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Indian South African is a compromise term for non-Europeans who arrived in South Africa from colonial India.

The broader term "Asians" became rather imprecise in a polyglot, immigration-defined nation like South Africa. Sometimes "Indian" included peoples from present-day Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan. At other times the aforementioned groups were subsumed in the broader geographical category "Asians," when it included persons originating in present-day Iran (Parsis or Zoroastrians, other Muslims and the small Chinese community).

There remains a cultural, religious and racial overlap for "Asians" and "Indian South Africans" from the most intense period of segregation and apartheid, when "Indian", "Asian", "Coloured",and "Malay" group identities depended on where a person thus defined was permitted to live under the Group Areas Act.

During the most intense period of ideological apartheid from 1948-1994, Indians were called - and often voluntarily accepted - terms for themselves that ranged from "Black" to "Asians" to "Indians." These terms, they felt, were improvements on the negatively-defined identity, "Non-White." Politically conscious and nationalistic Indian-South Africans wanted to show both their heritage and their local roots, and increasingly adopted "African", "Black", "South African" and when necessary, the distinction for foreigners and others, "Indian South Africans."

This account would be incomplete if one did not point out that identities are negotiated all the time, and in apartheid South Africa, this process constituted a politically conscious one for all South Africans, not least of all for those who rejected apartheid. Therefore, most second- and older generations of South Africans emphasize their nationality, not their race, tribe or ethnic identity. Of course, elections have a tendency to heighten ethnic loyalties for rapid political mobilization in competitive parliamentary democracies, which South Africa has become since 1994.^[1]

1. ^ SookDeo, A. "The Transformation of Ethnic Identities; the case of ‘Coloured’ and Indian South Africans.” In Journal of Ethnic Studies, Winter 1987-1988. (Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA.) Now a days south african indians are found around the globe and they are a very successful lot. They are very religious and have a strong affinity to their ancestral home.