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this post was submitted on 03 Dec 2024
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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.
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.