Page:Calcutta Review (1925) Vol. 16.djvu/389

1925] of nosed type) are the common element everywhere. The dolichoid-leptorrhin element (long-skulled-long-nosed type) which is in majority among the Sikh-Jats is to be traced down to Behar Kahars and Bengal Kaibartas!

Thus one cannot say that every language group inhabitating certain province contains a population with particular physical type and that type is strange elsewhere. Different physical types do exist in India as anywhere else in the world, yet elsewhere they do not form barriers for the formation of nationality. Therefore the reiterated argument of the imperialist critics that on account of difference of physical type India cannot form a nation is to be dismissed as unscientific. But India is on the other hand an ethnic unit. That is a bond for a common nationality.

Then comes the question of language. Primarily, India is divided into two language groups : Aryan and the Dravidian one. Of course in the course of time these two language groups have been broken up into several languages and various dialects. The imperial philologists have exaggerated the difference in this region also, and have created over 300 languages in India! This is enough to frighten any layman. But apart from this manipulation by denoting every patois as an independent language; we see that there are only several languages with grammar and literature of their own, and there are innumerable dialects. But these dialects cannot be arrayed as evidences against the possibility of the formation of an Indian nationality. Truly late Prof V. Luschan said that “the conception of language is as insecure as the definition of ‘race,’ and possibly it is still more difficult to define the relation between language and dialect; for example who will earnestly decide whether Ladinish (spoken in South Switzerland) is a language in itself or an Italian dialect? Anyway, amongst some of the 14 Italian dialects known to Dante there are more differences than amongst the German spoken in East Prussia and in Switzerland