This is getting rather silly.
Amir might not realize that he is flirting with some political undertones,
with his argument, but is also the same stance on the word that I've had
against Anirudh'd characterization. I might have had a
brief discussion with Anirudh about this a couple of years ago, and my
position is the same as Amir's. It's a leap to consider the two the same,
and that one is referring to the Indo-Aryan group when they say 'Indic'.
Here's the etymology of Indic[1] from Etymonline, which is the one Amir is
going by, Merriam-Webster on the other hand[2], as pointed earlier, accepts
both views. Given that the term is listed as an adjective, and has Latin
root *Indicus* and Greek root *Indikos*, both of which denote "of India;"
might help. This might also relate to how foreigners perceive a word
innocuously, vs. how the people being referred to see it. Ethnolinguistics
is far more interesting.
I pointed out then, and I'd do so again, that Anirudh's classification
might have a shade of influence from the nationalistic stand on the usage
of the term[3]. It's hard to debate this issue, when you are arguing over
the intention and context of a single word. To everyone unaware, Indic is
just some extension of India, denoting 'of India' and nothing more, while
some can choose to equate the word to a subset of a linguistic family and
bring up divisions thereof. The only thing that separates them is probably
context.
Regards
Theo
[
1]http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=Indic&allowed_in_frame=0
[
2]http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/indic?show=0&t=1352908404
[
3]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aryan#Usage_of_Aryan