Originally posted by Kakar-Wardak
View Post
Interestingly, the insults and contemptous attitude associated today with the word "paki" in English is moreorless the same mocking contempt that was once associated with the word 'Hindu' by the Persians.
In both cases, "paki" and "Hindu" being used as pejoratives, the contempt and mockery derrived as a result of Persians and English mainly coming into contact with the Indians we now call Punjabis (Paki and Indian immigrants to the UK are mostly Punjabis and Persian and Turkic attacks on India always went through Punjab).
Bacially, the negative and mocking things associated with "paki" in English and "Hindu" in Persian (depending on the era for Persian) are very similarly things like: having dark skin and being considered "ugly", dishonest, uncultured, smelly, weak, foreigner, rude behavior, disgusting habits, strange (as in ridiculous, laughable) untrustworthy, vagrant, unclean...
You can clearly see that Persians and English have come to similar historical views of pakis / Indians when it comes to derision, the negative things having mainly derrived from their contact with Punjabis / northwest Indians.
But generally 'Hindu' has mainly been used as a generic racial label in Persian to refer to all Indians. No different from the English word "Indian", or the now contemporary "politically correct" term "South Asian" (because pakis cant handle being reminded that they are just Indians with a fake fabricated nationality, so 'South Asian' is slowly replacing 'Indian' as the generic term for their racial group).
I have not often come across "slave" being associated with the word "Hindu" when reading history, but certainly Indians were often enslaved during the Tuco-Persian era in Iran / Central Asia. The Safavids for example had a large number of eunuchs from India knows as "the black slaves" in Persian, and were treated the worst of the slaves at the Persian court. Unlike the Georgian slaves in Safavid Persia, the Indians were entirely castrated and never considered for any duties than being a eunach. Georgian slaves ('the white slaves') on the other hand were allowed to rise up in the Persian army and at court, they were also allowed to settle permanently in Persia and become assimilated Persians. Indians were not, not even the 'Banyans' (Indian merchants) who were eventually all kicked out of Iran (in Safavid times a community of Indians was allowed to establish themselves temporarily in Esfahan).


Comment