The Indid race was a supposed sub-race in the context of a now-outdated model of dividing humanity into different races which was developed originally by Europeans in support of colonialism.[1] In 19th and early 20th century anthropological literature, the Indid type was classified as belonging to the Mediterranean type of the greater Caucasoid race.[2]

Physiognomy

American anthropologist Carleton S. Coon described the Indid race as occupying the Indian subcontinent, beginning from the Khyber Pass.[3] Coon wrote that "India is the easternmost outpost of the Caucasian racial region".[4] Indologists, such as those of the All-India Oriental Conference of 1941, described the Indid type as having a standard set of features:[5]

Indid: Consisting of the main body of the people of India: slim, graceful body, thin bones, medium height, long head, long face, brown skin, black wavy hair, protruding narrow forehead, triangular nose, weak chin.[5]

The Royal Society of Letters at Lund likewise stated in 1946 that the Indid type possessed a narrow forehead and large eye sockets.[6] John Montgomery Cooper, an American ethnologist and Roman Catholic priest, on 26 April 1945 in a hearing before the United States Senate "To Permit all people from India residing in the United States to be Naturalized" recorded:[7]

The people of India are predominantly Caucasoid. Their features, hair texture, hairiness, the shape of the nose, mouth, and so on, are all distinctly Caucasoid. It is only in some of the far, out-of-the-way places of India, as in this country, that you find certain traces of other races.[7]

German physical anthropologist Egon Freiherr von Eickstedt (1892–1965) proposed two subdivisions of the Indid race: (1) the North Indid type, which he stated was typified by people such as the Todas of the Nilgiri Mountains and Rajputs from Rajasthan; and (2) the Gracile Indid type, which he stated was represented by people such as the Bengalis.[8][9] The Romani people, being among the oldest members of the Indian diaspora, were classified as being of the Indid type.[10]

The theory propounded by German comparative philologists during the 1840s and 1850s "maintained that the speakers of Indo-European languages in India, Persia, and Europe were of the same culture and race".[11] This resulted in a distinction between the majority Indo-Aryan peoples of northern India and the less populous speakers of Dravidian languages, located mostly in southern India with areas outlying in Baluchistan in the northwest and in the eastern corner of the Bihar Province.[11][12] Notwithstanding, Dravidians came to be classified as belonging to the Caucasian race by 19th and 20th-century anthropologists.[13]

See also

References

  1. ^ For the model of dividing humanity into races, see American Association of Physical Anthropologists (27 March 2019). "AAPA Statement on Race and Racism". American Association of Physical Anthropologists. Retrieved 19 June 2020. Instead, the Western concept of race must be understood as a classification system that emerged from, and in support of, European colonialism, oppression, and discrimination.
  2. ^ McMahon, Richard (2019). National Races: Transnational Power Struggles in the Sciences and Politics of Human Diversity, 1840-1945. University of Nebraska Press. p. 315. ISBN 978-1-4962-0582-7.
  3. ^ Carleton S. Coon (1939). The Races of Europe. Dalcassian Publishing Company. p. 287.
  4. ^ Coon, Carleton Stevens; Hunt, Edward E. (1966). The Living Races of Man. Cape. p. 207.
  5. ^ a b Proceedings and Transactions of the All-India Oriental Conference, Volume 10. All-India Oriental Conference. 1941. p. 485.
  6. ^ Årsberättelse - Kungl. Humanistiska Vetenskapssamfundet i Lund: Bulletin de la Société Royale Des Lettres de Lund. CWK Gleerup. 1946. p. 47.
  7. ^ a b To Permit All People from India Residing in the United States to be Naturalized: Hearing Before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Immigration, United States Senate, Seventy-ninth Congress, First Session, on S. 236. April 26, 1945. United States Senate Committee on Immigration. 26 April 1945. pp. 5–6.
  8. ^ Malhotra, K.C.; Vasulu, T.C. (2019). "Development of typological classification and its relationship to microdifferentiation in ethnic India". Journal of Biosciences. 44 (64): 64. doi:10.1007/s12038-019-9880-8. PMID 31389353. S2CID 195811912.
  9. ^ Sharma, Ram Nath; Sharma, Rajendra K. (1997). Anthropology. Atlantic Publishers. p. 122. ISBN 978-81-7156-673-0.
  10. ^ Wolf, Josef (1971). Integral Anthropology: An Introduction to the Study of Man, Culture and Society. Statni Pedagogicke Nakladatelstvi. p. 200. The gypsies, who are actually of Indian origin and come from the North-West India region, are also akin to this Indid type.
  11. ^ a b Veer, Peter van der (14 January 2014). Conversion to Modernities. Routledge. p. 130. ISBN 978-1-136-66183-9. Caldwell's articulation of the racial and historical basis of the Aryan-Dravidian divide was, in fact, perhaps the first European valorization of the Dravidian category cast specifically in racial terms, though he admitted the likelihood of considerable racial intermixture. At the same time, Caldwell was merely modifying conventional wisdom in his uncritical acceptance of an Aryan theory of race, in which Dravidians were seen as pre-Aryan inhabitants of India. The Aryan theory of race, based as it was on William Jones's well-known "discovery" of the Indo-Aryan family of languages, had been developed by German comparative philologists in the 1840s and 1850s. It maintained that the speakers of Indo-European languages in India, Persia, and Europe were of the same culture and race.
  12. ^ Kuiper, Kathleen (15 August 2010). The Culture of India. Rosen Publishing. p. 71. ISBN 978-1-61530-149-2. Dravidian languages are spoken by about one-fourth of all Indians, overwhelmingly in southern India. Dravidian speakers among tribal people (e.g., Gonds) in central India, in eastern Bihar, and in the Brahui-speaking region of the distant Pakistani province of Balochistan suggest a much wider distribution in ancient times.
  13. ^ Playne, Somerset; Wright, Arnold (1915). Southern India, Its History, People, Commerce, and Industrial Resources. Foreign and Colonial Compiling and Publishing Company. p. 69.
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