Indid race

The Indid race was a supposed sub-race of Hindi people in the context of a now-outdated model of dividing humanity into different races which was developed originally by Europeans in support of colonialism. In 19th and early 20th century anthropological literature, the Indid type was classified as belonging to the Mediterranean type of the greater Caucasoid race.

Physiognomy
American anthropologist Carleton S. Coon described the Indid race as occupying the Indian subcontinent, beginning from the Khyber Pass. Coon wrote that "India is the easternmost outpost of the Caucasian racial region". Indologists, such as those of the All-India Oriental Conference of 1941, described the Indid type as having a standard set of features:

The Royal Society of Letters at Lund likewise stated in 1946 that the Indid type possessed a narrow forehead and large eye sockets. John Montgomery Cooper, an American ethnologist and Roman Catholic priest, on 26 April 1945 in a hearing before the United States Senate "To Permit all people from India residing in the United States to be Naturalized" recorded:

German physical anthropologist Egon Freiherr von Eickstedt (1892–1965) proposed two subdivisions of the Indid race: (1) the North Indid type, which he stated was typified by people such as the Todas of the Nilgiri Mountains and Rajputs from Rajasthan; and (2) the Gracile Indid type, which he stated was represented by people such as the Bengalis. The Romani people, being among the oldest members of the Indian diaspora, were classified as being of the Indid type.

The theory propounded by German comparative philologists during the 1840s and 1850s "maintained that the speakers of Indo-European languages in India, Persia, and Europe were of the same culture and race". This resulted in a distinction between the majority Hindi belt of northern India and the less populous speakers of Dravidian languages, located mostly in southern India with areas outlying in Baluchistan in the northwest and in the eastern corner of the Bihar Province. Notwithstanding, Dravidians came to be classified as belonging to the Caucasian race by 19th and 20th-century anthropologists.