Historically, the area was known as Dah Hanu region to the British administrators,[note 1] and as Brog Yul, "Hill country," in Tibetan.

[2] From their oral history, it can be reasoned that Dah-Hanu region was first occupied c. 10th century by a group of migratory Shins who practiced the largely-animist ancient Dardic religion, and staked claim to a "Minaro" ethnic identity.

[2][web 4] In 1880, G. W. Leitner, a British orientalist, called the Brokpas "remnants of an ancient and pure Aryan race" — this trope would be reinforced by other colonial administrators, effectively exoticising them.

[5] Mona Bhan, a Professor of South Asian Studies and Anthropology at Syracuse University, notes that such ahistorical racialising of linguistic and cultural traits has persisted even in modern ethnography on the Brokpas.

[web 4] The discourse on the Aryan traits of the Brokpas has been increasingly appropriated by right-wing Hindutva groups to leverage their supposed indigeneity against the Muslim other and to "validate their hold on India's disputed territory".