Dravidian race

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The Dravidian 'race' is the name sometimes still given to the peoples of southern and central India and northern Sri Lanka who speak Dravidian languages. They are so called for purely linguistic reasons; the peoples are of varying racial types. Some believe that Dravidian-speaking peoples may have been spread throughout the Indian subcontinent before the invasions of the Aryans. The early Indus Valley civilisation (Harappan and Mohenjo Daro) is presumed to have been Dravidian. They were then forced southwards by the invasion of the Aryans.

Into the 21st century, Indians, with considerable justification, continued to accuse the British Raj for exaggerating differences between northern and southern Indians, beyond anything scientific evidence supports, to help sustain their control of India. The British Raj ended in 1948. Yet all discussion of Aryan or Dravidian "races" remained highly controversial in India.

Some modern theories of the origins of both Hinduism and Buddhism focus on the resultant mixture of the "Aryan" and "Dravidian" cultures.