So why is Khan...
...not Indian?
I don't know, the actor looks pretty white.
So why is Khan......not Indian?The character IS Indian. In the two-volume The Eugenics Wars: The Rise and Fall of Khan Noonien Singh, Khan is depicted as a North Indian from a family of Sikhs. "Khan" is a title; his adoptive parents are from Chandigarh, Punjab, India and are both eugenic scientists.
By the final draft (of the film), Khan is Indian; a character guesses that Khan is from Northern India, and "probably a Sikh." Khan's full name was based on that of Kim Noonien Singh, a pilot Gene Roddenbery served with during the Second World War. Roddenbery lost touch with his friend and had hoped that Khan's similar name might attract his attention and renew his old acquaintance.
I don't know, the actor looks pretty white.He's played by a Mexican actor with a heavy Spanish accent.
Ricardo Montalban was cast in 1967, probably due to the fact that he had a look and sound to him that could pass for sufficiently "foreign", and "villainous" for the time. There probably weren't a whole lot of native Indian actors running around Hollywood at that time, and a television audience in the 1960s would have been much less likely to scrutinize the portrayal of a foreign or "ethnic" character by a white actor (see David Carradine in Kung Fu).
This artist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMPvcgejKpw share
Yeah at least Khan in the original is on some level foreign and mysterious. Montalban was a pretty big star in the late 40s and into the 50s so it was a coup to get someone like him for a TV episode (his career had waned in the 60s, before his Fantasy Island comeback).
Now Cumberbatch in the 2013 film? I still don't get that casting. When he was simply "Capt. Harrison" he was perfect, but the whole Khan revelation was just bizarre.