Racial Groups of India

Ethnic diversity is one of the well-known characteristics of contemporary societies. It is a legacy of conquests that brought forth diverse groups of people under the rule of a dominant group. Ethnicity also refers to a group of people sharing a common language, cultural meetings, memories, and descent produced through social interactions. 

So, ethnicity or race divides people in what terms? Well! The race is a grouping of people according to their caste, religion, physical appearance, and social qualities. On dividing people on the basis of these attributes, a group of people sharing the same attribute is called a racial group, and the term Racial Group was first used to refer to people of a common language and then to denote national affiliations. By the 17th century, the term began to pertain to physical traits. 

Various racial groups are there in India; among these, we will study major racial groups in India. Along with the understanding of racial groups in India, we will go through the key takeaways on racial groups and a few facts on the major racial groups in India.

Various Races in India

India is a motherland of various dialects and communities. The present population of the blended Indian subcontinent can be divided into the following five major racial groups:

• The Negritos, 

• Western Brachycephals, 

• The Proto-Australoids, 

• The Mongoloids, and 

• The Mediterranean. 

Please note that the above racial groups are arranged in the following hierarchical order:

• The Negritos were the first of the racial groups that came to India.

• Followed by theThe Negritos, Proto-Australoid race came to India, and the sources of Proto-Australoid are Australian aborigines. 

• The Mongoloids embarked in the land of India through the passes of northern and eastern mountain ranges.

• Lastly, The Mediterraneans came to India from southwest Asia.

Now, we will understand these racial groups in detail:

The Negritos - Etymology

The word Negrito is the Spanish "cute" version of negro, which means "little black person." 

The term ‘Negro’ was coined by 16th-century Spanish missionaries working in the Philippines and was taken by other European travelers and colonialists across Austronesia to allocate various peoples presumed as sharing comparatively small physical stature and dark skin. 

However, the Contemporary use of an alternative Spanish epithet, Negrillos, also inclined to bunch these people with the pygmy population of Central Africa, relied on perceived likeness in stature and coloration.

Historically, the tag Negrito was long being used to refer to African pygmies. The suitability of using the label "Negrito" to bunch people of differing ethnicities based on correspondence in stature and complexion has been challenged.

Many online dictionaries show the plural of the word Negrito in English as either "Negritos" or "Negritoes," without a prior clarity or a preference. However, the plural form in Spanish is "Negritos."

About the Negritos

These racial groups were perhaps the first of the racial groups that embarked into India. They settled in the hilly areas of Kerala, the Andaman Islands. 

Numerous diverse ethnic groups inhabit isolated parts of Southeast Asia and the Andaman Islands. Their current populations incorporate the following: 

• The Andamanese peoples of the Andaman Islands, 

• The Semang peoples (among them, the Batek people) hailing from Peninsular Malaysia, 

• The Maniq people of Southern Thailand,

• The Aeta of Luzon Island, 

• Ati, and Tumandok of Panay Island, 

• Agta of Sierra Madre

• Mamanwa of Mindanao Island, and 

• About 30 other officially recognized ethnic groups in the Philippines.

The Hindu communities, like the Kadar (Scheduled Tribe in the states of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, and Kerala), Irula (Dravidian ethnic group inhabiting the Indian states of Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and Karnataka), and Puliyan tribes (a Dalit (untouchable) caste in Hinduism) of Kerala look entirely like the Negritos. 

These communities relate to Africa, Australia, and their neighbouring islands. The Negritos have the following characteristics: 

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• Black (dark) skin, 

• woolly hair, 

• a broad and flat nose,

• and slightly protruded jaws.

The Proto-Australoids - Etymology

The expression "Ausoid" begat in ethnology during the nineteenth century, depicting clans or populaces "of the kind of local Australians." The expression "Australoid race" was presented by Thomas Huxley in 1870 to allude to specific people groups native to South and Southeast Asia and Oceania. 

However, in actual human studies, the term Australoid is used for morphological elements normal for Aboriginal Australians by Daniel John Cunningham in his Text-book of Anatomy (1902). 

An Australioid (sic, with an extra - I -) racial grouping was first put forth by Thomas Huxley in an exposition On the Geographical Distribution of the Chief Modifications of Mankind (1870), in which he isolated humankind into four chief gatherings (Xanthochroic, Mongoloid, Negroid, and Australioid). Huxley's unique model incorporated the local occupants of South Asia under the Australoid class. Further, Huxley specified the Melanochroi (Peoples of the Mediterranean race) as a combination of the Xanthochroi (northern Europeans) and Australioids.

Huxley (1870) portrayed Australoids as dolichocephalic; their hair was generally velvety, dark and wavy or wavy, with huge, substantial jaws and prognathism, with skin the shade of chocolate and irises which are dim brown or dark.

The expression "Proto-Australoid" was utilized by Roland Burrage Dixon in his Racial History of Man (1923). In The Origin of Races (1962), Carleton Coon elucidated his arrangement of five races (Australoid, Caucasoid, Mongoloid, Congoid, and Capoid) with isolated starting points. In view of such proof as asserting Australoids had the biggest, megadont teeth, this gathering was surveyed by Coon similar to the most antiquated and subsequently the primitive and backward. Coon's strategies and ends were subsequently undermined and show either a "helpless comprehension of human social history and advancement or his utilization of ethnology for a racialist agenda."[9] Bellwood (1985) utilizes the expressions "Australoid", "Austromelanesoid", and "Australo-Melanesians" to portray the hereditary legacy of "the Southern Mongoloid populaces of Indonesia and Malaysia".

Terms related with obsolete thoughts of racial sorts, for example, those suffixes in "- oid" have come to be viewed as conceivably offensive and identified with scientific racism.

About the Proto-Australoids 

These people perhaps belong to the Proto-Australoid race who came here just after the Negritos. Their sources are Australian aborigines who settled in central India. The following tribes are related to The Proto-Australoids group from Rajmahal hills to the Aravallis:                      

• Santhal, 

• Bhil, 

• Gond, 

• Munda, 

• Oraon, etc. 

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These communities vary physically from the Negritos in many ways, for e.g., their hair is coarse and straight in place of being woolly. It is presumed that they were the people who, in synergy with the Mediterranean race, had developed the Indus Valley Civilization.  Also, their skeletons have been found in the excavations of Mohenjodaro and Harappa. 

The Mongoloids - Origin of the Term Mongoloids

In 1785, the term Mongolian was first presented by Christoph Meiners, a researcher at the then-current Göttingen University. Meiners partitioned mankind into two races he marked "Tartar-Caucasians" and "Mongolians", accepting the previous to be delightful, the last to be "frail in body and soul, terrible, and ailing in virtue".

His more powerful Göttingen associate Johann Friedrich Blumenbach acquired the term Mongolian for his division of humankind into five races in the overhauled 1795 release of his De generis humani varietate nativa (On the Natural Variety of Mankind). In spite of the fact that Blumenbach's idea of five races later brought about logical prejudice, his contentions were fundamentally against racism, since he underlined that overall humanity structures one single species, and calls attention to that the change starting with one race then onto the next is progressive to such an extent that the qualifications between the races introduced by him are "very arbitrary."

In Blumenbach's idea, the Mongolian race contains the people groups living in Asia east of the Ob River, the Caspian Sea, and the Ganges River, except for the Malays, who structure their own race. Of people groups living outside Asia, he incorporates the "Eskimos" in northern America and the European Finns, among whom he incorporates the "Lapps". 

About the Mongoloids and Their Branches

The first country of this race was Mongolia (China). The Mongoloids came to India through the passes of northern and eastern mountain ranges. These individuals are packed in the close-by spaces of the Himalayas, for example, Ladakh, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, and different spaces of north-eastern India. The Mongoloids have pale or light fair skin, short tallness, relatively huge head, half-open eyes, level face, and expansive nose. In India, they can be separated into two branches- 

• Paleo-Mongoloids-  They were the first of the Mongoloids who landed in India. These individuals are settled fundamentally in the line spaces of the Himalayas. They are discovered for the most part in Assam and the contiguous states. 

• Tibeto-Mongoloids- These individuals came from Tibet and are settled for the most part in Bhutan, Sikkim, spaces of north-western Himalayas, and past the Himalayas where Ladakh and Baltistan are incorporated.

• The Mongoloids - Physical Appearance

The characteristics of the "Mongoloid" populations of Asia are as follows: 

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• Flat face with a low nasal root, 

• Accentuated zygomatic arches, 

• Flat-lying eyelids (often that are slanting), and dark eyes thick, 

• Dark hair,

• Yellow-brownish skin, and 

• Short, stocky build.

The Mediterranean - Concept 

The Mediterranean (also called the Mediterranid race) was an empirical race idea that was a sub-race of the Caucasian race as classified by anthropologists in the late nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries. According to different definitions, it was supposed to be common in the Mediterranean Basin and regions close to the Mediterranean, particularly in Southern Europe, North Africa, a large portion of Western Asia, the Middle East or Near East; western Central Asia, portions of South Asia, and portions of the Horn of Africa. Less significantly, certain populaces of individuals in Ireland, western pieces of Great Britain, and Southern Germany, regardless of living a long way from the Mediterranean, were thought to have some minority Mediterranean components in their populace, like Bavaria, Wales, and Cornwall.

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Carleton S. Coon portrayed the subgroup as having more limited or medium (not tall) height, long (dolichocephalic) or moderate (mesocephalic) skull, a tight and frequently marginally barbed nose, pervasiveness of dim hair and eyes, and cream to tan or dim earthy coloured complexion; olive appearance being particularly normal and typifying the alleged Mediterranean race.

The Mediterranean Race - Branches

The Mediterranean racial group is divided into the following two branches:

• Paleo-Mediterraneans - This racial group was the first of the Mediterranean race that came to India. They were of medium stature, dark skin, very much constructed body, and long head. Maybe they were individuals who had started development without precedent for north-west India. The gathering which came later pushed them towards the focal and south India. As of now, the Paleo-Mediterraneans, with their other sub-bunches, include the most piece of the number of inhabitants in south India and a huge piece of the number of inhabitants in north India. 

• Mediterranean's - They came to India later on. They fostered the Indus valley’s civilization as a team with the Proto-Australoids and started the bronze culture interestingly during 2500-1500 BC. Later on, the new attacking gathering coming from the northwest pushed them from the Indus valley to the Ganga valley and towards the south of the Vindhyas. Today, the vast majority of the number of inhabitants in lower stations in north India has a place with this race. 

• Oriental-Mediterranean's- They came to India extremely late. They are populated generally in the north-western boundary spaces of Pakistan and Punjab. They are likewise found in adequate numbers in Sindh (Pakistan), Rajasthan, and western Uttar Pradesh. 

Interesting Facts About the Racial Groups of India

• Indo-Aryans cover the majority of the Indian population which is mostly located in parts of north and central India. They are the most diverse group of people in India, is made up of the following dialects:

• Assamese, 

• Bengali, 

• Gujarati, 

• Hindi, 

• Kashmiri, 

• Konkani, 

• Marathi, and 

• Punjabi.

• India is the second-most populous nation in the world, containing 17.50% of the world's population.