swivel:
I agree. We oughn't get our panties in a bunch and should be able to joke. In fact, it is funnier when the person of said race/group is there to enjoy the joke, also.
samcdkey:
"The Mughal invaders were not Indians. Those who converted to Islam were."
A betrayal of your people and your heritage can hardly be considered remaining Indian.
"You have really weird ideas.
The whole of North East India is a mixture of Mongolian and SE Asian people who are now Indian.
Here are Indians from the state of Mizoram"
According to:
http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=lus there are only 500,000 Mizo in India. Similarly, they are converting to Christianity and may even be a (rather ridiculous claim, I say) "lost tribe of Israel".
"The Proto-Australoids were a race of Hunter-Gatherers. They are known to have spoken the Mundari Language[citation needed], and their descendants comprise communities scattered across South- and Austral-Asia. The largest population of this race can be found in India where they numbered close to 40 million in 1985. Around 45% of the general Indian population has some amount of Australoid admixture[citation needed]. Many Australoids in Southern/Central India have adapted to dravidian languages.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Australoid
In the mid-Indian region, the Gond who number over 5 million, are the descendants of the dark skinned Kolarian or Dravidian tribes and speak dialects of Austric language family as are the Santhal who number 4 million. The Negrito and Austroloid people belong to the Mundari family of Munda, Santhal, Ho, Ashur, Kharia, Paniya, Saora etc.
http://www.countercurrents.org/adibij.htm "
Intriguing on the first (although I belive the Australoid communities in Australia have been isolated for the 30,000 years at least) and minimal on the second. A population of a few million out of a billion are hardly worth considering as a major contributor to the culture.
"African descendents are Habshis (believed to be Assyrians)
http://www.colorq.org/MeltingPot/ar...d=Asia&x=Habshi"
Assyrians? THey are Ethiopians according to that site and make up a very small amount of the population. Ridiculously small, in fact. Only 1500 when they were present in India as part of the Mughals.
"Around 711 AD, Arabs brought Islam into north India by invading modern day Pakistan. In later years Arabs arrived in India as Muslim missionaries, merchants and mercenaries. Arab mariners had navigated the Spice Route between West Asia, South Asia and Southeast Asia for centuries. Many Arabs settled in India and married locals."
Ah, spice traders, yes. They'd probably leave their genetic traces, yes. But are you saying a trickling of merchants are going to impact the overall genetic structure of India very much at all?
"Indian civilisation on the other hand, with its process of peaceful penetration rather than military conquest (much like with the great Buddhist Emporer Ashoka centuries later) was able to leave a far greater and more enduring imprint on the region, providing the very basis and inspiration for the great Hindu empires that flourished like that of the Angkor-Khmer empire in Cambodia, the Chams in Vietnam, as well as Mataram, Majapahit and Sri Vijaya empires in Indonesia and Malaysia among many others including Buddhist kingdoms in Thailand and Burma."
I am aware of such Indian influence on surrounding cultures.
"The interchangeable terms of Brahmanisation, Sankritisation, Indianisation or rather expansion of Indian culture was a very broad process, the results of which differ in various countries. The relations between India and Farther India date back to prehistoric times, but it was from the period when IndianisedKingdoms were first founded on the Indochinese peninsula and in the island of Indonesia that the term Indianisation really applies."
This implies an outwards, not inward, movement. That is to say, Indians moving out of India and impacting other cultures, not SE Asians impacting Indians.
"Ah yes the Aryans...
http://www.gosai.com/chaitanya/sara...n-invasion.html"
Modern Indian nationalism doesn't change historical fact, specifically in genetic analysis.
According to:
http://www.gosai.com/chaitanya/saranagati/html/vedic-upanisads/aryan-invasion.html
For maternally inherited mtDNA, each caste is most similar to Asians. However, 20%-30% of Indian mtDNA haplotypes belong to West Eurasian haplogroups, and the frequency of these haplotypes is proportional to caste rank, the highest frequency of West Eurasian haplotypes being found in the upper castes. In contrast, for paternally inherited Y-chromosome variation each caste is more similar to Europeans than to Asians. Moreover, the affinity to Europeans is proportionate to caste rank, the upper castes being most similar to Europeans, particularly East Europeans.
When one considers the fact that this Aryan language was Sanskrit, the religion bears remarkably similarity and etymological cognate to all the European pagan religions and Zoroastrianism, and we realize that the upper caste of society were foreigners to India, in what way is this not a reality of foreign domination? The only thing is that there was significant mixture, so that over time, Aryans took native Indian wives and begat half-Aryan, half-native, children. But it is also telling that it is on the male line that the genetic similarities are to be found, once again pushing the point that it was at least partially military based.
I have other genetic evidence I posted in a thread to Light Gigantic. I might transport those links over here if I can find them easily.
"Depends how many Indians are descendents wouldn't you say?"
Are you claiming that a great deal of Indians are of Greek and Slavic origin?
"Its all relative. As I move further away from Bombay towards any part of India, the similarities in food, dress and customs become less and less. When I move beyond the boundaries of India, the only similarities may be of religion and or language. This is true for most non-Westernised Indians. Consequently the comfort zone of an Indian is directly proportional to the distance from his home. Meeting another person at varying levels of similarities with his zone of comfort provides his most significant basis for a friendship or relationship."
In so much as things relate back to one's home, this is true, yes.
"Actually most Hindus have house deities, with other deities having seasonal importance. Even if the South worshipped the same gods, their names and representation of their gods would have been translated to identify with the local people and would be alien or unfamiliar to the North. The conversation woud stop right there."
This is true. There'd be local differences in practices and the like, and naturally, when home deities are of such importance, the conversation would indeed stop there. But then again, if they were to discuss theology, they'd be discussing from the same canon, discussing the same issues, et cetera. That is to say, no Hindu is going to say "the Vedas are wrong!".
"Is it the same? We are intimately connected to the lives of people who lived through those thousands of years through mythology and parables. They are very much alive among the Indians of today."
Indeed, it is not, for we were raped by Christianity and lost our culture and identity. We are under an alien yoke and have been for 2,000 years. Even our epics have been vandalized by Christian influence, I.E. Beowulf.
"We have never been submerged. We have always held closely to our distinctness, which is evidenced by the fact that there are Hindus following a 5000 year old religion in a language that is so old, its hard to trace it beyond written traditions (Sanskrit)."
It is hard to claim a distinctness if this religion is clinged to by the rest of one's community to varying degrees.
"A change in dialect in India would very likely mean that the people are from a more or less different place, they have different food habits and dress codes, a different way of celebrating customs, maybe a different house god and quite possibly a different way of getting married. It's not just language."
Regionalism is apparent in all greater cultures. Local mannerisms and ways of life are apparent even in modern countries. Contrast a New Yorker with a Texan. The only difference is that India has a far greater history to make such distinctions even more engrained in the local areas.
"What do you think of these Indian Jews in Israel?
Do they seem more Indian or more Jewish?
If I had said they were Hindus or Muslims could you tell the difference?"
The girl on the LEft is distintly Jewish in look, and if I had paid attention to the flat-breads they were cooking, I might well be able to discern their Jewishness. But no, the Indian dress and the skin colour look very different from most modern Jews, yes.
"Young Indian Jews learn the traditional way of baking matzahs from their extended family, as part of the Jewish Agency's pre-Pesach preparations at the Ye'elim Absorption Center"
As in, from foreign Jews? Or did you mean litterally "extended family", as in, cousins and the like?
"You miss the point; there is nothing local about it. Sind is in Pakistan in the North. Hyderabad is in South India. Delhi is at the center."
Perhaps I should have used the more accurate "isolated languages".
"The Shariah is Islamic law. It is meant to be used in Islamic countries. Islam does not require you to follow anything other than the laws of your own country. Worshipping false gods, graven images, etc are about religion, not politics, and are forbidden by the Quran. They are not exclusive to the Shariah."
So then Islamic law and Islamic religious prohibitions are distinct? I had thought both had their foundation in the Qu'ran and the Sayings of the Prophet and such?
"Then you'd be wrong. In Saudi Arabia, my best friends were other Indians(doctors, nurses) or Pakistanis or Bangladeshis. The Muslim boys from Pakistan, India and Bangladesh were more comfortable with the Christian and Hindu nurses and doctors than with the other Muslim guys from n number of countries. In the US, we SE Asians have a group that is distinctly different. We watch bad Indian movies and eat Indian food together. I don't know any Muslims here though I've seen quite a few."
Intriguing! Though if you had were to meet with an Indonesian, an Arab, and a Syrian Moslem, would you not agree on theological and moral issues far more than your Hindu friends?
"There are Iranians and other ME people here who are all PhD's and hence pretty secular, but they are more foreign to me than the Americans I associate with. And this is true for other Indian Muslims I know in other parts of the US. We desis tend to find each other. "
In what way do you categorize them as more foreign in contrast with the few Americans?
TimeTraveler:
"Prince James hates whiners. This pretty much sums up the spirit of his arguement. If we want to dig deeper, we can see that he hates weakness, and whining is an expression of weakness."
You struck the nail right on the head. I detest weakness of all sorts.
"Prince James, you do not hate the Jew's, you hate the weak. Just be bold and say what you feel. The one thing you hate most of all is weakness. "
I do not hate the Jews at all, you are correct. I only hate whining Jews, like I hate whining Japanese, and whining Canadians, and whining Zimbaweans. You are quite correct. Weakness of any sort is something I find most revolting.
