First of all, “South Asia” is a geographical term referring to the South Asian subcontinent comprising the modern nations of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Maldives, Nepal, and Afghanistan.
Irrespective of any claim you may be trying to allege about the ethnic/cultural/linguistic separateness of Pakistanis, it is undeniable that according to the standard meaning of words in English they are just as much “South Asians” as Indians are.
[QUOTE=Civilrighte]
I consider Pakistanis to be Middle Easterners, racially and culturally closer to countries like Iran than to South Asia.
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It’s the Muslim religion that is Middle Eastern in origin, as opposed to the indigenous South Asian religions of, e.g., Hinduism, Jainism and Sikhism.
But most Pakistanis, like most Indian Muslims, are descended at least in part from non-Muslim South Asian ancestors. (Moreover, the current population of Pakistan is largely composed of and/or descended from people who were living in (what is now) India less than a century ago, but who relocated during Partition.)
[QUOTE=Civilrighte]
Their biological race is more Middle Eastern.
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If you’re going to assert that, you need to back it up with a cite.
[QUOTE=Civilrighte]
While a few North Indians exist in Pakistan (and vice versa, many Arabs exist in South Asia), most Pakistanis are racially closer to Afghanis and Iranians. Genetically they are different to most other South Asians.
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Cite?
While there are many different ethnic groups in India, and it’s true that south Indians tend to be ethnically different from north Indians to varying extents, I know of no reason to claim that north Indians in general are substantially ethnically different from Pakistanis. We wouldn’t expect them to be, since as noted above, they mostly have the same ancestors.
[QUOTE=Civilrighte]
Their culture is very Middle Eastern too and even their language is written in Persian.
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The Urdu language is indeed written in Persian script, but it is essentially the same language as the Indian language Hindi, written in Nagari script. Urdu has more Persian vocabulary and Hindi has more Sanskrit vocabulary, but the spoken versions of Standard Urdu and Standard Hindi are the same.
In fact, many language programs outside of South Asia teach Hindi/Urdu as one language, and teach one or both scripts according to the needs of the students.
Finally, all of this artificial nationalist separatism seems to me inexcusably dismissive and exclusionary towards Indian Muslims. One out of seven Indians is Muslim. Indian Muslims (mostly) use Urdu in Persian script and (by definition) practice Islam. Saying that Islam and Urdu separate Pakistanis from Indians is tantamount to claiming that Muslim Indians aren’t “real” Indians.
