Dravidians and Indo-Iranians in India

India – a land of more than a billion people. A land of so many peoples, languages, religions, faiths and “races”. A land of different complexions – from northern parts to southern and from eastern to western parts. So much diversity in a small part compared to the rest of the world, indeed. A country where each state has “its own” language along with many dialects and even multiple languages. Languages! for sure these are tied to the people in terms of traditions, behaviour and history. Why so much of diversity can have many answers but how so much can be explained in, if not one, but few corroborations, inferences and conclusions.

There have been debates since ages about the past of people of present day Indian subcontinent. Some scholars agreed on an Indo-Aryan invasion which proved to be unacceptable due to lack of “evidences”. But now mostly agree on a theory which tells of multiple migrations from the west of present day India-Pakistan border. Then there are scholars who suggest Indian origin of Indo-European languages, hence its speakers which only a few would be in sympathy with.

Now a question arises that why even scholars distinguish the population of India into two broad categories – Indo-Aryans and Dravidians. Why cannot be the people of India just be called Indians and the languages they speak be called “Indo” or something  which can only be connected to India just like , for example, people of Germany speak german and are called german, an Indo-European language. The reason is Linguistics – the study of languages. The experts of language study have, after much research, classified different languages under different classifications based on  its features and commonalities. These features include how the words are formed, the grammar, etc. It is needless to say there are  numerous parallels among the languages classified under the same bracket and a few with those under a different group. With this in context, the languages of India can be broadly grouped into two categories – Indo-European and Dravidian although there are few pockets where languages classified under Austro-Asiatic and Tibetan are spoken.