Expert: Jennifer - 7/10/2006

Question
Please tell me whts the Ethnicity of Indians... They are not essentianlly Asians... so r they Asian Indians in Ethnicity or just INDIANS?

Answer
Firstly, I must apologize for my late reply. I was away at the 37th Internationl Physics Olympiad and did not have access to a computer for 10 days.

With regards to your question, ethnicity refers to a way of classifying people in society according to their distinctive cultural traits. It is more specific than race. For example, the ethnicity of Indians can be Punjabi, Hindi, Bangali, Sikh etc. Indians are Indians if you classify them by race, irregardless of where they reside. But their ethnic group may be different - Punjabi, Hindi, Bangali, Sikh etc.

One of the first few civilisation of the world is the Indus Civilisation, centred around the Indus river which is now in Pakistan. Indians have their root from that civilisation, and the majority of them now reside in India, so an Indian who stay in India or anywhere else in Asia would identify themselves as Indian and Asian. However, if he grew up in a Western country, for example the United States, then he will identify themselves as Indian, not not necessarily as an Asian.