One upside of my relentless biz travel is airplane time to catch up on reading. Coming back from Hong Kong, I started digging into Niall Ferguson’s controversial Empire – a work previously covered on SM here. I personally find the book fascinating, well written, thoroughly researched and, dare I say, a balanced portrait of the whys, hows, and modern effects of British colonialism – warts, accomplishments, and all.
But, rather than dive into yet another post-colonial-legacy debate, I thought mutineers might be interested in one specific internal difference between the Brits in India vs. elsewhere in the empire – they had a much higher tendency to “go native” –
Until the first decades of the nineteenth century, the British in India had not the slightest notion of trying to Anglicize India and certainly not to Christianize it. On the contrary, it was the British themselves who often took pleasure in being orientalized. [Empire, pg 133]
Later chapters explore how this Prime Directive of sorts would change dramatically – in part leading to and following the Sepoy Mutiny. But, in the mean time, what explains the “orientalized” Brits? Ferguson identifies one culprit – the irresistible allure of our desi sista’s. Many a Brit discovered, apparently, that once you go brown, you stop foolin’ around–
In one of his Home Letters Written from India (mainly dating from the 1830s) Samuel Snead Brown observed that ‘those who have lived with a native woman for any length of time never marry a European… so amusingly playful, so anxious to oblige and please [are they], that a person after being accustomed to their society shrinks from the idea of encountering the whims or yielding to the fancies of an English-woman’ [Empire, pg 134]
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Ghee and Rice didn’t miss her… |
Ahhh the good ole days before that silly suffrage, equality, and womens rights nonsense. When women, like the children they were to care for, were seen but not heard and if they really had something to say, it was pleasant and never shrill. 
(Alas, many an ABCD gal suspect similar motives when a modern brutha heads back to the homeland to get married.)
One [married] Captain Robert Smith made similar remarks in his travelogue but in a more over-the-top way –
The mild expression, so characteristic of this race, the beauty and regularity of the features and the symmetrical form of the head are striking and convey a high idea of the intellectuality of the Asiatic race… This classical elegance of form is not confined to the head alone, the bust is often of the finest proportions of ancient statuary and when seen through the thin veil of flowing muslin as the graceful Hindu female ascends from her morning ablution in the Ganges is a subject well worth the labor of the poet or artist. [pg 134]
Leaving aside the arguably patronizing tone, I couldn’t help but chuckle at what comes next after Smith’s Aphroditian image. While positively ebullient about most physical charms of the desi maiden, Capt Smith saw fit to plant one caveat –
…he felt the typical Indian woman’s lower half was ‘badly formed and ill calculated to harmonize with so beautiful a superstructure.’ He had clearly given the matter a good deal of thought. [pg 134]
Heh… So apparently desi gals were unable to don the stretch pants and miniskirts so fashionable in, uh, Victorian England. Luckily, Capt Smith was there to post warning to the unknowing men back home. As for me personally, Capt Smith can criticize, but I like my women like Flo-Jo.
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p>UPDATE: Normally, as a rule, I try not to post updates to my posts or, for that matter, engage too deeply in the comment threads. As any blogger / commenter with a fulltime “real life” knows, this sport is addictive and the time drain can be enormous. We try to be a little engaged and occasionally, SM Intern will engage to nuke comments that personally attack folks and, if it continues, we ban the commenter altogether….
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p>BUT, scanning the comments (natch, the FURY) generated this time around, I figured I oughta chime in.
Y’all realize that this post is tongue in cheek, right?
Well, at least Manju does. But other folks seem to be taking my quotes of “Sam Snead” and “Captain Smith” as *my approval* of their positions when the whole point was the opposite! I hoped my sarcastic commentary in between their, uh, not-quite-scientific observations was apparent (dissing Women’s Suffrage? Joining Snead in praising women who are “seen but not heard”? “Stretch pants and miniskirts” as essential elements of Victorian fashion? Smith’s “over-the-top”-ness? Heck, I even tried to subtly work in Sir Mixalot – an “authority” who’d rather colorfully disagree with Capt Smith, et. al. about nice “lower halves” and join me in approval of Madhuri Dixit’s “Flo-Jo”-ness)…. (by the way, just now, I was being sarcastic about Mixalot being an authority )
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p>Perhaps my sarcastic tongue could use some practice. Or perhaps you’re just not allowed to quote, in polite company, any sort of colonial and/or female body subject matter without plainly and vociferously denouncing it (Male body parts are a diff matter, of course). If so, that’s unfortunate… it’s just so…. plain.
Still, I offer humble apologies and a convivial drink at the next meetup for those who walked away offended. And now, we return to our regularly scheduled lives…
To #100:
Coming from the South, if there was a Klansman married to a black woman, more than likely the Klan will lynch him.
Hindi Chini Behen Behen for China-India Friendship Year 2006, only few days of celebration activities and programs remain!
It might say that desis prefer other desis you racist ignorant prick.
103 was a response to Doordarshan (#79).
I think that’s actually the definition of hypocrisy. Also, Socrates wasn’t telling people not to boff little boys, then turning around and doing it himself. I may think Greek culture was problematic because of the pedophilic aspect of it, but I can’t necessarily say that his ideas were hypocritical.
I don’t think hypocrisy is such a bad word. I think we get really uncomfortable with it because honesty scares us, but I think hypocrisy is part of the human condition and part of the struggle of being alive. Coming to terms with your own contradictions is part of developing some maturity. People shouldn’t be so afraid to confront the inconsistencies between their beliefs and their actions.
I respect someone who is, for instance, honest about their racist or oppressive beliefs far more than I do some liberal who pretends to be anti-everything and yet is completely subtly racist, sexist, etcetera. I try to be honest with myself about this shit and it’s hard, but it doesn’t mean you don’t struggle to do so.
I refuse to comment on the topic of this thread, but I couldn’t let this question remain a rhetorical one:
Aye, the women must be too stupid to be concerned.
…Sahej, it’s a fine line that women walk in defending themselves. There are lots of strong and informed female voices on this blog – even MD, our resident woman Republican, has a strong femmy streak to her. You think it’s a random coincidence that women just stop commenting when men start racializing and judging women’s bodies down to the nitty gritty?
I acknowledge that it’s a different atmosphere when the discussion is lighthearted and funny – or, even if they are serious, men are humble and allow room for women – but on this thread, the male opinions of women’s bodies are definitive and in seriousness. Previous threads have ended up sounding just like this one, and you’re usually the one to stop and posit the same “Hey guys, where are the women in all this talk of women? Why don’t they care?” question. The answer, in my opinion: there’s really nothing that women can say about these topics after it becomes apparent that you guys have already made up your minds, and/or don’t really care to formulate a decision on women based on what women say.
“Desi women have nice breasts”… “Desi women have flat butts”… “Desi women are sexually undesirable”… I would never want to inhibit anyone from expressing an opinion, but when you put your words like that, what is there for desi women to say? They can object by saying it’s not true, but what difference would that make to you if you’ve already made up your mind? If a woman objects by pointing to her own body, then it’s more like pointing out that she is the exception to the general rule that you guys have established, and that doesn’t help either party. Lastly, it’s bad enough that you guys are having a discussion like this, but it would be even worse if I got indignant and started head-hunting for men – the classical hysterical woman (Antigone, Medea, Kali…) that men LOVE to see women be reduced to, because then they can say, “See, she’s fucking crazy”.
So, basically, this thread isn’t the place for women to speak. What backs them into the corner even more is that no matter what a woman says, there’s no good way to come out of a discussion like this without being taken for a) humorless, b) battleaxe or c) humorless battleaxe. Oh yeah, there’s also d) clueless and unintentional misogyny apologist and e) asshole colluder. Even if I had said what Yeti said in #27, as brilliantly succinct as it was, it would have been taken for angry feministing – clever, perhaps, but still a battleaxe move. I’m surprised some women are still engaging (really y’all, save your efforts for a more humble and welcoming discussion).
Again, it’s different when it’s just fun and games, but if you want to be real about it (as it seems y’all are trying to be here) there’s really nothing that a woman can say about this shit that hasn’t already been said many times on this blog. So if you don’t get it, you just don’t fucking get it.
Therefore, gentlemen, please resume congratulating each other on your mental masturbation. I suspect that, like me, the other women reading this thread simply laughed at it as soon as they got over the initial indignation.
Peace, Humorless Battleaxe
P.S. I know there are women who wouldn’t agree with me on this, but remember that I don’t claim to speak for all women. What I’m saying is just my guess based on how I see things. I’m also not picking on anyone in particular, just speaking about discussions like this in general. Just so you know, I do appreciate that you asked that question… and I almost always enjoy Yeti’s logic 🙂
beshbesh = Razib?
I totally support Shruti’s and suma’s words.
107, no way!
Do you think this is why I said what I did? If so, why say this and then write a explanation of what you think? My only point is that, in response to the above, my explanation was, its not for men to comment over-long on this topic, in my opinion. If women or some women, or a woman wants to comment so be it. I personally don’t like to hear guys call desi women exotic, or brown sugar, or to wax long on supposed attributes. Nor it is pleasent to hear it said about Asian women, or any other group. But its not on me to respond to it, and that’s my only point. If you as a woman do or do not want to respond, that’s your call
Except that, this is not just a problem for a blog thread. And my point is thats its not on desi men to be responding to this stuff, because its too wrapped up in cock-fights. And also, on the Miss UK thread, it was women judging down to the nitty gritty too. Desi men just need to take a cue from desi women about how they respond to this stuff. I will say it bothers me and there are times I feel like, why the f won’t somebody say something about lame-ass comments. At one point it would make me a little upset to see people just say nothing in response, but I did learn a long time ago a lot of what you are saying above. If you don’t think this thread is the right place, that is cool. But, someone did wonder why more people were not responding, and I answered that person. If you read above I did register my feelings, but its not on me to get into some long discussion about it. Any thread can be changed in tone by enough people who want to change it, and with support. Course if you think this thread is silly and not worth it, that’s your call again.
No, not necessarily.
To be rhetorical. (Just so we’re clear, my comment was not a response to the topic at all. It was an observation on the nature of the comments on threads like this.) My comment was also intended to cover all the bases, just in case someone did think women must be too stupid to be concerned. Replace stupid for apathetic or misinformed or anything that someone could come up with to rationalize why women aren’t being more vocal.
You were wondering why more women weren’t speaking up, and I was explaining to you that this whole setup makes it pointless for women to respond at all.
Way ahead of you, buddy 🙂
I’m out – peace.
Opening up a conversation with a random insult…..interesting.
And if nothing else, this conversation between me and you has stopped the racialized objectification at least for the last few comments.
If nothing else, anyone who comments on the thread is going to see that a discussion was had on this topic. I’d consider the tone of this thread has at least momentarily changed to one that at least problematizes racialized objectification.
Yeti, its probable that I am obtuse and am missing something.
replace in the above, one person and her daughter. does that still make the woman hypocritical to love her daughter even if ideologies differ? can we control the thoughts of those close to us?
Agreed!
r.e. #106
Shrutiji,
Your words are an oasis in this desert of a thread. Shabash and thank you.
John Galt:-)
The flat butts evolved to accommodate the short desi penises. Or more likely, it was a simultaneous evolution.
Seriously, there does seem to be a racial correlation between protrusion of the female bum and the length of the corresponding male sexual organ. The bigger the gluteus maximus the longer the shaft required to enter the target. Thus the big african butts and long schlongs.
Speaking of which, that picture of Madhuri Dixit appears to be a coy invitation to rear entry. 🙂
Except for the fact thats not true. Given the chance, desi men and women would choose mates from west of the Indus. As proved by the constant drooling over western and persian (and persian-looking) women and men by posters in this very forum.
Please REFRAIN from using multiple handles on the same thread. Thank you.
Shankar, great post, dude! Bravo!
A false tu quoque. There is no comparison whatsoever. The US actually is a superpower. India, on the other hand, is neither “shining” nor an “IT Superpower”. A tiny 2% share of the global IT business, and that too doing grunt work for american corporations, does not an IT Superpower make.
Even little Finland (population ~5 million) has a far better claim than India (population >1000 million) to the title. The Finns have given the world one of its major computer operating systems (Linux), and they dominate the cellular phone business (Nokia). Nothing original or world-shaking has come out of India, despite its vaunted hordes of “english-proficient” programmers and engineers.
And in case you didnt know Indians, including IIT graduates, also perform very poorly in international coding competitions.
Why haven’t those dusty archives been digitized and made available to the internet masses yet?
The US doesn’t do too well either. The last time a US university won the ACM Intercollegiate programming contest was around 10 years ago ( link ). Generally China and Russia dominate, the primary reason being that colleges in these countries strongly focus on these tests and prepare their students for a year or more. This is not to detract from the obvious ability of the students who win, but in all tests, focus and preparation are at least as important as talent and general ability.
I take it back. Why participate in a thread that’s structurally unfair. I see Shruti’s point. Many thanks for being kind enough to explain it to someone who is still apparently in need of learning (educating myself!)
Sorry to see you go, Sahej. The dark side’s not for everyone. Plus, when the market collapses, and the strip clubs close, and the whisky runs dry; it can get quite lonely.
But rest assured, sex and power and violence will always be deeply entwined. When the project to emancipate your libido from all that is structurally unfair proves just as futile as the one currently trying to cure homosexuality; there will be a spot at the bar reserved for you, at the corner of Wall and Broad.
Till then, my friend, I’ll spin some Brown Sugar in your honor.
Doordarshan,
you insult and offend me! educate myself! black!
a note to all the small-pricked low IQ black-faced world-hated-by south asians out there (who have inferior in every way to every race), remember to poke a little fun macacaroach, oops, Doordarshan. he, unlike we, is at peace with his micropenis and is spreading the gospel far and wide of black indian inferiority.
and remember let him “educate you.” his insults are the height of wisdom which even the rishis and gurus of yore could not attain.
take the above for example. one person and his mailman. does it still make the mailman hypocritical for delivering the mail even if ideologies differ?
you don’t choose your kids. you also don’t choose your family. you do choose your partners (usually in this society). I think that makes a difference. I really don’t think people who get together just land on top of each other and are magically bonded through some sort of genitally-mounted electromagnetic force. I think we all make choices.
I’m not saying it’s not complicated – we all live these contradictions to some extent. it’s about what we value most. some values can be contradicted. some can’t. i’m not going to be friends with someone who abuses children or partners. i’m not going to be best buddies with a virulent racist. and I make some other choices as well.
you definitely can’t just swap out one relationship for another. each one has their own complexity. to some extent anyone who is unhappy with the current system is a hypocrite for not engaging in forceful insurrection of some sort. so? we live with it and deal with it. then we die.
Hey Vinod, just so you know, I don’t think it was offensive of you to put this post up, I really wasn’t commenting on the fact that you posted it or critiquing your motivations. I just reacted to the material. So no need to apologize to me. Although one day I will take you up on that drink.
Another false to quoque.
The US won the top spot every year from 1977 to 1989. From 1990 to 1997 it won the contest 4 times. From 1998 to 2006 it had 15 contestants in the top ten, including 2 second place finishes. You call that not doing too well?
India’s vaunted IITians on the other hand don’t even crack the top twenty. Surprisingly, Bangladesh usually does way better than India. It came very close to making the top ten once (11th place).
China is definitely coming on strong in recent years. It also dominates the Math Olympiad. Even Iran won the Math Olympiad once. India never.
I was not trying a to quoque. All I wanted to point out was that programming contests are not like the Nobel Prize(or maybe in this case the Turing award) which everyone is trying equally hard for. They are contests between between 18 year olds. Who wins has a lot to do with who takes it seriously. Are you going to argue now that Saratov State is stronger at computer engineering than MIT, because they won and MIT lost? IMO the best colleges across the world can be equally competitive at a contest like this: the question being who is willing to invest the most time and resources.
As for India never winning the math olympiad, I am not sure what you want people on this blog to do about it. Should we get together and write you a letter of apology? If you have a problem with the attitude of a few desis, you should address them personally in your comments and point out your issues. Blanket statements like ‘too many desis are x’ are the marks of a troll.
Of course Brit colonial men would be enchanted by the Indian women they slept with, because there’s every chance they were professionals. What daughters of decent families would run off and consort with a visiting Brit soldier? You can’t compare apples and oranges, our dear little soldiers probably weren’t visiting the brothels much back home but assuming their money went further and the lack of a strong English community in the early decades of colonisation removed some inhibitions, they probably lived it up with the tawaifs.
And Vinod, your post was tongue in cheek till it got to the comment about desi women’s asses. Forgive us for being a bit touchy when we’ve grown up with desi men who see fit to pass judgement on the most minute aspects of a woman’s appearance when they are bald and paunchy (and presumably small-dicked) themselves.
sakshi, why respond to the bait? you know what it is!
…..frequently due to having similar cultural reference points and an understanding of “what it’s like” for the other party. And let’s also not forget that a hell of a lot of desi parents in the West throw up huge obstacles to the notion of their sons & daughters marrying someone from a different background. Both of these points are certainly major reasons behind why the majority of British desis end up married to someone from a similar background, for example, despite the fact that we don’t exactly have problems attracting white people here in the UK.
Jeeeaaloussss ? It’s amusing how irate some people can become in this matter if they have major problems attracting partners from the above groups. And by “some people”, I mean the kind regularly frequenting SM under different usernames and advocating “education” in response to being “offended, insulted even”.
Shruti,
A brief, quiet word in your ear.
Your objections to men making generalisations about women are justified; however, for your part it would be better not to make similar sweeping statements about men such as the one quoted above. “Some men” would have been more accurate. Otherwise you risk a) making the same mistake that you are accusing men of, and b) you risk alienating well-meaning men here who would otherwise support your stance.
I doubt you would react positively to a male commenter here saying something like “the castrated, emasculated, doormat man that women LOVE to see men be reduced to”, for example.
Hey, I got ya quoque right here pal.
Yeti @131 : I am in full agreement!
Vinod, thanks for a nice update. My sincere apologies to anyone who may have been upset. That includes Vinod, of course. Let’s all take that chill pill and smoke that peace pipe. Life is short.
Peace out.
Vinod: I think you misunderstand. My comments here are littered with the words “thread” and “discussion” precisely to avoid putting the blame on you and your post. If I had a problem with you I’d have emailed you, and if I had a problem with your post I would have had the courtesy to address it straightforwardly and respectfully.
…groooaaaaaan…. Is there anything that IITians are allowed to not be absolutely #1 at? It is not the Indian Institute of Programming. That’s the IIP (with three campuses in Jammu, Salem and Mumbai).
I think some IITians are not experts at open heart surgery. And we call them the best ? thoooo…Do you know how few IITians have published novels? Shame.
Yeah. Should have known better.
Vinod,
I did not mistake your quoting of Ferguson as your own endorsement of anything he said. My objection is solely to your “Flo-jo” comment. I don’t know whether you think desi women’s lower halves are beautiful or ugly. The thing is – I don’t want to know. What is offensive is that it’s considered OK to say these in a forum where women are present.
I want to point out that I’m certainly not singling you out. This just spilled over from over two weeks of comments of this type. Others (Abhi, I’m looking at you too :-)) and certainly a lot of commenters are out there saying “This is what I like in a woman’s body” without being asked. As if the media giving us these indirect messages of what is hot weren’t enough.
Just to be clear – I think it’s equally bad if women say it.
Respect and peace.
ps: I otherwise very much like your posts and really appreciate that you keep some ideological balance on SM.
Blog personae are just blog personae and I don’t feel like defending my manhood by continuing to argue on a blog
sorry sahej, shouldn’t had said “your libido” when i was only discussing libido in a very abstract and over-the-top way. for what it’s worth, your position is probably the braver, as i’m only defending the status quo (which is, of course, a product of nature…but i digress again) and you’ve risked the wrath of not only misogynists like me but also 2nd and 3rd wave feminists.
these water aren’t easy to navigate, but i’m sure you could teach colonel jai and i some tricks.
Tru Dat. It’s not like I’m out every night drinking whisky in strip bars…sometimes I order a Martini.
Manju,
There’s no hard feelings and it was more than a little funny. Its not guts so much as repetitive stupidity, but what the hell
An account I read a while ago indicated that in the pre-1857 days, there was indeed a fair amount of socializing between the British “white knights” and Desi women on the Subcontinent. Not to say that relations were uniformly or even predominantly cordial– in Bengal at least, which had suffered about 10 million people killed after the East India Company went mega-mercantilist on the region in the late 1700’s, any association with the Company was, shall we say, unconducive to gettin’ it on. Most of the Anglo “going native” stories I’ve encountered were in other parts of India with the roaring 1820’s and 1830’s in particular, as the major periods in which mixin’ it up took place.
OTOH, after 1857 and the Indian rebellion, the party was pretty much over. It wasn’t just that Englishwomen were being brought in (this had been occurring in the prior decades too)– it’s just that after the spectacle of Brits hanging villagers from trees and blowing apart Brahmins strapped to cannons after the Rebellion was put down, it was a little difficult for the colonialists and those inferior dark-skinned hordes under them to associate in such a way anymore.
It’s interesting that Niall Ferguson is mentioned here, since he (and other imperial apologists of late) really do tend to downplay the unbelievably sanguinary ultraviolence of the Raj. The British committed atrocities in India after 1857 that rival anything the Gestapo or the Bolsheviks committed later, and in terms of sheer numbers killed the British in India alone, if anything exceed them.
Amartya Sen wasn’t kidding– those famines in late 1800’s that killed 32+ million folks in India, had British intentions written all over them. In the British work camps, Indian work rations were less than what the Nazis allowed for in the concentration camps (Mike Davis wasn’t the first to point this out). The prison facilities on Andaman Island were essentially death camps. And even as Indian mothers and children were shrivelling up and dying slowly and painfully on the streets of Madras, the British were shipping food out of India, taxing us (literally) to death, even imposing price controls at the farmer’s markets.
All of this was occurring of course, even as the British were just about wiping out the native populations of Australia, Tasmania and New Zealand (putting a bounty on the head of the natives tends to do that), tossing Boer women and kids into concentration camps that killed 30,000, committing their latest atrocities in Ireland, working Africans to death in the sub-Saharan diamond mines, later terror-bombing people in Somalia and Iraq. Even outside of their Empire, in e.g. China (which was never colonized and where the troops actually did manage to beat up on the Brits, French and Americans in some lesser-known engagements after 1842 and 1860), the British caused a royal mess– forcing Indian opium onto the Chinese people while burning down the beautiful imperial Summer Palace in the Opium Wars. The Victorians and their successors were a murderous, genocidal bunch. It’s no accident that the word “loot” is of Hindi origin.
That’s why I’ve long found it rather odd to argue that India was fortunate for having the British rather than the Nazis as rulers– for a very large section of Britain’s history in India, the Brits were more vicious and bloodthirsty than even the worst of the 20th-century dictators. And in 1930’s Germany at least, there was no democracy and free press after Hitler took power (and he never won anything close to a majority vote, as is sometimes falsely claimed– he manipulated Parliamentary politics after getting only a minority of the votes) and it’s unclear how much the people as a whole knew about the worst of the atrocities, plus Germany at the time was acting from a position of relative poverty and political weakness (Germany was only the most minor of colonial powers) and, even with all this being said, modern Germans very much abhor their country’s prior imperialistic and warlike acts in the 20th century.
Whereas the Brits in the 19th century committed their genocides and atrocities during a period when the people had some form of representative government and a good deal of prosperity, and even today, British folks like Niall Ferguson try to make excuses for what was a viciously genocidal and violent enterprise, that utterly wrecked the industries, economies and agriculture of India, among other places. In fact, the countries in the 19th century that made out best were the ones who defeated the British in battle– the Afghans, the South Americans (Brits got a nasty comeuppance around the Rio de Plata around 1804 or so), the Egyptians (Mohammed Ali), even the Haitians who defeated a British invasion in 1793 and were among the wealthier of the former colonies (though French and later American meddling there didn’t help matters). (Afghanistan was a surprisingly wealthy and culturally rich place in the 19th century, despite having truly crummy geography.)
In the 20th century of course, it’s notable that most colonies decolonized very much unlike India, i.e. with very violent struggle and defeat of the British in war, and that they later advanced economically and politically only after they’d tossed off the British yoke– Ireland in 1921 (Anglo-Irish War), Egypt, Israel, Cyprus and Aden after WWII.
This crap about the British as “civilizers” has always been little more than a bunch of carefully propagated lies. It’s a damn shame that Britain still has apologists trying to tell them.