OCIs) are Indians who live outside of the Republic of India. According to the Government of India, ''Non-Resident Indians'' are citizens of Indi ...

, were classified as being of the Indid type. 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 majority

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 ...

northern India North India is a loosely defined region consisting of the northern part of India. The dominant geographical features of North India are the Indo-Gangetic Plain and the Himalayas, which demarcate the region from the Tibetan Plateau and Central ...

and the less populous speakers of Dravidian languages, 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 ...

. Notwithstanding, Dravidians came to be classified as belonging to the Caucasian race by 19th and 20th-century anthropologists. In 1929, the editor of ''

Vreme ''Vreme'' (Serbian for ''Time'') is a weekly news magazine based in Belgrade, Serbia. History Launch In 1990, dissatisfied with the media climate in SR Serbia, SFR Yugoslavia's largest constituent unit, a group of liberal Serbian intellectuals, i ...

'' in discussing the Miss Yugoslavia Competition wrote that the

Yugoslavs Yugoslavs or Yugoslavians ( Bosnian and Croatian: ''Jugoslaveni'', Serbian and Macedonian ''Jugosloveni''/Југословени; sl, Jugoslovani) is an identity that was originally designed to refer to a united South Slavic people. It has b ...

were a heterogeneous group, "defined by blond hair and blue eyes, with admixtures of northern Asian and Indid races, Slav tribes, and old Balkan races such as the Thracians."

References

{{Historical definitions of race Historical definitions of race

Physiognomy

See also

References