 India’s present day population is a conglomeration of people

belonging to different racial groups with different ethnic

backgrounds. The people entered India from different parts of the
world at different time periods adopting themselves.
 India has been a meeting point of different races and tribes from
times immemorial. Almost all the major races of the world are found
in India. As a result, India has a varied population and
diversified ethnic composition.
 Various attempts have been made, under the British Raj and since,
to classify the population of India according to a racial
typology. After independence, in pursuance of the government’s
policy to discourage distinctions between communities based
on race, the 1951 Census of India did away with racial
classifications.
 Today, the national Census of independent India does not
recognise any racial groups in India.

Ethnic Group
 Ethnic diversity is one of the social complexities found in most
contemporary societies. Historically it is the legacy of conquests that
brought diverse peoples under the rule of a dominant group.
 Ethnicity refers to the differentiation of groups of people who
have shared cultural meanings, memories, and descent
produced through social interaction.
 Ethnicity is considered to be shared characteristics such as culture,
language, religion, and traditions, which contribute to a person or
group’s identity.
 An ethnic group, or an ethnicity, is a category of people who identify
with each other based on similarities such as common ancestry,
language, society, culture or nation.
 Ethnicity is usually an inherited status based on the society in which
one lives.
 Membership of an ethnic group tends to be defined by a
shared cultural heritage, ancestry, origin myth, history,
homeland, language or dialect, symbolic systems such
as religion, mythology and ritual, cuisine, dressing style, art, and
physical appearance.
 An ‘ethnic group’ has been defined as a group that regards itself or
is regarded by others as a distinct community by virtue of certain
 characteristics that will help to distinguish the group from the
surrounding community.

Racial classification of Indian People

 India’s present day population is a conglomeration of people
belonging to different racial groups with different ethnic backgrounds.
 The people entered India from different parts of the world at different
time periods adopting themselves.
 India has been a meeting point of different races and tribes from
times immemorial. Almost all the major races of the world are visible
in India. As a result, India has a varied population and diversified
ethnic composition.
 The population of the country mainly derived from the following
racial groups:
 Different Anthropologists classify racial composition of Indian people
based on their works.
 Some of the notable classification are Sir Herbert Hope
Risley (1915), B.S. Guha (1937), Giufrida-Ruggeri (1921),
A.C. Haddon (1924), Eickstedt (1934), S.S. Sarkar (1961) etc

Racial Groups of India – General Classification

Negrito
 The word Negrito is the Spanish diminutive of negro, used to
mean “little black person“.
 The Negritos from Africa were the earliest people to have come to
India. This is the oldest tribe in India.
 They have survived in their original habitant
in Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
 The Jarawas, Onges, Sentinelese and the Great Andamanese are
some of the examples.
 Some hill tribes like Irulas, Kodars, Paniyans and Kurumbas are
found in some patches in Southern part of mainland India.
 Badgi in Rajmahal (Bihar), Jaroya in Andaman, Kadar in
Karnataka, Naga+khasi in North East etc.
 This has often been interpreted to the effect that they are remnants of
the original expansion from Africa some 70,000 years ago.
  However, another study suggests that the Onge (indigenous to Little
Andaman) are “more closely related to Southeast Asians than
they are to present-day South Asians”, and that the Great
Andamanese “appear to have received a degree of relatively recent
admixture from adjacent regional populations but also share a
significant degree of genetic ancestry with Malaysian negrito groups.
 Significant geographical distribution (Globally): Andaman Nicobar
island in India, peninsular region in Malaysia, Thailand’s Southern
part, Philippines’s luzan, negros, Palawan region etc.

The Negritos Tribe

 Racial features:
 Height : short stature
 Skin color : brown to black
 Hair: woolly or curly hair
 Noise: wide and fatty
 Lips: wide and reverse
 Head: wide
 Forehead: bulbous forehead

Proto-Austroloid or Australo-Melanesian
  The term “Australoid” was coined in ethnology in the mid 19th
century, describing tribes or populations “of the type of native
Australians“.
 In physical anthropology, Australoid is used for morphological
features characteristic of Aboriginal Australians by Daniel John
Cunningham in his Text-book of Anatomy (1902).
 An Australioid racial group was first proposed by Thomas
Huxley in an essay On the Geographical Distribution of the Chief
Modifications of Mankind (1870), in which he divided humanity
into four principal groups (Xanthochroic, Mongoloid, Negroid,
and Australioid).
 The term “Proto-Australoid” was used by Roland Burrage
Dixon in his Racial History of Man (1923). In a 1962 publication,
Australoid was described as one of the five major human races
alongside Caucasoid, Mongoloid, Congoid and Capoid.

Global
distribution of Proto-Austroloid or Australo-Melanesian

 South Indian tribes specifically described as having Australoid

affinities include the Oraon, Munda, Santal, Bhil, Gondi, the
Kadars of Kerala, the Kurumba and Irula of the Nilgiris, the
Paniyans of Malabar, the Uralis, Kannikars, Mithuvan and
 Chenchus, Malpaharis of the highland of central India. This tribe
is dominant in Middle and South India.
 Proto Australoids or Austrics were the next to come to India after the
Negritos. They are people with wavy hair lavishly distributed all over
their brown bodies. Long headed with low foreheads and prominent
eye ridges, noses with low and broad roots, thick jaws, large palates
and teeth and small chins.

Proto-Austroloid or Australo-Melanesian

 Racial features:
 Height : short to medium stature
 Skin color : brown to black
 Hair: clean hair
 Noise: broad flat
 Lips: wide and reverse
 Head: wide
 Forehead: bulbous forehead

Mongoloid
 Mongols: The Mongols are an East-Central Asian ethnic group
native to Mongolia and to China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous
 Region. They also live as minorities in other regions of China, as well
as in Russia.
 Mongoloid is a grouping of various peoples indigenous to Asia, North
America, South America, and the Pacific Islands (with some
exceptions).
 In 2019 Mongoloid comprised 29%, Negroid 27% and Caucasian
20% of earth population.
 The first use of the term Mongolian race was by Christoph Meiners in
1785, who divided humanity into two races he labeled “Tartar-
Caucasians” and “Mongolians”.
 The word “mong” derives from the word “mongol”
and “mongoloid”. Dr. John Langdon
Down, who discovered Down’s syndrome in the 1860s, used
“mongolism” and “mongoloid”
to describe the people from Mongolia and Mongoloid race (those of
Asian ethnicity).
 Mongoloids found in the North-Eastern part of India in the States of
Assam, Nagaland, Mizomram, Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh,
Manipur, and Tripura and in Northern parts of West Bangal, Sikkim,
and Ladakh are people with yellow complexion, oblique eyes, high
cheekbones, sparse hair and medium height.
 Indian tribes belonging Mongoloid race: Lepcha. Toda, Rava,
Khasi, Limbu, Garo, Naga, Chakma etc.
Mongoloid

 Mongolian community in India:

 Onward migration from Tibet: Mongolians who were originally
studying in Tibet in the 1950s followed the Tibetans and fled to India
after the 1950 invasion of Tibet and the 1959 Tibetan uprising. Many
of them settled in Kalimpong, West Bengal.
 Direct migration from Mongolia: They entered India through northern
or eastern mountain. Presently they occupy large areas of Ladakh,
Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim and others part of north east India.
 The Mongoloid race of India can be divided two sub groups:
o Palaeo– Mongoloids: Assam and Myanmar border.
o Tibeto-Mongoloids: Bhutan border, Sikkim and Trans Himalayas.
 Racial features
 Height : medium to tall
  Skin color : Yellowish to fair
 Hair: straight and dark hair.
 Noise: flat to steep
 Lips: simple
 Head: wide and round
 Forehead: high
 Check bones: high

Dravidians
 The origin of the Sanskrit word dravida is the word tamiz (Tamil). The
Sanskrit word dravida is used to denote the geographical region of
South India. In Prakrit, words such as “Damela”,
“Dameda”, “Dhamila” and “Damila”, which later evolved
from “Tamila”, could have been used to denote an ethnic identity.
 While the English word Dravidian was first employed by Robert
Caldwell in his book of comparative Dravidian grammar based on the
usage of the Sanskrit word dravida in the work Tantravarttika by
Kumarila Bhatta, the word dravida in Sanskrit has been historically
used to denote geographical regions of Southern India as whole.
 Dravidian people or Dravidians are speakers of any of the Dravidian
languages. There are around 245 million native speakers of
Dravidian languages.
 Dravidian speakers form the majority of the population of south India
and are natively found in India, Pakistan,
Afghanistan, the Maldives and Sri Lanka.
 Origin of the Dravidians:
 The origins of the Dravidians are a “very complex subject of research
and debate.”
 They may have been indigenous to the Indian subcontinent, but
origins in, or influence from, West-Asia has also been proposed.
 According to Narasimhan et al. (2018), Dravidians formed as a
mixture of Archaic Ancestral South Asians, and neolithic farmers from
Iran.
 Although in modern times speakers of various Dravidian languages
have mainly occupied the southern portion of India, Dravidian
 speakers must have been widespread throughout the Indian
subcontinent before the Indo-Aryan migration into the subcontinent.
 According to Carole Davies, “many academic researchers have
attempted to connect the Dravidians with the remnants of the great
Indus Valley Civilisation, located in Northwestern India,“ most
noteworthy Asko Parpola, who did extensive research on the IVC-
scripts. The Brahui population of Balochistan in Pakistan has been
taken by some as the linguistic equivalent of a relict population,
perhaps indicating that Dravidian languages were formerly much
more widespread and were supplanted by the incoming Indo-Aryan
languages.
 Nowadays Tamils, Malayalis, Telugus, Kannadigas that make up
around 20% of India’s population.

Geographi
cal distribution of Dravidians

 Racial features:
 Height : medium to tall
  Skin color : black, brown, fair
 Hair: plentiful hair with slight curls
 Noise: steep
 Lips: simple
 Head: wide and round
 Forehead: high

Mediterranean
 The Mediterranean race (Mediterranid race) is one of the sub-races
into which the Caucasian race was categorized by most
anthropologists in the late 19th to mid-20th centuries.
 This racial stock may be related to the Caucasian physical type i.e.
the white race.
 It is one of the dominant races in India.
 The Mediterranean is characterized by medium or short stature,
slender build, long head and dark complexion.
 The Mediterranean race is divided into three types such as:
 Palaeo-Mediterranean
 Mediterranean and
 Oriental.
 The Paleo-Mediterranean racial type is found in Tamil-Nadu and
Andhra Pradesh and is represented by the Tamil and Telegu
Brahmins in South India.
 The Mediterranean is considered one among the most dominant
racial strains in India who are believed to have been the builders of
the Indus Valley Civilization.
 The oriental Mediterranean is almost similar to the Mediterranean
type. Even though the Mediterranean race was once pre-dominant
throughout India, but now it is confined to the South, among the
Dravidians.
 Raci
al diversity in India

 Racial features:
 Height: shorter or medium (not tall) stature,
 Skull: long or moderate skull,
 Nose: a narrow and often slightly aquiline nose,
 Hair and Eyes: prevalence of dark hair and eyes,
 Skin Colour: cream to tan or dark brown skin tone,

Brachycephals
 Western Brachycephalics include the broad headed people living
mainly on the Western side of the country such as the Ganga valley
and the delta, parts of Kashmir, Kathiawar, Gujarat, Maharashtra,
Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.
 The Parsis and Kodavas also fall under this category.
 It is believed that the western Brachycephals have entered India from
the west.
  This race is divided into three sub-groups:
 The Alpinoid
 The Dinaric and
 The Armenoid.
 The Alpinoid is characterized by broad head, medium stature, light
skin and are found amongst the Bonias of Gujarat, the Kayastha
caste of Bengal etc.
 The Dinaric is found among the Brahmin of Bengal, non-Brahmin of
Karnataka. This strain is also claimed to be found among the
Orissans. People belonging to this strain are characterized by broad-
head, long nose, tall stature, dark skin colour.
 The Armenoid is characterized by more marked shape of the back of
head, a prominent and narrow nose. The Parsees of Bombay
possess these characteristics and therefore they are believed to be
the true representatives of this racial type

Nordic or Indo-Aryan:
 Russian-born French anthropologist Joseph Deniker that initially
proposed “nordique” (meaning simply “northern”) as an “ethnic
group” (a term that he coined).
 He defined nordique by a set of physical characteristics such as the
concurrence of somewhat wavy hair, light eyes, reddish skin, tall
stature and a dolichocephalic skull. Of six ‘Caucasian’ groups
Deniker accommodated four into secondary ethnic groups, all of
which he considered intermediate to the Nordic: Northwestern, Sub-
Nordic, Vistula and Sub-Adriatic, respectively.
 Nordics points were the last one to immigrate to India. They came to
India somewhere between 2000 and 1500 BC.
 They are now mainly found in the Northern and Central part of India.
 People belonging to this racial stock are characterized by tall stature,
long head, light skin and hair and blue eyes.
 This physical stock has come to India from the North South East
Asia, South West Siberia through Central Asia and spread all over
the Northern part of our country during the second millennium B.C.
 At present, this strain is found amongst the Bania castes of Gujarat,
the Kayasthas of Bengal etc., in North India, not in a pure form, but in
a mixed form with the Mediterranean race.
 They are, in particular, found in Punjab and Rajputana. This racial
type is represented by the Kho of Chitral, the Red Kaffirs, and the
Khatash.
 It is believed that they have influenced Indian culture through their
contribution of new ideas to philosophy and literature.

 Racial segregation :
 Racial segregation is the systemic separation of people into racial or
other ethnic groups in daily life. It may apply to activities such as
eating in a restaurant, drinking from a water fountain, using a public
toilet, attending school, going to the movies, riding on a bus, or in the
rental or purchase of a home or of hotel rooms.
 Amity-Enmity Complex:
 The amity-enmity complex was a term introduced by Sir Arthur Keith.
His work, A New Theory of Human Evolution (1948), posited that
humans evolved as differing races, tribes, and cultures, exhibiting
patriotism, morality, leadership and nationalism.
 Ethnocentrism :
 The term ethnocentrism was coined by Ludwig Gumplowicz and
subsequently employed by social scientist William G. Sumner.
Ethnocentrism is the act of judging another culture based on
preconceptions that are found in the values and standards of one’s
own culture – especially regarding language, behavior, customs, and
religion. These aspects or categories are distinctions that define each
ethnicity’s unique cultural identity.
 Pygmy peoples:
 In anthropology, pygmy peoples are ethnic groups whose average
height is unusually short. The term pygmyism is used to describe the
phenotype of endemic short stature for populations in which adult
men are on average less than 150 cm (4 ft 11 in) tall. The term is
primarily associated with the African Pygmies, the hunter-gatherers
of the Congo basin.
 Anthropometry:
 Anthropometry (from Greek anthropos, human and ‘measure) refers
to the measurement of the human individual. An early tool of physical
anthropology, it has been used for identification, for the purposes of
understanding human physical variation, in paleoanthropology and in
various attempts to correlate physical with racial and psychological
traits. Anthropometry involves the systematic measurement of the
 physical properties of the human body, primarily dimensional
descriptors of body size and shape.
 Mongolian spot:
 A Mongolian spot, also known as Mongolian blue spot, is a
congenital birthmark with wavy borders and irregular shape. It
normally disappears three to five years after birth. The most common
color is blue, although they can be blue-gray, blue-black or deep
brown. The spot is prevalent among East, South, Southeast, North
and Central Asian peoples, Indigenous Oceania’s (chiefly
Micronesians and Polynesians), Sub-Saharan Africans, Amerindians,
non-European Latin Americans, Caribbeans of mixed-race descent,
and Turkish people.

Racial Groups of India – Risley’s Classification

 Turko-Iranian – Both of these locations are currently in Pakistan.
Iranians-Turks People are tall and have a light skin tone.
 They have dark eyes and a small nose.
 Indo-Aryan – This ethnic group is mostly found in Punjab,
Rajasthan, and Kashmir.
 This group includes Rajputs, Khatris, and Jats. Long heads and big
noses characterise the majority of the population.
 They have a tall stature, a light complexion, and black eyes.
 Scytho-Dravidians – This race is a cross between Scythians and
Dravidians. They may be found in the states of Saurashtra, Coorg,
and Madhya Pradesh. Scythian people belong to the top layers,
whereas Dravidian people belong to the lower strata. They have a
large head, a nice nose, are of medium height, and have a fair
complexion.
 Arya – Dravidian – it is a hybrid of two races: Indo Aryan and
Dravidian. They are mostly found in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.
 Brahmins and other members of the upper castes are classified as
Aryans, whereas Harijans and other members of the lower castes are
classified as Dravidians.
 Their skin ranges from light brown to black, and they have a long
head.
 Dravidian-Mongol – This race is a cross of Dravidian and Mongolian
races. They are mostly concentrated in West Bengal and Orissa.
  This group includes Brahmins and Kshatriyas from these areas. This
racial type emerged as a consequence of the intermixture of
Mongolians and Dravidians, with some Indo-Aryan elements also
present.
 These folks are usually dark, have a round head, a medium nose,
and are of average height.
 Mongoloids – This race includes the tribal peoples of Assam and the
North-Eastern border.
 Dravidian – Dravidians are primarily found in South India and
Madhya Pradesh. Chotanagpur’s Santhals are an example of this
genre. Their skin is black, their eyes are dark, their head is long, and
their nose is big.

Racial Groups of India – J.H. Hutton Classification

 The first residents of India, according to Hutton, were most likely the
Negrito people, who have left little trace in India.
 The Proto-Australoid comes after them. Then there was an early
branch of the Mediterranean race that spoke an agglutinative
language that gave rise to the current Austro-Asian languages.
 These are attributed with a rudimentary understanding of agriculture
as well as a megalithic cult.
 Later waves of Mediterranean immigrants arrived from Eastern
Europe, bringing with them metalworking skills and the ability to build
city-states.
 The broad-headed features in India’s population, according to Hutton,
may be traced back to the Armenoid branch of the Alpine race.
 They communicated in a Dravidian dialect.
 Mongolians arrived from the east and made their way to the south. In
1500 B.C, the Indo–Aryan race arrived in India.
 According to Hutton, India’s population is made up of the following
races:
 Negrito
 Proto-Australoid
 Mediterranean
o East Mediterranean
o Mediterranean,
  Armenoid branch of Alpine
 Mongoloid
 Indo–Aryan.

RACIAL GROUPS IN INDIA

Introduction

 Our present day population is a conglomeration of people belonging to

different racial groups with different backgrounds
 These people entered India from different parts of the world, at different points
in time, adopting various land and water routes
 Almost all the major races of the world are visible in India, as a result of which
the country is said to have a varied and diverse ethnic composition

Racial groups, from which the present day population of the country has been derived

1. THE NEGRITOS
o According to the Geographers, these were the earliest occupants of
India
 Also, they have expressed their view that Negroid people
migrated to India from Africa and established their language on
the soil of India
o These features are met with particularly amongst the Andaman
islanders, the Uralis of Nilgiri Hills, Kadors of Kochi, Pullayans of Palni
Hills, etc.
 The tribes like the Angami Nagas in the North-East, and Badgis
in Rajmahal Hills in Jharkhand possess their traits
o The race is characterized by short stature, dark chocolate brown skin,
woolly hair, bulbous forehead, broad flat nose and slightly protruding
jaws
2. THE PROTO-AUSTRALOIDS
o These are believed to have come to India from the East Mediterranean
area(Palestine), soon after the Negritos
o Presently, they constitute the bulk of the population in many isolated
parts of central and southern India
o The Veddahs, Irulas and Sholagas are their true representatives
 The Bhils, Kols, Badagas, Korwas, Mundas, Bhumjis of the
highlands of the Central India and the Chenchus, Kurumbas,
Malayans and Yeruvas of South India may all be treated as their
representatives as well
o According to some Anthropologists, these people on their arrival
pushed, displaced and supplanted the Negritos to shift to more
inaccessible, remote and less hospitable areas, where they are found
even today
o In physical appearance, they more or less resemble the Negritos with
the exception of woolly hair
 Their other physical characteristics are bulbous forehead, broad
flat nose and slightly protruding jaws

3. THE MONGOLOID
o It is believed that China is the homeland of the Mongoloid race, from
where they were pushed southward into the Malaya Peninsula and
Indonesia
o They entered India through the passes in the northern and eastern
mountains
o Presently, they occupy large areas in Ladakh, Sikkim, Arunachal
Pradesh and other parts of East India
o Their physical characteristics include a round and broad head, face with
very high cheek bones and a long flat nose, with little or no hair on the
face and the body
o The tribes of Garo, Khasi, Jaintia, Lipchas, Chakmas, Naga belong to
this race

 They are further classified as:

o Paleo-Mongoloids– They were the first of the Mongoloids who came to
India. These people are settled mainly in the border areas of the
Himalayas. They are found mostly in Assam and the adjacent states
 o Tibeto-Mongoloids– These people came from Tibet and are settled
mainly in Bhutan, Sikkim, areas of north-western Himalayas and beyond
the Himalayas in which Ladakh and Baltistan are included.

4. THE MEDITERRANEANS
o This racial stock came to India from eastern Mediterranean region or
South West Asia
o They are believed to have migrated during the third and second
millennium BC
o Their physical characteristics include medium stature, dark skin and
long head
o In all probability, they first settled in North-western India and started
practicing agriculture there; post which they were pushed into central
and southern India by subsequent immigrants
o Presently, they form the bulk of population of south India and a
considerable proportion in northern India
o The Mediterranean were the chief architect of the Indus Valley
civilization as is evident from the excavations of Mohenjo Daro and
Harappa

5. THE BRACHYCEPHALS
o These are characterized by Broad heads
o Coorgis and Parsis are their representatives in India
o These are further sub-divided into three major groups:
 Alpinoids, who came to India along the route passing through
Baluchistan, Sind, Kathiawar, Gujarat, Maharashtra,, Karnataka
and Tamilnadu
 Dinarics, who followed the Ganga Valley and its delta as their
route to enter India
 Armenoids, who came through Chitral, Gilgit, Kashmir and
Nepal to enter India

6. THE NORDICS
o They spoke the Aryan language and migrated to India sometime during
the second millennium BC
o The main concentration of these people is in the north-western part of
the country
 They are a predominant type in Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan
o The main characteristics of this race are long head, fair complexion,
well developed nose and a well-built strong body.