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Are Indians asian or Middle-Eastern ? Or both ?
Hi - when I was studying in the uk it was common practice to refer to Indians and Pakistanis as asian . But in the usa ive often heard the term being applied mainly to Chinese , Japanese , and Korean rather than Pakistani or Indian.
Question is therefore would we more correctly refer to ourselves, and see ourselves more as middle-eastern rather than asian ?
Part of the seeming confusion might indeed arise from the fact that we have a large spectrum of appearances and cultures in the Indian ethnicity and diaspora .
In the western part of India . Indeed even in the south ( Kerala ) people look more Arabian and in the far north eg Kashmir and Punjab we even resemble the various Turkish nationalities
In the eastern half , in the north there is obvious Mongolian influence and in the south , once could easily see Austroloid influence
Bearing in mind the great barriers of the Himalayan mountains and the Karakorums between India and china, it seems plausible that interaction between India and china would have been sparse but looking westward, there were no such huge physical barriers , so interaction with the Iranian and arab peoples would have been very much more . Indeed in the state of kerela , many communities trace their origin to the land of Syria where they are believed to have migrated from .
My take is that we are therefore a little bit of a mixed bag - ethnically and culturally and my summary inference is that we are much closer to the middle east but politically and economically we might be more " asian "
In support of this "dual nature" we can look at countries which span two worlds - eg Russia - both European and mongolian-asian , turkey which is both Islamic in culture but european (mostly ) in ethnicity , Kazakhstan which is culturally mostly leaning towards Russian but ethnically mongolian , perhaps morocco, which is culturally Islamic but linguistically rather French and Lebanon which is quite a mixture of a nation too , being linguistically mostly French and culturally a middle eastern melting pot "¦. ( you may have some arguments about the details of those examples but surely we can agree that there is such a thing as a duality of nature - which is the main point I was making )
One major argument in favour of labelling us Indian as middle-eastern would be that the "west", that is in particular NATO, would now have a substantial friend in the middle-east , a huge region where without India they might have no real ally ( also taking into account the hot and cold relations they are having with pak ), barring tiny Israel ( which is insufficient for such a huge region - the middle -east )
So there we have it, my take ;- ethnically and culturally, the cultural media , cusine-wise we ( especially much more so in the western and northern half of India, the majority by far ) are middle-eastern, "¦.. politically and economically we are asian .
Yes ?
Hi - when I was studying in the uk it was common practice to refer to Indians and Pakistanis as asian . But in the usa ive often heard the term being applied mainly to Chinese , Japanese , and Korean rather than Pakistani or Indian.
Question is therefore would we more correctly refer to ourselves, and see ourselves more as middle-eastern rather than asian ?
Part of the seeming confusion might indeed arise from the fact that we have a large spectrum of appearances and cultures in the Indian ethnicity and diaspora .
In the western part of India . Indeed even in the south ( Kerala ) people look more Arabian and in the far north eg Kashmir and Punjab we even resemble the various Turkish nationalities
In the eastern half , in the north there is obvious Mongolian influence and in the south , once could easily see Austroloid influence
Bearing in mind the great barriers of the Himalayan mountains and the Karakorums between India and china, it seems plausible that interaction between India and china would have been sparse but looking westward, there were no such huge physical barriers , so interaction with the Iranian and arab peoples would have been very much more . Indeed in the state of kerela , many communities trace their origin to the land of Syria where they are believed to have migrated from .
My take is that we are therefore a little bit of a mixed bag - ethnically and culturally and my summary inference is that we are much closer to the middle east but politically and economically we might be more " asian "
In support of this "dual nature" we can look at countries which span two worlds - eg Russia - both European and mongolian-asian , turkey which is both Islamic in culture but european (mostly ) in ethnicity , Kazakhstan which is culturally mostly leaning towards Russian but ethnically mongolian , perhaps morocco, which is culturally Islamic but linguistically rather French and Lebanon which is quite a mixture of a nation too , being linguistically mostly French and culturally a middle eastern melting pot "¦. ( you may have some arguments about the details of those examples but surely we can agree that there is such a thing as a duality of nature - which is the main point I was making )
One major argument in favour of labelling us Indian as middle-eastern would be that the "west", that is in particular NATO, would now have a substantial friend in the middle-east , a huge region where without India they might have no real ally ( also taking into account the hot and cold relations they are having with pak ), barring tiny Israel ( which is insufficient for such a huge region - the middle -east )
So there we have it, my take ;- ethnically and culturally, the cultural media , cusine-wise we ( especially much more so in the western and northern half of India, the majority by far ) are middle-eastern, "¦.. politically and economically we are asian .
Yes ?
