That said I dont rule out Kashmiri-Sri Lanka inter-action business or marriage. Thats not because of caste, “devout hinduism” or whatever. It would be because of education, westernized ideals and plain common goals. e.g. Gupta and Rajaratnam who look like they are from different continents. Also in the case of marriage, opposites attract i.e.black and white even though society/family (some more than others, hint) oppose/frown on that coupling.”

There is a tamil brahmin (all iyers, no iyengars in sri lanka) community in sri lanka. Don’t think it’s as prominent as in Tamil Nadu, though. Vellalars are at the top in Sri Lanka I believe.

And in the west, they sometimes inter-marry with brahmins from other regions (i know of a sri lankan tamil brahmin/punjabi brahmin marriage).

Speaking of “tight networks” all of my suggested connections on facebook are my fellow Baha’is and I’m not even that plugged-in to the community (I reactivated my account after 4yrs). I’ve seriously never seen such a tight virtual cluster and I’d be interested to see if there were studies mapping out online social clusters.

I knew a girl surnamed as “Chase”, and she was a Jewish American. But seriously, many C-level executives, members of the board, founders of iBanks, and portfolio managers are Jewish, not that there is anything wrong with this, in much the same way that there is nothing wrong with a lot of Indians owning small shops or owning motels/hotels.

it’s discover, not discovery. i spend a lot of the day online. my smart phone notifies me of stuff constantly (comments, etc.) and i read on the kindle a lot, so i check the web on dat. i will much busier in the near future, so this is a last big blast for a few months.

No offense. Cousins like say the French and English.

Emigres communities from South India from 300-500 years ago are now Sinhalese. Some Sinhalese (Sri lankans) in the North are now Tamil.

Hopefully we will go back to the Sri Lanka mentality.

No different from the American USAian ethos. Either hold onto the old word or blend into the melting pot.

To be honest Sri Lankans mix easily with pretty much anyone specially the below 60 year crowd. Its an island thing. Jamaican, Puerto Ricans, Ghanians whatever. My cousins (from the Tamil side, I am a multi breed) who are in their 60′s (and late 60′s) now, are married to Indonesian, English, German to name a few. Almost all met while studying in Universities out of the country.

Assume you have heard of MIA the singer.

Then from about hundred years back the Coomaraswamys and Ramanathans apparently orthodox Hindus at that time..

http://www.sepiamutiny.com/sepia/archives/005737.html#comment-237860 From the wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rama_P._Coomaraswamy

Rev. Dr. Rama Poonambalam Coomaraswamy, M.D., (1929 – 2006), was a cardiac surgeon, then a psychiatrist and later a Traditionalist Catholic priest and exorcist, besides being a prolific writer on Traditionalist Catholicism and Perennialist topics.

Rama Coomaraswamy, of mixed Tamil, English and Jewish ancestry, was the son of the famous Indologist Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy, and of his fourth wife Luisa Runstein, an Argentine-born woman of Jewish descent. He is the grandson of the Tamil-Ceylonese lawyer and social pioneer Sir Muthu Coomaraswamy and his English wife Elizabeth Beeby. As such, Rama Coomaraswamy hailed from notable Tamil and English families.

and boston_mahesh replied I have actually visited Dr. Coomaraswamy back in ’04 in Wilton or Milton, Connecticut.! I met his son, Frank, who is 1/8 Tamil. Frank is a principal or a teacher at a school down there. Frank is married and has at least 2 kids, who are 1/16 Tamil. They were all very nice and gracious, and I’ll never forget how happy and old-world Frank’s blonde-hair daughter was to see us. It blew my mind that these kids – who are 1/16 Tamil – still have their old surname, and they carry it with a lot of pride. They are keenly aware that their great grandfather was the first Desi knight.

it’s usually an order of magnitude in the elites though:

http://www.jewishachievement.com/about/about.html