South Asian ethnicity indicates genetic origins in southern Asia and the Indian subcontinent, including Sri Lanka and areas of Pakistan, Bhutan, and Bangladesh. While South Asia serves as both a cultural and geographical designation, its physical boundaries roughly correspond to the area in and around the Indian subcontinent — enclosed by the Himalayan, Hindu Kush, and Arakan Mountains in the north, west, and east, and the Indian Ocean to the south. Inhabiting modern-day India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, and Nepal, South Asian people trace their origins primarily to Indo-Aryan and Dravidian peoples, but include a wide range of other ethnic heritages, including Austroasiatic, Iranian, Sino-Tibetan, Turco-Mongol, and more. South Asia is the most densely populated region in the world, home to a plethora of faiths and religious doctrines, including Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, Sikhism, Jainism, Christianity, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, and more. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, waves of mass migrations spread South Asian people and communities around the world. Today, millions of people of South Asian descent can be found in the Americas, Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, and the Caribbean.
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South Asian history
Around 1500 B.C.E., nomadic Indo-Aryan tribes migrated from Central Asia into the Indus Valley, where the once-advanced Indus civilization had by then declined. During this early period, known as the Vedic period, the four Vedas — the oldest surviving Sanskrit texts and the seminal scriptures of Hinduism — were composed. The Vedic period saw the process of stratification of Indian society into “castes,” structured around the four varnas, or major classes in Indian society: Brahmans (priestly class), Kshatriyas (warrior and kingly class), Vaishyas (trader class), and Sudras (laboring class). In 322 B.C.E., Chandragupta Maurya managed to subdue and unite the warring kingdoms of northern India, establishing the Mauryan Empire, the first of its kind in recorded Indian history. Over the next few centuries, the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India — the Mahabharata and the Ramayana — were composed.
Between the fourth and sixth centuries C.E., the Gupta Empire ruled over much of the Indian subcontinent, ushering in what is considered to be the Golden Age of India, noted for cultural achievements in the fields of literature, architecture, sculpture, and painting. In the tenth century, the Chola dynasty of South India expanded into Sri Lanka, the Maldives, and the Andaman Islands, reaching as far north as the Ganges River. Around the same time, a series of excursions into the Punjab in the northwest by Mahmud Ghazni, sultan of the Turco-Persian Ghaznavid Kingdom, set the stage for the Muslim conquests of the Indian subcontinent.
Mahmud Ghazni invaded India seventeen times, but it was Muhammad Ghori, Sultan of the Ghurid Empire of present-day central Afghanistan, who was the first to establish permanent Muslim rule in India. After Ghori’s assassination in 1206, one of his military slaves (mamluk), Qutb al-Din Aibak, assumed power and became the first Sultan of Delhi. Spanning five different ruling dynasties, the Delhi Sultanates ruled over large parts of the Indian subcontinent for 320 years.
In the early sixteenth century, a Central Asian prince named Babur — a descendant of Genghis Khan — invaded India and defeated Ibrahim Lodi, the last ruler of the Delhi Sultanate. Babur established the Mughal Empire, which ruled over most of South Asia for the next 450 years. At its peak, it was among the wealthiest empires in the world, accounting for nearly a quarter of the world economy. Two simultaneous processes precipitated the decline of the empire in the seventeenth century: a series of raids into the Mughal Deccan by Shivaji’s Maratha forces, and the early settlement of the British East India Company in western India.
In 1757, a force of the British East India Company led by Robert Clive established direct rule over Bengal in eastern India. Over the following century, the British conquered large parts of India, triggering a period of intense cultural transformation. In 1857, in response to a rebellion by Indian soldiers, the British ousted the last Mughal emperor and established British rule in India. In 1885, the Indian National Congress was founded, followed by the Muslim League in 1906; the two movements refined their ideology over the next decades, and by the mid 1940s, the National Congress — led by Mahatma Gandhi — demanded the British leave India. In 1947, British Crown rule in India was dissolved, and the land was partitioned into two independent dominion states: a Hindu-majority polity in India and a Muslim-majority polity in Pakistan. The partition displaced ten to twelve million people along the Hindu-Muslim divide; the atrocities committed during partition remain an open wound in the collective memories of both India and Pakistan. In 1971, Bengali nationalists in East Pakistan successfully defeated the West Pakistani military and established the People’s Republic of Bangladesh.
South Asian culture
Owing to differing geographies and climates — including snow-capped mountains, scorching deserts, lush jungles, and more — and exposure to outside influence throughout the region’s long and turbulent history, South Asia houses extremely rich and diverse cultures. South Asian cuisine reflects this diversity: in the Himalayas, noodle soups such as thukpa and thenthuk are common, while fish dishes, such as machher jhol (a traditional spicy fish stew), are common in the coastal societies of Bengal. South Indian dishes, such as masala dosa (a cooked, thin, fermented rice-batter pancake filled with potato) are international favorites, while Goan cuisine merges Hindu, Muslim, and Portuguese influences (the latter due to Portuguese colonialization from the sixteenth to the twentieth century). The local cuisine of the Punjab is arguably most immediately identified as “Indian food” around the world, including a variety of paneer (pressed cottage cheese) curries, and dishes prepared in a traditional clay oven, including tandoori roti, naan, paratha, and kulcha. Due in large part to the religious and cultural influence of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, which emphasize respect and non-violence to all forms of life, South Asia is by far the most vegetarian region in the world. Some of the world’s greatest achievements in the arts and sciences have emerged from South Asia. Many of the foundations of modern mathematics originated in India, including the modern decimal system, the trigonometric functions of sine and cosine, and even the concept of the number zero! In the arts, the Sanskrit epics of the Ramayana and Mahabharata contain extremely refined philosophical and devotional material, as well as timeless narrative themes. Mughal architecture — best exemplified by the Taj Mahal, a mausoleum built by Emperor Shah Jahan for his departed wife Mumtaz Mahal — is admired around the world. More recently, South Asia has produced literary giants such as Muhammad Iqbal (“The Poet of the East,” 1887–1938) and Nobel laureate Rabindra Nath Tagore (1861–1941). The satyagraha (non-violent resistance) espoused by Mahatma Gandhi has made him an inspiration for civil rights advocates around the world. Gandhi’s birthday is commemorated in India as Gandhi Jayanti, a national holiday, and around the world as the International Day of Non-Violence.
Throughout much of history, India was renowned for producing the world’s finest textiles. Words like bandana, pajama, khaki, and calico made their way to the English language through the British trade in Indian textiles. Today, clothing in India often reflects the ethnicity, geography, climate, and cultural traditions of particular regions in South Asia. The sari, a draped strip of unstitched cloth, often worn over a petticoat, is a common women’s garment. Headgear, including a wide variety of turbans, caps, and hats, have traditionally served to associate its wearer with a particular religious, ethnic, or social group. Centuries of British colonialism and the recent ascent of globalism have introduced and popularized Western styles and fashions in most reaches of South Asia.
South Asian languages
South Asia is home to hundreds of living languages, most of which belong to either the Indo-European or Dravidian — and, to a lesser extent, Austroasiatic or Tibeto-Burman — language families. Hindi, Urdu, and Bengali, the national languages of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, respectively, are the most widely spoken among the Indo-Aryan languages descended from Sanskrit, common to northern and central India. Telugu, Tamil, and Kannada, spoken in southern India and parts of Sri Lanka, belong to the Dravidian language family.
Explore more about ethnicity estimates
- MyHeritage DNA at MyHeritage
- Ethnicities around the world at MyHeritage
- What Is My Ethnicity? How MyHeritage Estimates Ethnicities at MyHeritage Knowledge Base
- Where's My Ethnicity?!: Why An Ethnicity Might Not Show Up In Your DNA (and How To Find Evidence Of It Anyway) at MyHeritage Knowledge Base