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Classification of Social Races in India!
No Agreement:
The word ‘race’ has been used as a system for classifying people according to certain physical characteristics. Members of social groups differ with respect to pigmentation, hair form and other observable differences. Anthropologists have suggested numerous schemes of classification which differ widely from each other.
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Linnaeus and Cuvier divided the human group into three races. Heakel established thirty-four races. Sir Arthur Keith has divided human race into four classes. In recent years, G. Elliot Smith divided mankind into six races. Sergi divided mankind into Eurafrican and Eurasian races.
Some anthropologists adopt the scheme suggested by Huxley in 1870 giving five principal types i.e., Negroid, Australoid, Mongoloid, Xanthochroid and Melanochroid, while others use a four-fold division into Caucasian, Mongol, Negro, Australian, and sub-divide the Caucasian into Nordic, Alpine and Mediterranean.
Genealogical Classification:
Thus, here is no agreement among the anthropologists as to how races should be classified. Due to want of proper technique and conception of race there have been as many classifications of races as there are writers on the subject. Denikar understands by race a group of characters actually found in combination in existing populations. Ripley, on the other hand, is concerned to find ideal types supposed to have once existed in pure form.
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Many writers regard the attempt to build up genealogical schemes giving the affinities on the various races to each, other as hopeless. Thus, Eugen Fischer, Matiegka and Martan abandoned the attempt at genealogical classification. Dr. Haddon, therefore, says clearly that his classification “is not a classification as that word is understood by zoological and botanical systematists as it includes geographical consideration.” “A race type exists mainly in our minds,” and on another page he observes “one might almost say the impossibility of the task of framing a consistent classification of mankind.”
No Pure Race. The difficulty with the physical anthropologists is that individuals rarely exhibit all the characteristics of the type to which they belong. The concept of race is not precise, and it cannot be made so. Man has continuously migrated, tribes and nations have marched and counter-marched over the face of the globe, people have mated with strangers so that hybridization has become universal.
The racial traits are now widely mixed in the various groups of mankind, and one may wonder whether there was any pure race in history. Dunn and Dobzhansky write, “Race mixture has been on during the whole of recorded history. Incontrovertible evidence from studies on fossil human remains shows that even in prehistory, at the very dawn of humanity, mixing of different stocks (at least occasionally) took place.
Mankind has always been and still is a mongrel lot.” The mass of people in Britain, according to Professor Fleure, is betwixt and between neither fully the one nor fully the other. On account of this fact of race mixture, it becomes difficult to arrive at any agreed scheme of classification.
An important point to realize about racial classifications is that they do not correlate with either social structure or culture patterns. High cheekbones show some relationship to reddish brown skin: brown-black hair is associated with brown-black skin.
But none of these is associated with intelligence, or a caste structure, or musical ability, or a belief in God, or the practice of polygyny or anything else except each other. The inherited physical characteristics on the basis of which races are classified are not correlated with social behaviour.
Further, many classifications have been mischievous rather than helpful because they have encouraged men to assume that some races are mentally superior to others, and that there is a correlation of physical traits with intelligence. As we shall see later on such assumption of correlation is frequently incorrect. However, it does not mean that there should be no attempts to classify mankind on the basis of physical traits.
Three Main Races:
The classification of races into Negroes, Mongoloid, and Caucasians seems to have been largely accepted. Although there are no clear-cut lines separating them, there being considerable overlapping, each stock is marked by certain characteristics which are more or less common to all its members.
The Negroes, with their black skin, projecting jaws, broad nose and curly hair include the Melanesians, who have a lighter skin and slightly different nose from the Negro group. The Mongoloid or yellow race has lighter skin, prominent cheek bones, olive-shaped eyes and straight black hair. In this group American Indians are included. Some anthropologists regard Whites as a separate race, while others consider them an offshoot of the Mongoloid race. The Caucasians overlap with other races.
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Each of these three racial divisions may further be divided into sub-races, though there is no consensus of opinion as to just what these sub-races should be. Nordic, Mediterranean, Alpine, Hindus etc. are considered to be sub-races of Caucasians.
Races in India According to Sir Herbert Risley, India has seven racial types:
(i) Pre-Dravidian type surviving among primitive tribes of the hills and jungles, such as Bhils.
(ii) The Dravidian type living in the Southern peninsula upto the Gangetic valley.
(iii) The Indo-Aryan type of Kashmir, Punjab and Rajputana.
(iv) The Aryo-Dravidian type in the Gangetic valley.
(v) The Cytho-Dravidian type running east of Indus.
(vi) The Mongoloid type found in Assam and the foot hills of the eastern Himalayas.
According to J.H. Hutton, the Negrito races were probably the original occupants of India. Negritos were followed by the Protoaustraloids whose ancestors could be traced to Palestine. Next came Mediterranean race, who gave the Austroasiatic languages. By the end of the 4th millennium B.C. the Alpine race entered into India. Finally, about 1500 B.C. the Indo-Aiyan race entered India.