Asia is a big place with a lot of people. Is it really polite to clump them all together and call them all Asian? Is there anyway to differentiate between the different people living in and around India, I’m sure its insulting to someone from Pakistan to call them Indian. And what about the people from the North/north east direction and those from the south and south west? They’re all different physically (can’t really phrase this well without sounding either stupid or racist.) At uni’ there are so many different people from Asia it gets difficult to get across who it is you’re talking about if you don’t know their names.
Short answers.
No.
Yes.
Yes.
For longer answers, start here: http://www.google.com
Use words like “Asia”, “India”, “sub-continent”, “Pakistan”, “Bangla Desh”, “history”, “geography”, “division”, “race”, “racial”, “heritage”, “religion”, etc.
Happy browsing! 
Or go down to the library and check out a book on the history of India.
Just to disagree with DDG a little.
Sometimes. It’s no more impolite than calling people who live in Europe Europeans. OTOH, if you’re doing with the attitude of “all Asians are the same,” then yes, it’s insulting.
Slightly different issue. That’s like calling someone from Germany an Italian – it’s just plain incorrect.
That’s why I prefer to use names.
In the UK, it’s generally understood that when you say ‘Asian’ you mean someone from the Indian subcontinent.
If you really want to find out what part of India or Pakistan or Bangladesh a person’s family originally comes from, you could just ask them.
Like JeffB says, it’s best to find out names and use them. If not, then there’s always clothing. “That tall bloke who wears a red puffa jacket” is more likely to identify yer man than “That tall Asian bloke”
Most Pakistanis will want to skewer and grill me like a kabâb for saying this, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s a fact:
Pakistanis are Indian. So are Bangladesh people.
“Indian” in the sense of belonging to historical India, of having the cultural and geographical background of India. This is the sense of “Indian” used in the book India of One Thousand and One Nights by Roland & Sabrina Michaud, where their focus was on cultural continuity, not politics. So much of important Indian cultural heritage like the Indus Valley civilization and the ancient University of Taxila were located in what is now Pakistan.
If Pakistanis aren’t Indian, why do they have an Indian language (Urdu) as the official language? Urdu is not native to Pakistan at all. It comes from India and is still the native language of most Indian Muslims.
To answer the OP, there is a neutral term that covers Bhâratis, Pakistanis, and Bangladeshis all together: South Asian. It also includes Sri Lanka, Maldives, Nepal, and Bhutan. Sometimes you hear the term “Subcontinental” but that is a clumsy polysyllable and I don’t like to use it. “South Asian” just sounds better.
By saying Pakistanis are “Indian” I of course don’t mean to imply that they belong to the current Republic of India, officially known as Bhârat. But people will take it the wrong way because of confusing these two senses of the word. The present political borders are very recent in the history of India which goes back several thousand years, and will not last forever. I take the long view.
Tansu, where abouts in the UK are you from? Where I live, saying someone is Asian implies they come from Asia. To me, asking someone where they’re from isn’t something that’s offensive. Just ask where they’re from, and go from there. Would you be offended if asked if you were German, if you came from Austria? I hope not. I go with Jeff B on the Asian thing. If you’re from Asia, you’re Asian - and that includes people who live in, say Siberia. Don’t be too worried about being politically correct - its all a waste of time, I reckon…
Hate to disagree with someone who’s backing me up, but it would not help me to say “that tall bloke who wears a red puffa jacket” because I have no idea what a “puffa jacket” is.
The extensional or etic* semantics of “Asian” is clear enough: it simply means from the continent of Asia. Dictionary definition.
But it’s the intensional or emic* semantics that people really pay attention to and get confused about. That depends on your cultural/historical context.
For the British, their approach to the Asian continent was mainly through colonizing India (they also played many intrigues in Iran). When the British use the word “Asian” unmarked, the first thing that comes to their minds is the Indian subcontinent. Also Iran, Afghanistan, and Great Game territory. Let’s call this Asian[sub]1[/sub]. I read a travel book by one English journalist who got off the plane in Tehran and called dust and animal dung the “smell of Asia”. He was thinking of Asia[sub]1[/sub]. The Indian and Pakistanis in America use “Asian” to mean ‘subcontinental’ leading to confusion.
For the Americans, no routes led direct to India. American experience with Asia all came about from westward expansion to California then across the Pacific to China & Japan (and eventually Philippines, Korea, Vietnam). The American mind’s imprint of “Asian” inevitably comprises chopsticks and people with conical straw hats in rice paddies. We can call this Asian[sub]2[/sub].
For the ancient Greeks, “Asian” basically meant Anatolia (what we now call Turkey) and Syria. The name Anatolia came from ancient Greek for ‘Land of the Rising Sun’. Asian[sub]3[/sub]?
And yet all of these added together (Asian[sub]1+2+3[/sub]) still do not cover the full extension of “Asia”. There’s all of Siberia (from the Ob-Ugric peoples of the Ural Mountains, to the Chukchi and Eskimo), and Israel, and the Arabian Peninsula. They’re Asian too, but nobody thinks of them that way. Asian[sub]0[/sub].
The term Oriental (which was deconstructed so well by Edward Said that it is now definitely not politically correct) has had a similar semantic intension as Asian. For Brits, “Oriental” conjures up images of India and the Middle East, while for Americans it’s inevitably chopstick-land. When I was a kid in the 60s, the commercials for Northwest Orient Airlines conditioned this association in our brains. You heard the words “Northwest Orient” chanted to a quasi-“Chinese” tune, then the sound of a big Chinese gong.
For the French, thanks to their colonial experience, Oriental came to imply the Middle East and North Africa. For the French to refer to Morocco as “Oriental” is really geographically bizarre, since Morocco lies to the west of France!
[sub]*Emic interprets events according to their particular cultural function, while etic characterizes events only by spatio-temporal criteria.[/sub]
I have an Indian internet chat friend living in Essex, England. She considers herself to be Asian. And technically, she’d be correct. The Indian subcontinent is part of Asia.
I suspect that this has a lot to do with the fact that there is a large Indian population in that part of the UK, so there is a logical “claim” by the Indians on the word “asian”. Here in Australia, however, we have a small Indian population, and a large Chinese and Vietnamese population, so to the average Australian, the word “Asian” means “East Asian”, and Indians are, well… Indians.
I disagree with the notion that you should avoid using these words when describing somebody. That is oversensitivity to the point of impeding everyday life.
A crime is committed. The suspects are an Indian guy in a wheelchair, an Polynesian woman, and a very fair Norwegian. When the cops ask you what you saw, are you going to say, “Uh… the person was… uh… wearing a…um…hat.” Utterly ridiculous, since, the racial/ethnic terms in question are in no way derogatory. Anyway, it’s covered here.
As Malcolm X pointed out, Europe is just a peninsula of Asia. Look at a world map, it’s obvious.
That reminds me of the strangest use of the word “Asian” I ever heard. According to Master W. D. Fard, America’s so-called Negroes are really “Asian.” Huh? I never got that one, either.
Something brilliant once said by Charles de Gaulle:
“China is a big country, inhabited by many Chinese.”:rolleyes:
Pakistani and Bangladeshi people are “Indian” in the same sense that Canadians are “American”. It may be true in a broader historical or geographical context, but it’s not tactful to lump Indians and Pakistanis together as a single group. Bear in mind that the the two coutries were actively at war as recently as the 1970s and there is stil a certain amount of friction over Kashmir.
Both “India” and “Bhârat” are recognised as official names in the 1949 Constitution, unless they’ve amended it recently.
Bully for you, but don’t be surprised if you cause offence by lumping the citizens of three independent countries together. (You’ll find you have trouble understanding the cricket commentary as well.)
Analogy: That part of the Island of Ireland which now constitutes Eire (officially known as Ireland, in the English language) was part of Great Britain for hundreds of years before it achieved independence in 1921. For how much longer should we continue to refer to citizens of the Republic of Ireland as “British”? Perhaps some of the Irish dopers have a view? May we insist on calling them “Irish” once Ireland has been independent for as long as it was part of Britain?
I think that most Brits (officially known as Britons) would understand “oriental” to refer to East Asia and, as Tansu said, “Asian” to refer either to the Continent as a whole, or to the Indian Subcontinent, depending on the context.
British Asians often use the term “Continental” to describe the Subcontinent. This can be confusing, since most non-Asian Britons generally use the term to refer to mainland Europe. The average Continental grocer is more likely to sell garam masala and ghee than chorizo and camembert.
So do I - I didn’t mean to suggest otherwise.
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A crime is committed. The suspects are an Indian guy in a wheelchair, an Polynesian woman, and a very fair Norwegian. When the cops ask you what you saw, are you going to say, “Uh… the person was… uh… wearing a…um…hat.” Utterly ridiculous, since, the racial/ethnic terms in question are in no way derogatory**
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Absolutely. The point I was trying to make is that our OP goes to university with loads of Asian students. There might be several tall Asian blokes in the student bar, and our OP is trying to point one of them out to his/her mate. If only one of them is wearing a red puffa jacket (padded jacket - looks a bit like a sleeping bag), then that’ll identify him. ‘Tall Asian bloke in a puffa jacket’ or ‘tall bloke in a red puffa jacket’ is more useful than ‘that tall Asian bloke over there - no, not him - no, not him - yeah, him’
I should have made it a lot clearer, sorry.
Joachim Piper: yes, asking someone where they’re from is exactly what I suggested.
Another interesting point to consider is…
People in Eastern-Russia are MUCH different thatn people in Western-Russia. I mean REALLY different. They are Europeans in the Western part, but look at the south-eastern. That is right next to Korea, man, they are Asians! Wow…
Me too. I’m only thinking about the people you meet once or twice out of the 18000 odd people in and around the university.
I think maybe I was dwelling on the Indian subject too much. I just wanted to know how to politely refer to the different races in Asia, which, where I come from , implies all of the continent and not just the subcontinent of India.
I only ask because it seems to be an area some people get very hot under the collar about these days.
False analogy. What is now Pakistan was the original India, the very first place the name “India” ever applied to. What is now Pakistan had been India continually throughout several thousand years and only very recently became another political entity. Ireland had been politically, culturally, and ethnically separate from Britain from the earliest times, and though its period of colonization was awfully long, that was just a temporary episode out of its thousands of years of history.
I already noted the current political divisions of the Indian subcontinent, but for Pakistanis to ignore their Indian heritage leaves them a people without any background, without any historical depth, as though the country had just dropped out of the sky in 1947. To deny where they’ve come from for political reasons is ideology, not reality. They have the archeology of five thousand years of India in their soil. This is not something foreign imposed on them. It’s where they came from. It’s like the insistence (for political reasons) that Urdu and Hindi are two different languages. Anyone can see that they’re one and the same language, used two different ways.
I’m aware of the political situation, but that is not everything. What kind of identity can a people have with no historical depth to their heritage? The Egyptians are Muslim and Christian, but they have no problem identifying their origins with their pagan ancestors. Egyptians have a sense of the continuity of their civilization through the ages; they know where they came from and have a secure sense of their place in the world. The Yemenis are all Muslim, but they are proud to identify with the ancient civilization of the Queen of Sheba.
The Pakistani identity is complicated by the recent wars they’ve fought with Bhârat. Still in a tense security situation. Embattled, they feel pressure to deny that they ever had anything to do with India. The Muslims of India and Pakistan prefer to trace their origins to foreigners: to Persians, Afghans, Turks, and Arabs who entered India. As if they are all Sayyids and never had any ancestors who converted to Islam from Hinduism. Even though it’s plain that the vast majority of them are descended from Hindu converts. What’s the problem with that? The original Muslims of Mecca had to convert from paganism. Everyone had to start somewhere.
I’d agree that most Brits tend to interpret Asian as “from the Indian subcontinent”, but Iran would be considered “Middle-Eastern”, not “Asian”.
I’d suggest that this is because Britain has a larger proportion of immigants originating from the Indian subcontinent than from other parts of Asia (although, of course, this may itself be linked with colonialism)
Nope, it doesn’t. “Oriental” conjures up images of China, Japan, Thailand etc… Don’t know anyone over here who thinks of India or the Middle east when people use the term “Oriental”.
Jomo,
The OP is about the “politically correct” (or polite) way to refer to people from the Indian Subcontinent. It contad the following question:
The answer to this question is, essentially, that it is polite to be as accurate as possible in one’s references to somebody’s national origin and that many Pakistanis would take offence at being referred to as “Indian”. Just as many Canadians take offence at being referred to as “American”.
I can now see why the analogy with Ireland is inappropriate as far as your argument is concerned: I though that you were arguing simply that Pakistan-as-India was longer-established than Pakistan-as-independent-country, but you seem to be arguing that territories and peoples have some immutable identity ab initio, which new political subdivisions can never change.