Hypothetically if I’m born in India would I be Indian

[eRobin]

I’m a bit nervous asking about this subject incase it’s taken the wrong way. I was speaking with a not-quite friend (an acquaintance as I don’t know them very well but we’re friendly) from Bangladesh. I am Celtic. I asked him hypothetically if I was born in Bangladesh, India, or Africa, would be considered Indian or British or both because of my ethnicity/skin colour. He said I wouldn’t be considered Bengali because I wouldn’t be part of their culture/religion, and other places like India or Africa would feel the same. But when I asked him why he considers himself to be British despite being born here if I couldn’t be classed as Bengali if I was born over there, a woman from Dubai who was also present said that my comment was racist - but I felt that what the person from Bengali had said was racist. Do celtic people not have a culture?

Who would you support if England played India at cricket?

Tebbit Test, isn't that? It's as good a one as any 🤣

BTW this is a lovely book about modern Anglo-Indians. They seem better at preserving/appreciating Victoriana than we are! 🤣

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Teatime-Peggys-Glimpse-Anglo-India-Journey/dp/1804692425

How about England v. Wales ? Or Scotland ? Or Northern Ireland ?

@Genevieva

what absolute nonsense. You are basing your view on one piece of anecdote from your friend who happened to live in the US and like it.

I am British born of Asian heritage - and the UK is my country as much as yours. I wouldn’t move elsewhere because I have less loyalty to the UK than you.

I belong here as much as you do - and quite frankly I’m sick of needing to explain and justify that to people like you.

Interesting thread.
I wonder if you dont have parents on your birth cirtificate or fake parent names on there who do we belong to.

your name place of birth fake parent name.
Or.
Your name place of birth no parent name.

They don’t believe they are superior. They believe they are a separate and unique people and that is an entirely normal worldview. They indeed are a separate and unique people and this is why they are well liked and admired globally.

Arguably they used to have a more universalist outlook in WW2 because they literally thought they could make Koreans and Taiwanese into Japanese people. Of course that’s ridiculous, and they do not believe this any longer, haven’t for a very long time.

What’s ridiculous is English people maintaining that you can self-identify into whatever ethnic groups you wish.

It wasn’t my view. It was an anecdote about my friend. That’s all. You have a different anecdotal story. Neither one is more valid than the other. Did you forget to read the beginning, where I said that my view was that he was British. We went to school together. I never thought of him as Indian. In some ways I’d say his father was more English than the English.

I'm not saying they believe now that they are superior, but the Yamato superiority was widespread up to the 1970s. I should have made this clearer.

This WW2 military historian has effectively summarised the ugly history of how Japanese racial beliefs then synthesised with Western racial eugenics to create the terrible ideologies that led to events such as the Rape of Nanjing.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/racial-purity-domination-world-war-ii-bryan-rigg

They were laid out in this document.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Investigation_of_Global_Policy_with_the_Yamato_Race_as_Nucleus

I think not, no.

Joseph Rudyard Kipling, Joanna Lumley and George Orwell each were born in India (empirical India while the British Empire was on it's last legs). Do you consider them to be Indian?

Your link states this was largely forgotten material until a Western academic studied it. So not sure how you think they were pushing this stuff in the 1970s.

Tbh Western academics tend to misread Japanese intentions in WW2 while Japanese are still apologists (their modern history conveniently begins with the atomic bomb, as if that wiped away all their wartime actions).

The truth is yet to be written on this one.

Tbf Kipling is an interesting case since his first language was Hindi and he retained a deep connection to India throughout his life. Obviously this sits alongside his 'white man's burden' stuff.

In a sense, he's a little like his character of Kim, who never fits in with the British fully nor the Indians. Kim's thesis as a novel is partly that the Great Game deserves to be won by the British because unlike the Russians, they respect & love Indian culture. It's an interesting tension throughout Kipling's work and life, which I think this book is good on.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Kipling-Sahib-Making-Rudyard-1865-1900/dp/0349116857

Sorry, the 1970s stuff was a source I read elsewhere, nor that page.

Can I ask how you think Western academics misread Japan's WW2 intentions?

"What’s ridiculous is English people maintaining that you can self-identify into whatever ethnic groups you wish."

This is correct. However, why does that not work the other way around? Whenever the media reports on a stabbing (many, many reports recently as we know), they never release the ethnicity of the perpetrator because they know it'll cause racial tensions. Why does it cause racial tensions? Because then it'll be clear as day that these crimes are nearly always committed by non-English people. The media will even get ahead of it and emphasise they're British by dint of being born in Britain, which is like saying Joanna Lumley is Indian just because she was born in India.

If you're not ethnically/culturally English, how can you possibly identify as English or British? Because you're allowed to. The English culture is all too often associated with football fans, ie the EDL. The EDL is often associated with racism and far-right extremism, so the English are castigated automatically as racist and far-right.

British is just an identity of convenience these days. It's worn like a skinsuit.

Afaik Orwell & Lumley lived in English colonial enclaves, it's not like their parents were assimilated into mainstream Indian society.

Moreover, both left India as babies!

You know, Tommy Robinson, for all his myriad faults, let black and brown people join the EDL from the start.

Do you agree or disagree with that action?

It should be remembered that there have always been ethnic minorities in Japan, acknowledging its mainly a homogenous country doesn't necessitate ignoring them.

The Ainu and Ryukyu people, to name two.

I agree with that action because they're the sort of people who love England and have fully assimilated. They don't want Sharia or Halal. They love England for England, not to sponge off the state and call us racists for noticing.

In short Western academics tend to overemphasize racial elements and underplay the economic argument to the Japanese expansion. Or they think that economic argument was merely some sort of cover for ‘what they were really doing … ‘

The Japanese don’t seem to have believed in the kind of scientific racism that was trendy in the West at the time. Japanese tended to have believed in their civilizational superiority, not biological superiority. And they still believe this to a degree, which you may not like, but it’s a completely normal thing to do.

It's probably already been said but the term Celtic an umbrella term for the various Celtic cultures and a group of languages. It isn't really an ethnicity.

The question is interesting though, would a Scot born in Japan be considered Japanese? Probably not but the reason why someone born here but with parents from overseas or even someone who moved here they might be considered British is that "Britishness" is a concept, its something the British themselves came up with during and after Empire, that to be connected to Britain in that way through empire conferred on people a state of "Britishness" which is different from Englishness or Scottishness and so on. It is something we invited in exchange for our influence (for better or worse) in the world.

With other Anglo-sphere countries like Australia or the US these countries were built on Global immigration and until recently many they were open to those who wanted to come and make their home there so I think this is how the English speaking world one way or another seems has more permeable access to that identity than other countries.

Japanese are themselves 10-15% Jomon aboriginal (Ainu are descended mostly from these now assimilated people).

Okinawans are genetically different from Japanese, but this wasn’t well understood prior, they saw themselves as culturally distinct Japanese people for the most part.

Again, it’s a Western view to say they are ethnic minorities when Okinawans themselves don’t see it that way (although genetic testing has shown this to be the case!)

OK, the Ryukuyans may not have been seen as 'ethnic minorities' in the Western sense, exactly. But they were seen as distinct, including ethnically by some, from mainstream 'Yamato' Japanese and forced to assimilate in the past.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamato_people#:~:text=Relations%20with%20the%20Ryukyuans,-See%20also:%20Ryukyu&text=Major%20disagreements%20exists%20as%20to,mixture%20of%20Yamato%20and%20Ryukyuan.

Agreed. Your point on crime : are you trying to say that black or brown criminals commit crime due to lack of assimilation? True definitely for many recent immigrants, for one.

But otoh is a black or brown person born & raised in Britain & committing crime in adulthood necessarily due to lack of assimilation? It may well be especially in the case of criminal subcultures tied to ethnic groups. But always? After all, white British people do also commit crime ofc, it's not as if crime itself has ever been alien to Britain (or anywhere else).

Surely the only question here is how they viewed themselves ?

It's interesting people generally use Asian or African countries as comparisons.

It's interesting to do so, but why not also compare to say, Germany or Spain or France or Italy or Sweden?

European views obviously vary on to what degree you can become one of them culturally if your parents are from elsewhere. But there's generally some laxity : otherwise icons of France like, as I cited, Montand, Adjani & Aznavour, would all be non-French.