My thoughts on India - races of the world

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Everywhere I go, I watch people like an anthropologist doing research on racial origins. I do it instinctively as if programmed to do so. Here’s my report. The people in India are absolutely fascinating. I’ve seen people of all races on earth in India. There are Indians who look Arabic or Middle Eastern, East Asian/mongoloid, southern European/Mediterranean (olive skin, green or hazel eyes), African (minus the afro), Southeast Asian (especially the tribals but they’re related anyway), Polynesian, Aboriginal (Australia), Indigenous people in South America, hispanic, etc., etc. Near the end of my trip, I thought, well, I haven’t seen anyone who looks Scandinavian and just as I was thinking that, a guy walks on the train. He looked like a lightly-tanned Swede with sandy brown hair and very fine features. I thought he was a foreigner but he turned out to be a local of Uttar Pradesh. Great, my list was pretty complete. I’m talking about the facial features, of course, as there are no real afro or blond haired people in India. The list is easily explained. The moghuls (middle eastern) dominated India for a long time in history, the Mediterraneans have traded with the Malabar Coast since 1000 BC, and Africans migrated to Australasia through southern India. Tribes in south-western India have been genetically linked to Africans and some still practice rituals that originated in Africa. India borders China and I think the mixing resulted in all kinds of mixed looks such as hispanics and indigenous tribes. When I was in the mountain village north of Joshimath, everybody looked mixed and each looked as if she were of a different race. Just take the photos you have of Indians and use photoshop to change their skin colour and/or hair and you’ll see what I mean.

A side topic: some time after my 3 month stay in India, I learned that gypsies originally came from northwestern India (Rajasthan) where they still exist in the form of many different tribes. When I learned that, everything I experienced in northern India suddenly made total sense to me. Consider the Romani, their clothing, how they live, their purity laws, and their strict moral code but only within their own group. They rob or harm others outside of their group without hesitation because they have absolutely no obligation to anyone else except their own group. Most of the people in northern India were like that, at least that’s how I felt. (I’m talking about the lower castes but since most people are of lower castes, that would be most of the people in India.) If I just think to myself that I am in the land of the gypsies, then I would know exactly what to expect, how I should conduct myself, how to go about doing things, etc. It would have made things so much easier had I known that before I went to India.

From what I observed and learned about races, cultures, beliefs, gypsies, etc., my theory is that all the hominoids that walked out of Africa went to India first and then from there, dispersed to everywhere else in the world. I have much more on this topic but it’s well beyond the confines of a travelblog.

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