Amonth into his new job at the world’s largest renewable energy park in Gujarat’s Rann of Kutch, Anawar Alam was planning his escape. Hired along with 17 others who had travelled with him to work on the construction of a solar project, Alam had hoped that the promised pay and perks would support his family back home on the farm in Bihar. But within two weeks he was having second thoughts.
“Nothing really prepared us for where we would be working or the fact that it was so far from the nearest village. The work was strenuous, the shifts were 12 hours, and we were living in makeshift tents,” says Alam.
“It was incredibly hot, and the contractor kept yelling at us for not working longer or harder, threatening us by saying that he would kill us and no one would even know we had disappeared. But the bigger problem was that he was not paying us on time or in full.”
You mean people treat migrant workers badly on a building site? And no whites, Europens or Arabs in sight either. This is all purely internal to India.
How can this be without any of the paler and therefore evil people?
There’s no-one in the world with less regard for the Indian peasant than middle class and wealthy Indians.
I beg to differ. Have you ever met wealthy Arabs?
Perhaps someone can tell me. Did white people, or the Raj, invent the Indian caste system or the whole Hindu idea of reincarnation being required to advance in it, therefore Untouchables?
Was it us?
No. It’s several thousand years old.
The usual story is that there were the original inhabitants (how original, as with American Indians, well, who knows) who are now the darker skinned southerners – “Dravidic” I think? The north of the country – and where “north” ends has been a moveable feast over the millenia – was invded and conquered by “Aryans”. The originals, not Hitler’s blue eyed blondes. They are lighter skinned. And in order to maintain their social preeminence over the millennia they instituted the caste system. Us, we Brahmins, we’re tops. You darkies in the fields and the shithouses, you’re the bottom. And this is inherited. And we’ll never shag or marry across those boundaries.
It’s worked very well too – the social distinctions of 2k, 3k years ago are still seen in today’s descendants.
That might be wrong in part but that is the general sense of it.
A comparison to us would be if it were still true that Normans only married Normans, only Normans could have a horse, or a castle, or own land, Anglo Saxons were just peasant scum. A thousand years later.
You know, if England were like Wales.
So it’s wasn’t White Colonialism wot did this? I’m shocked, I tell you.
As an aside, this is yet another inconvenient instance of people venerating paler skin, without us actual whiteys being involved at all. Funny, that.
There’s also a good explanation for that too. Think of Lizzie Bennet (one of the Austen characters at least) mithering about bonnets and you’ll get freckles.
Tans, freckles, were signs that you were an oik, working outdoors. White skin that you were a posho sitting in drawing rooms.
This lasted right up until oik work moved indoors, no heavy lifting, and a tan was a sign that you were a posho able to fly off to the sunshine. Within a heartbeat society decided that tanned was better than pale – tanning salons, spray on tans, showing off the skiiing tan in Jan etc etc etc.
What was the rickets situation among the English landed gentry, I wonder?
An amusing element of Tim’s retelling is that it was indeed white colonialism wot did it. Just not the white colonialism still just about in living memory.
Ironically, its was the White Colonialists that put an end to some of the worst excess of Indian ‘culture’.
Did I say ironically? I mean, those evil white people put an end to culturally important festivals like widows being burnt alive. Basically genocide it was.
It sounds like the sort of thing that should be of interest to trannies: Rann of Kutch.
This just in – working conditions in poor countries suck.
Workers say that as a result, most return home after a few months, losing wages and opportunities in a sector that is seen as key to creating green jobs.
Nobody has ever found these promised “well paid” “green jobs”, but maybe if we give rich people another few billion in subsidies for handcrafted artisanal electricity, they’ll magically appear?
Their cricket teams are pretty good. Do you have to be a Brahmin to play, or are street sweepers allowed?