It’s not. In Bangladesh, we precisely identify the town or village ethnic Bangladeshis come from, but have a single word to refer to all non-Bangladeshis (“bideshi,” meaning “foreigner”).
The article reads like the author wrote it, and then sprinkled in “white men” randomly wherever it fit grammatically. Maybe it helped get the thing published.
I once described the caste system as “racism invented by people who look alike” and my girlfriend from Madya Pradesh (Central Indian Province) thought that was very apt.
Humans are great, until you let them form groups, once that happens you’ll get tribalism and prejudice almost every time as far as I can tell.
Even sports’ fans will beat eachother up sometimes.
I'm increasingly hearing the idea (from Hindu nationalists?) that the caste system was the invention of the British, not anything indigenous. If anyone's in the know, I'd be curious to hear what's broadly accepted among historians nowadays.
The scholarly opinion of this question has been quite dynamic over the last century.
Nowadays, the consensus seems to be that Caste was definitely a thing before the Raj took over, but it was more fluid and regional, and was not the centralized, static hierarchy it is today. There were other power structures (feudal, religious, etc) that were not colored by caste, and competed with caste to triangulate people.
The British Raj took calculated steps to centralize, formalize, and entrench the caste system, shaping it into a form that is recognizable today, where it is strictly tied to opportunity and wealth.
It’s worth noting that is a common pattern of colonialism: to divide the colonized people against themselves along arbitrary, existing lines and elevate an arbitrary group, aligning the interest of that group with the interests of the colonizers. It’s a timeless and tragic human story.
I’ve only started researching this subject, so if anybody would like to correct or qualify anything I’ve said, I welcome it.
> It’s worth noting that is a common pattern of colonialism: to divide the colonized people against themselves along arbitrary, existing lines and elevate an arbitrary group, aligning the interest of that group with the interests of the colonizers. It’s a timeless and tragic human story.
The Tutsi and Hutu of Rwanda immediately come to mind.
It can’t be a British invention. My understanding of Bangladeshi history is that we converted to Islam to escape the caste system. That predated British rule by hundreds of years.
What classical Hinduism had was the varna system, where you were a member of a particular varna according your jobs and qualifications (for eg, bhramans were supposed to be learners and teachers of scriptures, analogous to professors and phd's today). And even this varna system was debated and discusses throughout classical Hinduism, as with every other idea in Hinduism was.
But overtime, especially when people of different cultures and languages interact, things can become twisted and lost in incorrect translations, whether through genuine error,any inherent biases of the translator or malicious intent.
And also overtime, cultures can evolve in response or in interactions with outside forces (especially the Islamic and later European invaders over a 1000 year period) that would seek to implement their own hierarchies and systems. Infact, the indigenous Indians were treated as second class citizens in empires established by outside invaders (Jaziya collection is common example of this).
But what generally makes the system as being attributed to the British is due to the Divide and Conquer strategy implemented by the British. Dividing the populace becomes a lot easier if you can mutate or deepen existing lines in the system.
But truthfully, the exact lineage is very hard to find, especially for a culture that is not only 5000+ years old but has also been interacting with and assimilating just about every other global culture during that 5000 years period (Indians have been interacting with everyone from Chinese, SE Asians, Romans, Greeks, Persians, Mesopotomians, Africans, Arabs, Ancient Egyptians, Turkic Nomads, etc)
This isn't my area, but my understanding is that like most things related to history (especially Indian history), it's complicated. There are a lot of very old antecedents, but the modern caste system probably "originated" with the later Mughals. The British Raj took those scattered, vaguely related systems and codified them into what we recognize today.
Is that label typically applied to anyone not an ethnic Bangladeshi, or to people who aren't citizens of Bangladesh? E.g. if there's a Bangladeshi in India, would they be bideshi? Conversely, if there's someone who moved to Bangladesh from Pakistan but are current citizens, do they get that label? (this is to satisfy my own curiosity about identity formation on the subcontinent, not accidentally stumbling on some hot button political issue)
> In Bengali, the term bideshi is used to describe a foreigner. The literal translation is "without land." This past summer, during six weeks conducting research on a global health project in Bangladesh, I heard the term often -- in reference to me.
> It felt strange, as I was born in Bangladesh and lived there until I was 3. To me, Bangladesh is where I can easily blend into a crowd. Bengali was the first language I learned. I visit often to see family. I feel a sense of ownership and belonging in Bangladesh that I have not always felt in America.
Citizenship isn’t particularly meaningful in Bangladesh. You can’t become Bangladeshi by acquiring citizenship.
Maybe a better qualifier is dominant culture men in a society because I’ve seen that across the world. Rarely do non dominant cultures band together effectively. But this is all anecdote and conjecture on my part.
It's odd how many people who share this anti-Whitism express this sentiment in the very same breath in which they denigrate, demonise or humiliate Whites.
Either they don't actually believe it and are just zealously taking the opportunity to revel in their socially-acceptable racism, or they're supporting this trend I'm seeing of Whites becoming ethnically conscious and collectivising in the face of the hostility they are being exposed to.
It's probably the former, but the latter is the effect regardless.
What, this is a behavior specific to white, powerful men?
What went down in and around Lexington and Concord was a more serious crime than murder, it was an act of rebellion.
The author appears committed to a particular affect which seems out of context with the history he presents.