Pretty much any ex British colony is heavily biased against darker skin tones, America, India, Israel, it happened to pretty much all of them
For India specifically it’s more a continent than a country. There’s a bunch of different ethnic groups lumped together, and for most of its history it was never unified. Then the Brits decided they’re all Indian and combined them because that makes corruption easier.
The British did not create the caste system.
The British didn’t create the caste system from scratch, but they had a huge role in shaping what became the modern caste system. I’m sleepy, so I’m going to quote direct from this BBC article (though it’s a good amount article, if you have the time. It does a good job for a summary, imo)
“[Britain’s reshaping of Indian society] was done initially in the early 19th Century by elevating selected and convenient Brahman-Sanskrit texts like the Manusmriti to canonical status”
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" [The caste] categories were institutionalised in the mid to late 19th Century through the census. These were acts of convenience and simplification."
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“The colonisers established the acceptable list of indigenous religions in India - Hinduism, Sikhism, Jainism - and their boundaries and laws through “reading” what they claimed were India’s definitive texts.”
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“There is little doubt that the religion categories in India could have been defined very differently by reinterpreting those same or other texts.”
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“In fact, it is doubtful that caste had much significance or virulence in society before the British made it India’s defining social feature.”
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"The colonisers invented or constructed Indian social identities using categories of convenience during a period that covered roughly the 19th Century.
“This was done to serve the British Indian government’s own interests - primarily to create a single society with a common law that could be easily governed.”
“A very large, complex and regionally diverse system of faiths and social identities was simplified to a degree that probably has no parallel in world history, entirely new categories and hierarchies were created, incompatible or mismatched parts were stuffed together, new boundaries were created, and flexible boundaries hardened.”
“The resulting categorical system became rigid during the next century and quarter, as the made-up categories came to be associated with real rights. Religion-based electorates in British India and caste-based reservations in independent India made amorphous categories concrete. There came to be real and material consequences of belonging to one category (like Jain or Scheduled Caste) instead of another.”
Apologies for just quoting at length at you. I fear that presenting info this way will give the sense that I am lecturing you, but that is not my intention; a large part of why I share this info is because I learned of this relatively recently and I was astounded by how significant Britain’s role was.
The common knowledge among those interested in the history is that Britain insitutionalized and entrenched caste in an administrative framework that never before existed in India.
They generally saw their colonial subjects as tools for financial gain and wished they could stay out of the messy sociologic aspects of how different people may relate to each other. On a more fundamental level, they didn’t see them as people.
They also implicated skin color in caste in a way that it was not previously. Their perception of the world at the time was very much “white = good” and “anything other than white = bad” and they couldn’t help but apply that framework to all human relations.
Typical British move. Divide and conquer. They invented entire countries and flags so that the Arab World can never reunite.
Typical colonizer move, though Britain is certainly the biggest one, they all did this. The Rwandan genocide, for one of many examples, is a direct result of Germany and later Belgium reinforcing an artificial split between the long-since homogenized Hutu and Tutsi “ethnicities”.
Before they did that, the difference between “hutu” and “tutsi” mostly came down to “do you own cattle?”
Interesting, it sounds like a topic I could learn more about.
I don’t think their point is that the caste system didn’t existed before English colonization, but that India was not an unified and centralized country.
You’re right. They also didn’t create colorism, which has existed in every human society since the dawn of time.
What they did do is institutionalize and entrench caste. They applied their racialized view of the world and interpreted caste as “low caste = dark skin = bad” and “high caste = fair skin = good” There is nothing in ancient Indian literature that connects caste to skin tone.
There is however significant literature tying caste to virtue. Low caste individuals in India are disenfranchised similar to African Americans in the US.
The British didn’t help the issue by identifying certain castes as innately criminal, subjecting them to constant police surveillance and even imprisoning them premptively.
The Indian government, at its inception, outlawed caste discrimination and there are several affirmative action plans in place to provide increased oppurunities to disenfranchised castes but, similar to the African American community in the US, execution of such plans and positive outcomes are still lacking.
During his visit to Kerala, India in 1959, Martin Luther King Jr. was being introduced by a school principal: “Young people, I would like to present to you a fellow untouchable from the United States of America” Initially shocked, he reflected and then responded: “Yes, I am an untouchable, and every Negro in the United States is an untouchable”
It’s weird because there is an internalised class hierarchy in the UK that even the traditional working class seem to adhere to very strictly. And yet the concept of the Dalit seems simultaneously abhorrent.
It’s honestly not very unified today. Their national languages are Hindi and English, yet only 55% of the population consider Hindi to be their first or second language. In fact, I asked my coworker from S. India where Hindi is pretty rare, and he said he’d use English if he traveled around India because he’s not very comfortable w/ Hindi (despite studying it in school), though he could use Hindi if he had to.
Somehow the government holds things together. I guess people see themselves as Indian despite the extreme differences between regions. So I guess that’s something the Brits somehow got right, though they completely screwed up Pakistan (many Indians believe Pakistan and India should be the same country, despite their fierce rivalry).
From what I’ve heard about Modi it’s pretty much the opposite…
It’s not a unified system where everyone gets along, it’s a rigid caste system (I think technically outlawed but not enforced) where people with power are ok with it because they’re not on the bottom, and the people on the bottom don’t have enough power to change anything.
There’s a reasons Modi’s friends are trump, putin, and kim.
Yeah, I’m not a fan of Modi either. But somehow Modi has a high approval rating, which is why I say they somehow hold things together.
The reason for Modi’s approval is very similar to Trumps. He’s very good at blaming the other (in this case Muslims and several other groups).
He’s also in power at a time when India was inevitably going to grow stronger economically and people can feel that. GDP is growing at 7-8% annually which is massive for a country of India’s size, even if GDP per capita leaves a lot to be desired.
Though India is developing at a steady pace now and is on a trajectory to be a developed nation in two decades, I don’t think I’d rush to give Modi credit for that. It’s a relatively untapped market that constitutes a fifth of humanity. It was bound to grow barring war, natural disaster, crippling geopolitical / trade tensions etc. He’s just at the right place at the right time and had the right type of divisive rhetoric that seems to be hot all over the world right now.
Sure, and I think the same is true for Trump. He inherited a strong economy and, despite his best efforts, didn’t completely screw it up during his first term. Had he won reelection in 2020, I think the economy would have struggled a bit more because his “solution” to the supply chain issues would be tariffs (that’s his answer to everything), which would make the supply chain issues even worse, and I think we’d get a double dip like we did when Hoover did the exact same thing just prior to the Great Depression.
But unfortunately, people don’t seem to look at longer term impacts to things. I think this is an interesting breakdown on how the economy/market relates to political party choice. According to Ben Felix, people turn to conservatives when they’re bullish about the economy (tends to be at the top of a business cycle) and to progressives when they’re bearish (tends to be at the bottom), which leads to conservatives tending to preside over market crashes and progressives tending to preside over growth. There’s some strong correlation there, and I think the analysis makes sense, at least in general terms.
That said, Modi is in a different position entirely. India has been poised to see massive growth, and all they needed was for one of their major competitors (e.g. China) to falter so they can take their spot. With Trump wanting to punish China, the US will likely turn to India more and more, leading to further growth.
Leaders rarely significantly alter the direction of the country’s economy, and their impact tends to be only in screwing things up.
But somehow Modi has a high approval rating,
Because 50%+ of India that votes benefits from it…
I think we’re just using different definitions of “hold things together”
I thought Modi’s policies were generally bad for the populace at large. I haven’t been tracking it very well though, so I could be mistaken.
Trump’s policies tend to be bad for the population at large (basically triggered the massive inflation we had), and so are Putin’s (triggered a ton of sanctions w/ his stupid war), so if his policies are anything like either of those two, then I would assume they’d be bad for average Indians.
I thought Modi’s policies were generally bad for the populace at large
But it gets worse the further down the ladder you go.
trump will be bad for his white voters, but he’ll treat the people they view as below them even worse
Some people compare themselves to others to judge their worth, so they’ll settle for less if others get nothing.
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Pretty much any ex British colony is heavily biased against darker skin tones
Oh, so I’m racist. Fuck you maybe?
You’re an ex British colony?
I guess the real racism was the enemies we made along the way :)
Ive never met anyone more racist than a new Zealand Indian talking about an Indian who just arrived from India. Its like they know exactly where to strike to inflict the most damage. (Except maybe a south African talking about a non white south African)
For me it was an old acquaintance in college. Dude was Japanese and the things he said about other Asian groups was distressing.
People talk about racism in America, and yes it’s a problem, but having spent time with people from around the world, holy hell. America is probably the least racist country in the world. Absolutely dwarfed by the weird, vitriolic, oddly specific racism basically everywhere else.
I think that’s because you have a lot of racially motivated crimes.
Because people in America think it’s a problem and thus they view it as an issue that needs to be reflected on. Many countries have not gotten to that stage yet and still either think it doesn’t exist or isn’t a problem.
Don’t you think that’s because you’re traveling and seeing it through a traveler’s eyes? Also, you’re probably white. A few of my friends have been opening up lately about how bad it is and don’t forget the BLM years. America is fucking racist.
Not really. It’s less through travel and more having conversations with my immigrant friends about the things they experienced in their home country.
And again, yeah racism is still bad here, I’m just saying comparatively.
Yeah traveling and meeting people, then getting them to talk about their neighbors or immigrants is eye opening.
I don’t really talk politics (especially while traveling) and definitely don’t share or hold racist or nationalistic opinions. Folks from around the world are happy to share their hatred of others…not being on my turf, I nod and disengage.
All I see are DEI hires
It is like Syrians and Lebanese hating on one another when I can’t tell them apart.
