However, this article apparently uses a different, more anthropoligical or “racial” definition of “ethnic groups” – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_India:
Whether any of these can be considered a “stateless people” is highly debatable, fo course.
Clarification on my question, since it was asked: group with a “self- recognized ethnic identity,” i.e., if you ask them what they are, they’ll say “I’m a Czech” or “I’m a Rajasthani” living in a coherent area like the Basques or the Bengalis. Dispersed peoples like diasporic Jews and Romani aren’t what I was wondering about, nor are diffuse groupings like Dravidians and American Indians. And ethnically distinguishable people who are part of the main culture, like American Blacks or Copts in Egypt, are similarly not quite it. And the question was cultural, not “racial,” insofar as that distinction can be made.
Moreover In Iran they were/are something of a co-dominant minority. Not entirely ( there are disputes and complaints about excessive “Persianization” ), but quite a few Turks were members of the ruling class under the Shah, the whole interlinked group of families descended from the Qajar dynasty in particular. Historically Azerbaijan has almost always been in the Persian sphere and was frequently a dynastic powerbase for ruling Persia ( as with the early Safavids, Afshars and Qajars ).
India is a complicated one. It seems like every group, ethnic or otherwise, it agitating for independence somewhere. There is hardly a state without an independence movement or two. Secession is practically a national pass time.
And there are so many ways to divide people- language, religion, caste, class, race, tribe (all of which are intertwined in ways outsiders can probably never fully understand)- that choosing one to focus on seems to beyond the point. Chances are any given Indian is going to fall on the “under represented” side of at least one of thse.
In any case, India has a relatively weak central government and the states are broken up along language lines. While it’s not perfect and plenty of groups get screwed, it’s hard to claim that there is large scale oppression along the lines of the Kurds. Most oppressed groups are smaller and too remote to really be equivalent- remember, there are still people in India that have had no or minimal contact with the outside world.
Besides which, political power is the least of their concerns- they are mostly worried about keeping their land, surviving droughts and not being involved in stuff like forced sterilized. A lot of groups there are analogous to our own Indians, the Native Americans, and face the same issues, especially regarding being pushed off their own fertile and sustainable land and being given barren land in return. It’s facinating and sad and definitely worth learning more about.
Hmmm . . . so, hypothetically speaking*, if the Azeri regions of Iran were hived off and merged with the existing state of Azerbaijan – what would that state be like? And what would the remainder of Iran be like?
*Maybe not so hypothetically, either. If war ever comes between the U.S. and Iran, and if the U.S. wins, I would not be surprised if our government decides to weaken the defeated enemy, and serve the cause of “national liberation” at the same time, by stripping away all Iranian territory that is not historically and predominantly ethnich-Persian. That would include Iranian Kurdistan, Luristan, and Arabistan/Khuzestan/al-Ahwaz in the west, and Balochistan in the east, just for starters. BTW, one of Saddam Hussein’s pretexts for attacking Iran was to “liberate” the ethnic Arabs of (coincidentally oil-rich) Khuzestan; and there is an active Arabistan independence movement – see http://www.al-ahwaz.com/ (website is in Arabic, but you can see a map of the territory they claim). There’s a Balochi independence movement, too: http://www.balochvoice.com/
Surprisingly, that region is near Azerbaijan! But I think you’ll find ethnic Azeris spread throughout Iran, and trying to carve it up would be about as successful (and bloody) as what we saw in Yugoslavia.
The 20,000,000-25,000,000 Sikhs are more of a religious rather than a ethnic group. But they are a distinct group, they have a recognizable homeland, and there is an active independance movement.
I’d say that these racial classifications can’t be considered ethnic groups at all. It’s not even highly debatable. I’ve never met an Indian who claimed to be a Western Brachycephal or Austric. The ethnic groups in India are numerous and pretty well known. Most of them are along linguistic lines that are further subdivided along religious and caste lines. Tribal groups are separate ethnic groups. The most prominent group seeking independence is the Sikhs. Most agitating groups, however, are seeking their own states rather than independent countries, such as the Gurkhas (Nepalese-speaking Indians) in northern West Bengal.
So, the top two contenders are:
Sundanese: 35M (from the CIA FactBook)
Kurds: 20M - 40M (depending on whom you believe)
Should we call it a draw? Kurdish websites claim the higher numnber, but I couldn’t calculate the exact number given in the CIA FactBook because that reference lumps the Kurdish population figures in some countries together with other minorities.
