I think that is an exaggeration. When I looked at your photos, I have always seen clearly a South Asian and nothing else right from the beginning (and I didn’t know anything about your nationality, ethnicity, place of birth, places of origin, mother tongue, etc. at first).

In their case, from Tibetans.

I think the special relationship (I think it isn’t a mentor-mentee relationship, but a relationship of equals) between Turkey and Pakistan is to do with the good relationship (including significant monetary grants) between the founders of the Turkish Republic (including Atatürk) and some influential Muslim groups from what is now Pakistan and nearby Indian territories during the Turkish War of Independence (1919-1923), rather than anyhing else. If the special relationship was to do with the Turkic speaking elites of the South Asia of the past, we would see a similar special relationship between Turkey and Bangladesh, but it isn’t the case to my knowledge.

an easy way to test this in east bengal would be to do a STRUCTURE analysis of muslims and hindus. though even west bengalis and assamese have a lot of recent burmese ancestry, so i’m not sure. the ahom kings of assam who defended that region’s hindu culture from the mughals were originally tibeto-burman. also, there are several mongolian groups in northeast india who have shifted to a hindu identity. the main issue is that *individual* converts to islam and christianity have an easier go of it probably than hinduism. but in the past it seems likely that most religious change happened communally in south asia.

Yes. I think Islam and Christianity are generally more suitable for ethnic assimilation than Hinduism (after all, they have no caste system).

i agree. my paternal grandmother, by origin a hindu, did not look east asian at all, but typically south asian. my paternal grandfather died before i was born, but all claim he looked “foreign” (i have no photographs, and must infer his appearance from my father and his brothers and sisters). for what it’s worth, i resemble him the most out of my grandparents reputedly, and have been told by a friend from singapore that in that nation i’d probably be assumed to be malay due to my appearance.

Very logical. Hindi is the ideal language to adopt in Uttar Pradesh for a Han Chinese foreigner.

from physical appearance and cultural folkways there is a strong assumption that my paternal lineage has a non-bengali component

You once said that your father has a slightly Mongoloid appearance on his face or something like that, so you are referring to that I guess. As your Han Chinese ancestor is from your mother’s side (I also think he is too distant to have any effect on your physical appearance btw), Mongoloid genes of your father’s side are probably from Burmese people (small numbers of whom live in Bangladesh and north east India btw).

So my conclusion is, your known ancestors are all Bengalis from various regions of north east South Asia – and some of them non-Muslim (Hindu in their case) until recent generations btw – except one non-Bengali (I don’t know from which ethnicity) Muslim distant ancestor from Uttar Pradesh, who has a distant Han Chinese ancestor who came to Uttar Pradesh as a merchant, converted to Islam there and married a local Muslim woman. Are these all correct?

That is very interesting. A Muslim ancestor from Uttar Pradesh who supposedly has Muslim Han Chinese (Hui?) ancestors, really interesting indeed.