Who is an Indian?

[Guynextdoor2]

Hitite Swastika, Anatolia, turkey

Swastika Crete

Swastika - Roman, in Spain.

Swastika - greek

inscription on the Værløse Fibula reading alugod followed by a swastika. Denmark

Now sonny are you going to tell me Ancient Greeks, Ancient Germans, Ancient Danes, Ancient Crete and Ancient Rome were all Hindu or Proto Hindu?

That seal from Harappa is seal and you can apply anything on it and make it proto Rastafarian if you delude yourself enough.



I was only applying precepts of "your civilization"? You should be enamoured not annoyed.

Oh you aren;t saying anything that I don't know about. And there's a helluva lot of difference between tracking the Swastika and the pashupati seal. The evidence presented by the presence of the seal in certain other ancient civilizations is that the Indus Valley traded with them, not that it came to India from there.

 

[utraash]

Is 'Indian' an ethnic group? No - in South Asia ethnic groups are defined along different lines (tied in with language) such as Punjabi, Sindhi, Pashtun, Baloch, Gujarati etc.

'Indian' is certainly not a racial group, at least not by any currently established anthropological categories.

So at this point in time 'Indian' is nothing more than a nationality - a term for those who hold Indian citizenship.

Why do some people find this concept so hard to grasp?

I was talking about religious demography buddy ..... What was the population of Hindus n Buddhist around 1000AD in current geography of Pakistan.... ?

 

[Pindi Boy]

Pakistan forever



Does this line by you mean

That north INDIANS , Punjabis . hindu Punjabis , Brahmins Are not Indians.

I am a JAT PUNJABI and I'm of indian heritage

north East Indians OR those that live near assam or tibetan himlayers border are they not Indians

You do realise THAT IN EVERY COUNTRY there are races of different ancestory.

Do they not teach this things in Pakistani schools

Why are you so ashamed to shoe your identity and using false flags .........I know being an indian is really shamefull is'nt is????

 

[scionoftheindus]

Go ahead but do not include us or anybody from the Indus basin. We do NOT want to be associated with the humoungous sea of achoots, Adavasis and the other distinguished peoples in your country.

No matter how much you deny, we south Indians are real inheritors of IVC..present day Pakistanis are the mixture of Caucasians, australoids and negroids..you are not pure dravidians..south Indians ancestors who were most likely negroids or australoids built IVC...we have full rights over them.

 

[Jat Boy]

USMA.

If I was ashamed I would not be plastering it all over the internet forum

PUNJABI JAT BOY born in UK living in UK ...

VERY PROUD of whom we are vist Punjab every year to see our land and our Khotis(home)

But still priviledged to be living in a GREAT COUNTRY like UK.

I CAN SEE WHY THE ENTIRE ISLAMIC WORLD IS FLOCKING TO EUROPE and esp UK/Germany

 

[Levina]

Or they are just catering to a large student body of a particular national origin.

Pakistanis and Indians fall under the 'Asian' category in the US Census, for example.

Should I be surprised???

 

[ayesha.a]

An indian is someone with an indian passport or someone living abroad who can trace his/her heritage to the races indigenous and unique to present day india e.g. tamils, south indians, gujeratis etc. Or someone who has family links there.

The only sensible post on this thread, as an answer to the title.

To nitpick though, maybe it is improper to consider anybody belonging to one of the indegenous Indian races to be Indian. Governor Bobby Jindal recently made a remark about wanting to be just called American, and not Indian-American. People with Irish, German , French etc ancestries are usually just considered Americans, so there is some truth to Mr Jindal's assertion.

So maybe self description can play a part here - people of Indian descent born outside India, and having always lived outside India, and share no cultural affinity with India, should not be considered Indian.

Is 'Indian' an ethnic group? No - in South Asia ethnic groups are defined along different lines (tied in with language) such as Punjabi, Sindhi, Pashtun, Baloch, Gujarati etc.

'Indian' is certainly not a racial group, at least not by any currently established anthropological categories.

So at this point in time 'Indian' is nothing more than a nationality - a term for those who hold Indian citizenship.

Why do some people find this concept so hard to grasp?

For the same reason that many Pakistanis find it difficult to grasp that this applies to them as well.

On this very thread, you can see Pakistanis claiming that they are the heirs of the IVC, other Pakistanis claiming that the first Muslim to enter the subcontinent was the first Pakistani, and so on.

 

[livingdead]

The only sensible post on this thread, as an answer to the title.

To nitpick though, maybe it is improper to consider anybody belonging to one of the indegenous Indian races to be Indian. Governor Bobby Jindal recently made a remark about wanting to be just called American, and not Indian-American. People with Irish, German , French etc ancestries are usually just considered Americans, so there is some truth to Mr Jindal's assertion.

So maybe self description can play a part here - people of Indian descent born outside India, and having always lived outside India, and share no cultural affinity with India, should not be considered Indian.



For the same reason that many Pakistanis find it difficult to grasp that this applies to them as well.

On this very thread, you can see Pakistanis claiming that they are the heirs of the IVC, other Pakistanis claiming that the first Muslim to enter the subcontinent was the first Pakistani, and so on.

whoever carries Indian passport or legal document that govt of India recognizes as proof of citizenship is Indian. One might reject all cultural affinity yet be Indian.
Bobby is indian american in same sense people call african american or italian american, it just a description of his root. People do claim successful individual as one of their own(kenyans do for obama for example), nothing new.

 

[ayesha.a]

Go ahead but do not include us or anybody from the Indus basin. We do NOT want to be associated with the humoungous sea of achoots, Adavasis and the other distinguished peoples in your country.

Wow, the level of racism here would shame an upper caste Hindu.

"Adivasis" and other aboriginal people are despicable for you, eh?

 

[Assange]

Indian is a GOD particle feeling which binds 1.2 billion people into one....

 

[nForce]

No other nation in the World, with so much of diversity and yet so much unity.


Proud to be an Indian.

 

[ayesha.a]

whoever carries Indian passport or legal document that govt of India recognizes as proof of citizenship is Indian. One might reject all cultural affinity yet be Indian.
Bobby is indian american in same sense people call african american or italian american, it just a description of his root. People do claim successful individual as one of their own(kenyans do for obama for example), nothing new.

The first sentence is indisputable. The debatable question arises only for those who are not Indian citizens.

Everybody is the USA, with the exception of the native Americans, are descended from immigrants. Most of them do not get hyphenated. Has George Bush ever been described as a British-American? Ronald Reagan as an Irish-American? Kennedy as a Scottish-Irish-American?

If white people are not associated with their ancestors' place of origin, why should brown skinned people be? That in itself is a racist practice.

Somebody born and brought up in the USA, and not sharing any cultural affinities with India, should be considered American, not Indian-American. Her brown skin should not prevent that.

 

[Mamsalaphala]

Wow, the level of racism here would shame an upper caste Hindu.

"Adivasis" and other aboriginal people are despicable for you, eh?

Wow the level of Hindu Hate by you would shame Muhammed and his mullas too.

Upper caste Hindus are "racist" for you, eh ?

 

[ayesha.a]

No other nation in the World, with so much of diversity and yet so much unity.


Proud to be an Indian.

That's true only linguistically. The USA has far more diversity of races, ethnicities, national origin and so on. You won't find a Vietnamese and a Chinese and an Indian and a Kenyan and a Spaniard all living together in the same building or working in the same office or attending the same school in India.

Wow the level of Hindu Hate by you would shame Muhammed and his mullas too.

Upper caste Hindus are "racist" for you, eh ?

No, they aren't. Not all of them. Some are.

Historically, it is inherent in the caste system, systematically. You cannot deny or wish that away.

Can you deny that for thousands of years, upper caste Hindus considered many lower castes to be beneath themselves?

 

[livingdead]

The first sentence is indisputable. The debatable question arises only for those who are not Indian citizens.

Everybody is the USA, with the exception of the native Americans, are descended from immigrants. Most of them do not get hyphenated. Has George Bush ever been described as a British-American? Ronald Reagan as an Irish-American? Kennedy as a Scottish-Irish-American?

If white people are not associated with their ancestors' place of origin, why should brown skinned people be? That in itself is a racist practice.

Somebody born and brought up in the USA, and not sharing any cultural affinities with India, should be considered American, not Indian-American. Her brown skin should not prevent that.

I dont think its racist because its usually people themselves self-identifying as african/indian/irish/iranian/italian. People say this sometimes with pride sometimes just to give more info, people want to show off they got interesting root.
Its not brown only thing, italian and irish definitely do it, English/scots usually dont. There is huge american population that traces back their root to ireland, so much so that many american presidents use it to gather votes(claiming their got irish ancestry).
There was a joke(or is it true?) that even Obama tried to search his irish roots when he was in dublin(apparently from his mother's side).