Negroids & Shudras, North-south

[Yashwant Malaiya]

1. The siddis or shidis loving in the coastal areas of
Sindh, Maharastra and Konkana are of Negro descent. Since
some of them are Hindu, and since they are concentrated in
coastal areas, suggests that not all of them were brought
as slaves during the Muslim period. They could have
arrived as traders etc.

They are physically quite distinct and have nothing to do with
Dravidians.


2. Who is a shudra? There are 4 points of view.

a. By traditional view (as expressed in BrahmaNotpatti-
maartNDa and Jaati-bhaaskara) all those who do not tradionally
go through the upveet ceremony are shudra. By this, about
80-90% of the population of India is shudra.

b. There is an extreme view that at the present time there
are only Brahmins and the rest are Shudras. This view is not
without some historical justification.

c. By liberal view, all those in "clean" occupations are
not shudra. This view would thus accept zamindars as
Kshatriyas and all traders as vaishyas.

d. One view, that I take, is that the 4-fold division
ceased to be of any applicability quite some time ago,
and thus all, to some extent, are Shudra (and of the
other 3 varnas).


3. Are shudras generally darker skinned? Not necessarily.
Some quite "high" castes tend to be darker. Rajputs
of noble blood are often darker. Members of some
quite "high" merchant castes are darker skinned.
A few very light skinned castes are shudras, at least
according to the traditional criterion. A lot of
brahmins can be quite dark.

If there is an average "shudra" racial type, it would
not be different from an average Indian racial type.

North South divide: Dakshinapatha or the Dravida country
included modern Gujarat and Maharashtra. Thus the Gujarati and
Marathi brahmins are among the "panch-dravida". Orissa
is tradionally considered North.

Incidentally the old Gurjara country, now in Rajasthan,
is not considered Dravida.

Yashwant