Historical Definitions of Races in India - Great Races

Great Races

Scientific racism of the late 19th and early 20th centuries divided mankind into three "great races", Caucasoid (white), Mongoloid (yellow) and Negroid (black) in accordance with their own world-view.

The populations of the Indian subcontinent however were problematic to classify under this scheme. They were assumed to be a mixture of an indigenous "Dravidian race", tentatively with an "Australoid" grouping, with an intrusive Aryan race, identified as a sub-race to the Caucasoid race, but some authors also assumed Mongolic admixture, so that India, for the purposes of scientific racism, presented a complicated mixture of all major types.

Edgar Thurston identified a "Homo Dravida" who had more in common with the Australian aboriginals than their Indo-Aryan. As evidence, he adduced the use of the boomerang by Kallar and Maravar warriors and the proficiency at tree-climbing among both the Kadirs of the Anamalai hills and the Dayaks of Borneo.

The "Negroid" status of the Dravidians however remained disputed. In 1898, ethnographer Friedrich Ratzel remarked about the "Mongolian features" of "Dravidians", resulting in his "hypothesis of their close connection with the population of Tibet" whom he adds "Tibetans may be decidedly reckoned in the Mongol race" In 1899, a journal called "Science" summarized Ratzel's findings over India with, "India is for the author, a region where races have been broken up pulverized, kneaded by conquerors. Doubtless a pre-Dravidian negroid type came first, of low stature and mean physique, though these same are, in India, the result of poor social and economic conditions. Dravidians succeeded negroids, and there may have been Malay intrusions, but Australian affinities are denied. Then succeeded Aryan and Mongol, forming the present pot porri through conquest and blending."

In 1900, anthropologist Joseph Deniker said, "the Dravidian race is connected with both the Indonesian and Australian... the Dravidian race, which it would be better to call South Indian, is prevalent among the peoples of Southern India speaking the Dravidian tongues, and also among the Kols and other people of India... The Veddhas... come much nearer to the Dravidian type, which moreover also penetrates among the populations of India, even into the middle valley of the Ganges.". Deniker groups "Dravidians" as a "subrace" under the group of "Curly or Wavy Hair Dark Skin" in which he also includes the "Ethiopian" and "Australian". Also, Deniker mentions that the "Indian race has its typical representatives among the Afghans, the Rajputs, the Brahmins and most of North India but it has undergone numerous alterations as a consequence with crosses with Assyriod, Dravidian, Mongol, Turkish, Arab and other elements." His theories have been discarded by post-modern anthropologists.

According to Carleton S. Coon in his book The Races of Europe 1939, he classified the Dravidians as "Caucasoid" due to their "Caucasoid skull structure" and other physical traits such as noses, eyes and hair.