•Children used social category membership in their nationality and person judgments.•Children chose light-skinned, Hindu, and local-language speakers as “more Indian”.•In a novel task we manipulated skin tone to assess colorism.•Language and accent influenced judgments of leadership, intelligence, and warmth.•Children’s leadership choices highlight status inferences based on language cues. The present research assessed 5- to 10-year-old Indian children’s attention to social category information and status when evaluating the nationality and characteristics of novel individuals. In Study 1, children chose which of two targets was “more Indian” (with the option to choose “both”). Targets varied on three social dimensions: Skin Tone (White, Lighter-skinned South Asian, Darker-skinned South Asian), Religion (Hindu, Muslim), and Language (Tamil local state language, Hindi India’s lingua franca, British-accented-English, Indian-accented-English). Children reliably chose Lighter-skinned South Asian, Hindu, and Tamil-speaking targets as more Indian. In Study 2, focusing on the language contrasts from Study 1, we replicated our nationality findings and extended them to person judgments (kindness, intelligence, and leadership). Children chose Tamil speakers as more “Indian,” and “kind,” Tamil and British-accented-English speakers as more “intelligent,” and British-accented-English speakers as “better leaders.” Children’s responses reflected attention to markers of social familiarity, representativeness, and status.