Talk:East Indian people

Suggested rewrite

May I suggest the following content:

The term East Indian as a demonym may refer to:

• people from South Asia, South Asian ethnic groups
• or more specifically, people from India, Indian
• people from the Eastern parts of India
• East Indian Catholics, a Marathi-speaking, Roman Catholic ethnic group, based in and around the city of Mumbai

Can we make it a bit more detailed than the usual style for disambig pages. I think it is necessary here. --Deepak D'Souza (talk) 06:25, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Deepak, go ahead and make any changes you consider appropriate.

A quick note: we already have a East Indian disambiguation page, so this page only needs to cover the people. All your list elements are fine, but the header sentence is missing the people qualifier. Abecedare (talk) 07:00, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

I just checked OED for East Indian, and the result contained a few surprises. It defines it as:

• (adj.) Of or pertaining to the East Indies. (East Indies = A geographical term, orig. including Hindustan, Further India, and the islands beyond. Opposed to the West Indies or Central American islands, and now usu. restricted to the Malay archipelago.)
• (adj.) In Anglo-Indian use: Eurasian (Eurasian = Of mixed European and Asiatic (esp. Indian) parentage.)
• (n.) A Eurasian.
• (n.) A man descended from one of the indigenous peoples of the Indian sub-continent, esp. if resident in the West Indies.

We need to cover these additional meanings in this and the East Indian article. (To avoid edit-conflict, I'll wait till tomorrow before making any changes myself.) Abecedare (talk) 07:13, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Ok, Im done. I have added the bits from OED as you have suggested but I have some doubts about the "Eurasian" term. It seems to meet the current defination of "Anglo Indian" I believe that the usage may be outdated, probably from the time when "Anglo-Indian" was used to refer to only the British in India and not to people of mixed ancestry. Just a guess, I could be wrong. There are some other issues on my head which I will list in a seperate thread below. --Deepak D'Souza (talk) 04:16, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks! This page had fallen off my watchlist and I had forgotten about it.

I too didn't know about the Eurasian meaning of East Indian; I think nowadays it is not used except possibly in academic publications. But since we have a solid source for this meaning and since we should be wary to recentism, the disambiguation page should cover that meaning. I think the way you have organized and worded it is fair and accurate. Abecedare (talk) 04:29, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Other Issues

Somebody jumped the gun and moved "Mumbai Catholics" to East Indians. East Indians should redirect here. Regarding the "East Indian Catholic" article, I am ambivalent about what the correct name should be. There are many opitons: "East Indian (community)" or "East Indian Catholics" or the previous name "East Indian (ethnic group)". The problem with the "East Indian (ethnic group)" is that people confuse the meaning of the term "ethnic" . In the western hemisphere, people from South Asia are treated a single unified ethnic group. While this may not be correct, it is a source of confusion. "East Indian Catholics" seems fine. The only problem I see with it is that in regular use they never append the word "Catholic" to identify themselves, just "East Indian" suffices. This is opposed to Goan Catholics or Mangalorean Catholic who need to differentiate themselves from other Goan and Mangalorean groups by adding "Catholic". Im not sure how "East Indian community" pans out as per Wikipedia naming conventions. In my opnion we can either go for"East Indian Catholics" or "East Indian community". --Deepak D'Souza (talk) 04:37, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

I agree that East Indians should redirect here, and prefer East Indian (community) or East Indian community as the title for that page. I'll drop a note on Talk:East Indians since editors of that article may have useful input. Aside: I didn't realize I had commented on the page 3 years back! I could have sworn that I didn't know about the article, prior to the recent WT:HNB and AFD discussion. Abecedare (talk) 04:46, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

IMHO, it should not be about what you want of what tom , Dick or Harry wants, it is and should be about what the community wants. We are the original inhabitants of Bombay, regardless of biased historians, who only note change taking place, and not what already exists. The East Indian Community of Bombay is called and will be in the foreseeable future "the East Indians of Bombay". While we are predominantly Catholics we have not adopted the word Catholics as a part of our community name. Hence if we are to do justice to an online encyclopedia then choose what the community wants i.e "the East Indians of Bombay". while you seek verifiable sources, i ask you, where do you find sources to discredit or put in error what has been written on this community. This community has an association that is more than a hundred years i.e The Bombay East Indian Association. i request you to verify your sources as well.., as there are many persons who like to view history from their own angle and who want to destroy the information that the financial capital of India, i.e Bombay, was ever Christian/Catholic. Prem Moraes (talk) Prem Prem Moraes (talk) 19:37, 1 June 2010 (UTC)