>>82104490
Indians were never pale, but the majority of their ruling class was. For instance, ead the descriptions of how Gautama Buddha looked, who came from the Shakya tribe who lived in modern Bihar and even in ancient times the area was not entirely Indo-Aryan but very tribal. However, Buddha was described as being fair-skinned with deep blue eyes. This fits the Greek and Persian descriptions of the Scythians/Saka, who were among the Aryan groups who settled in North India and were ancestors of the Shakya. The race mixing accelerated in Late Antiquity where the ruling class kept getting annihilated by new arriving powers like the Kushans, Huns, etc. It was complete by the time the Muslims arrived where the Rajput class was born, where any local thug with enough power could claim to be a "son of the prince" (rajaputra = rajput) and advance their caste.
