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Dravidian people refers to populations who speak languages belonging to the Dravidian language family. Populations of speakers are found mostly in Southern India and some minor populations are found in pockets of Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal.

Concept of the Dravidian people

The term Dravidian is taken from the Sanskrit term Dravida. It was adopted following the publication of Robert Caldwell's Comparative grammar of the Dravidian or South-Indian family of languages (1856); a publication which established the language grouping as one of the major language groups of the world.

However over seventy three languages are presently listed as Dravidian in the study. Further the languages are spread out and cover parts of India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka as is indicated in the study.

Racial classifications

Classical anthropologists have long debated the racial classification of Indians, in particular Dravidians. One scheme labeled Dravidians as the Australoid or Veddoid race in about the 40 human races in that system.

Since skin color is subject to strong selective pressure, similar skin colors can result from convergent adaptation rather than from genetic relatedness. Skin color of Dravidians (people who are native speakers of Dravidian languages) can range from very dark brown to almost white skin. Sub-Saharan Africans, populations from India, and Indigenous Australians have similar skin pigmentation, but genetically they are no more similar than are other widely separated groups. Furthermore, in some parts of the world in which people from different regions have mixed extensively, the connection between skin color and ancestry has been substantially weakened (Parra et al. 2004).

However Richard McCulloch (who advocated Racial separatism) said that only the people of Central India belong to the Dravidic race while the South Indians are Veddoid.

Genetic classifications

The genetic views on race differ in their classification of Dravidians. Most modern anthropologists, however, reject the genetic existence of race, like Richard Lewontin who states that "every human genome differs from every other", showing the impossibility of using genetics to define races. (Biology as Ideology, page 68). According to population geneticist L.L. Cavalli-Sforza of Stanford, whose work was done in the 1980s almost all Indians are genetically similar to Caucasian, but Lewontin rejects the label Caucasian. Cavalli-Sforza found that Indians are about three times closer to West Europeans than to East Asians. Dr. Eduardas Valaitis, in 2006, found that India is genetically closest to East and Southeast Asians with little genetic similarity to Europeans; that said he also found that India could be considered very distinct from other regions. Genetic anthropologist Stanley Marion Garn considered in the 1960s that the entirety of the Indian Subcontinent to be a "race" genetically distinct from other populations. Others, such as Lynn B. Jorde and Stephen P. Wooding, claim South Indians are genetic intermediaries between Europeans and East Asians.

Recent studies of the distribution of alleles on the Y chromosome, microsatellite DNA, and mitochondrial DNA in India have cast overwhelmingly strong doubt for a biological Dravidian "race" distinct from non-Dravidians in the Indian subcontinent.

This doubtfulness applies to both paternal and maternal descent; however, it does not preclude the possibility of distinctive South Indian ancestries associated with Dravidian languages.

Linguistic classifications

The best known Dravidian languages are: Tamil (தமிழ்),Kannada (ಕನ್ನಡ), Malayalam (മലയാളം), Telugu (తెలుగు), and Tulu (ತುಳು). Notably one Dravidian language, Brahui (بروہی), is spoken in Pakistan and minor tribal languages are used in Nepal and Bangladesh, perhaps hinting at the language family's wider distribution prior to the spread of the Indo-Aryan languages, though relatively recent migrations of populations have also been proposed.

Early arrival theory

Kamil V. Zvelebil has suggested that the proto-Dravidians of the Indian subcontinent arrived from the Middle East, and may have been related to the Elamites, whose language some propose be categorized along with the Dravidian languages as part of a larger Elamo-Dravidian language family. However, S.A. Starostin has disputed the existence of an Elamo-Dravidian language family.

According to a view put forward by geneticist Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza in the book The History and Geography of Human Genes, the Dravidians were preceded in the subcontinent by an Austro-Asiatic people, and followed by Indo-European-speaking migrants sometime later. The original inhabitants may be identified with the speakers of the Munda languages, which are unrelated to either Indo-Aryan or Dravidian languages. However, the Munda languages, as a subgroup of the larger Austro-Asiatic language family, are known to have arrived in the Indian subcontinent from the east, possibly from the area that is now southwestern China, so any genetic similarity between the present-day speakers of the Munda languages and the "original inhabitants" of India is likely to be due to assimilation of the natives by Southeast Asian immigrants speaking a proto-Munda language.

Some linguists believe that Dravidian-speaking people were spread throughout the Indian subcontinent before the Aryans settled there. In this view the early Indus Valley civilization (Harappa and Mohenjo Daro) is often identified as having been Dravidian. According to them it is now considered likely that the collapse of Indus Valley civilization was caused by environmental change (drought) which then encouraged the migration of the nomadic Indo-Aryans into the area. In that perspective it is therefore more likely that the Dravidian speakers of South India were already living in the region and were merely one of the groups little affected by the initial Indo-Aryan migration.

Late arrival theory

Some scholars like J. Bloch and M. Witzel believe that the Dravidians moved into an already Indo-Aryan speaking area after the oldest parts of the Rig Veda were already composed (see Bryant 2001: chapter 5)

This theory might be supported if a higher antiquity of the Indo-Aryan languages could be established. However, since this theory is mainly a linguistic hypothesis, the Dravidian influence on Aryan languages must not necessarily be equated to a movement of populations.

Prominent Dravidian linguistic groups

• Brahui : Brahuis belong to North-Dravidian linguistic family. They are found in Balochistan province of Pakistan.
• Gonds: A prominent group of Dravidian speaking Tribal people the Central region of India.
• Kannadiga : These people belong to South-Dravidian language family. Mostly found in Karnataka , Tamil nadu and Maharashtra.
• Kurukh : These people belong to North-Dravidian family. Found in India and Bangladesh. It is the only language indigenous in Bangladesh.
• Malayali : The people of Kerala belong to South-Dravidian linguistic family.
• Tamil : These people belong to South-Dravidian linguistic family. Mostly found in Tamil Nadu, Sri Lanka, Singapore and Malaysia.
• Telugu : These people belong to Central-Dravidian linguistic family. Mostly found in Andhra Pradesh also in Orissa and Tamil Nadu.

Geographic distribution

Political ramifications

The concept of a Dravidian race has affected thinking in India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh about racial and regional differences.

India

Some Indians believe that the British Raj exaggerated differences between northern and southern Indians beyond linguistic differences to help sustain their control of India. The British Raj ended in 1947, yet all discussion of Aryan or Dravidian "races" remains highly controversial in India. It is now widely believed that the British only used this as their 'Divide and rule' blueprint for taking over the region.The British also used this "theory" of perceived differences between so-called "Aryans" and "Dravidians" to propagate racist beliefs concerning the inherent "inferiority" of the Dravidians when compared to the "Aryans", thus justifying their colonization of South Asia (since the British identified themselves as "Aryans")

It has also informed aspects of radical politics (e.g. Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, DK, AIADMK, VC, etc.) in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu nationalistic politics, which has at times appropriated the claim that Dravidians are the earliest inhabitants of India in order to argue that other populations such as the locally or ritually dominant were oppressive interlopers from which the Dravidians should liberate themselves.

Sri Lanka

In Sri Lanka, the current ethnic conflict and the civil war are further complicated by the view that the majority Sinhalese and minority Tamils belong to two different ethnic and linguistic families. Sinhalese (like Dhivehi) is an Indo-Aryan language that exists in the southern part of South Asia.

See also

• Vedic culture in South India The prevalence of Vedic cultural influence in South India
• Burusho: Burushos are a prominent non Dravidian and non Aryan speaking group found in Northern Areas of Kashmir.
• Dravida - The Sanskrit term for South Indians specifically Tamils
• Aryan - For self description of Proto-Indo-Iranian people
• Aryan race - Discussion about the concept of Aryan race
• Race - Discussion about the concept of race

External links

• Dolmens, Hero Stones and the Dravidian People
• Harappa.com Glimpses of South Asia before 1947
• Peoples and Languages in pre-Islamic Indus valley
• India and Egypt

References

1. World Haplogroup Maps
3. Bindon, Jim. University of Alabama. Department of Anthropology. August 23, 2006. <http://www.as.ua.edu/ant/bindon/ant275/presentations/POST_WWII.PDF#search=%22stanley%20marion%20garn%22>.
4. Lewontin, R.C. Biology as Ideology The Doctrine of DNA. Ontario: HarperPerennial, 1991.
5. Robert Jurmain, Lynn Kilgore, Wenda Trevathan, and Harry Nelson. Introduction to Physical Anthropology. 9th ed. (Canada: Thompson Learning, 2003)
6. Valaitis, E., Martin, L. DNA Tribes. 2006. January 22, 2007.
7. Garn SM. Coon. On the Number of Races of Mankind. In Garn S, editor. Readings on race. Springfield C.C. Thomas.
8. Robert Jurmain, Lynn Kilgore, Wenda Trevathan, and Harry Nelson. Introduction to Physical Anthropology. 9th ed. (Canada: Thompson Learning, 2003)
9. Jorde, Lynn B Wooding, Stephen P. Nature Genetics. Department of Human Genetics. 2004. <http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v36/n11s/full/ng1435.html>.
10. Bamshad, M.J. et al. Human population genetic structure and inference of group membership. Am. J. Hum. Genet. 72, 578−589 (2003).
11. Rosenberg, N.A. et al. Genetic structure of human populations. Science 298, 2381−2385 (2002).
12. Entrex PubMed: A prehistory of Indian Y chromosomes: evaluating demic diffusion scenarios
13. Entrez PubMed: Polarity and temporality of high-resolution y-chromosome distributions in India identify both indigenous and exogenous expansions and reveal minor genetic influence of central asian pastoralists
14. Entrez PubMed: Human mtDNA hypervariable regions, HVR I and II, hint at deep common maternal founder and subsequent maternal gene flow in Indian population groups
15. Sitalaximi, T "Microsatellite Diversity among Three Endogamous Tamil Populations Suggests Their Origin from a Separate Dravidian Genetic Pool" Human Biology - Volume 75, Number 5, October 2003, pp. 673-685
16. Zvelebil, Kamil V. 1974. "Dravidian and Elamite - A Real Break-Through?", Journal of the American Oriental Society 94.3 (July-Sept.): 384-5.
17. Nelson, Robin (2003). Antinomies of Modernity: Essays on Race, Orient, Nation. Duke University Press. pp. 37–38. ISBN 0822330466.
18. van der Veer, Peter. Conversion to modernities: The Globalization of Christianity. Routledge (UK). p. 130. ISBN 0415912733.

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