The whole 'British Raj started the caste system' is revisionist Indian nonsense because they don't like to accept they were practicing color based racism 1000s of years ago. It's typical blame whitey bullshit that of course liberals and anti colonialist types swallow whole because the poor little Indians could have never have invented something so vile, could they?
'Varna' itself means 'color' and I suppose the fact that there are millions upon millions of dark skinned Dalits and millions of light skinned brahmins is entirely coincidental? You think the British turning up and governing for a few hundred years with very little intermixing is what caused that demographic change? Get real.
While it's true to say that the British exploited caste divisions in order to more effectively divide and conquer the idea that they themselves added the racial element is nonsense. The vedic tradition of Varna goes right back to the Aryan invasion of India.
No, you are completely and totally wrong. First of all I never said the British created the caste system. That predates British colonization of India however it was NOT based on skin color and credible scholars who actually know how to read Vedic texts have not only refuted that idea but the entire Aryan Invasion of India Theory itself. I don't think you even bothered to read the link. While there is a North-South cline in skin color in India skin color is not caste specific and there is no evidence that ancient Indian writing promotes racism or colorism. That is an idea that Europeans imposed on India and which White Supremacists continue to perpetuate. You've basically fallen for some pseudo-historical, Neo-Nazi, racist propaganda which has no basis in fact. Now if you are going to challenge me on this issue provide a credible source of your own that supports your claims or you will be accused of basing you beliefs on internet garbage. You might also try reading the article that I cited before mindlessly dismissing it.
Here are a few things that you missed:
1. Colorism in the western countries emerged with the belief of alleged attached superiority of
white skin of European race who were the power holder for a very long time as against the subverted
class with a darker skin, who were taken as slaves. India however consists of varied color tones of its
subjects ranging from very dark to very fair skin owing to the very different climatic and geographic
conditions. Again, in Indian scenario, power was determined by more than just skin color- factors like
caste and class played vital role in determining the acceptability of a person.
3. While the Indus civilization was coming to its end, the immigrant Aryan race was mixing up
with the early tribals of the region and laying foundation of a new culture in the Northern part of India.
Id. at 22. At the same time, in the Southern region, Dravidian culture was flourishing. There are also
studies establishing traces of Mongolian race in the Eastern Indian regions etc.
5. Ancient texts like Mahabharat, Ramayan, and Rigveda depict dark skinned heroes. See, e.g.,
Sandeep Balakrishna, The Indian Conception of Skin Colour, CENTRE RIGHT INDIA (19 Apr. 2013),
http://centreright.in/2013/04/the-indian-conception-of-skin-color/#.VW6OpEatFVc; See also, e.g.,
Whiteness, Complexion and Skin Color,
http://www.livinghindu.com/whiteness-complexion-skincolor/
(Dec. 25, 2012).
6. Varna: The literal meaning in Sanskrit describes it as color; however, in ancient Vedic texts it
was used alternatively for a ‘category.’ Concise Oxford English Dictionary, OXFORD ENGLISH
DICTIONARY 1601 (12th ed. 2011). So, understanding Varna in the context of color is misleading. It
was used as a classification under which a lot of Jati’s were included.
Now don't lose sight of what I am saying here. I am not saying that White people are inherently evil. I am not saying that only White people can be racist nor am I saying that it is impossible for cultures other than those in Europe to develop a concept of racism or to perpetuate it. I am saying that while other cultures noticed differences like skin color they did not use these superficial traits as a basis for social hierarchy the way Europeans did. Racism is a relatively recent phenomenon in human history that has its roots in European colonialism. Many people of European descent saw themselves as superior and developed the concept of race to rationalize their position in the world as founders of civilization and conquerors which they believed was part of a natural order. Not only did they invent this idea they tried to ascribe this concept to ancient cultures such as those in India and Egypt which many modern scholars recognize have no basis in historical fact.
All of this is covered in the book that I referenced and here is a relevant excerpt:
While the Mortonites represented the science of polygenic racism in America, racist theories also were brewing in Europe. The most prominent European biological determinist who was motivated by ideas about race during the time of the American School of Anthropology was the frenchman Joseph-Arthur, comte de Gobineau (1816-1882), author of a number of novels and nonfiction history books. His most influential work,
Essai sur l'inégalité des races humaines, was published in four volumes from 1853 to 1855 (Gould 1996) and thus was contemporary with
Types of Mankind. It was immensely popular in Europe and America in the late nineteenth and well in to the twentieth century and in fact outlived the Mortonites' text. With Josiah Nott's assistance, a selectively abridged version of the first two volumes of this book was translated into English in 1856 under the title of
The Moral and Intellectual Diversity of Races (Biddiss 1970; Brace 2005). Nott (1856) wrote a long appendix to this translation. Ultimately, Gobineau's Essai played an important role in Hitler's racial philosophy and horrific politics. Gould (1996, 379) referred to Gobineau as the grandfather of modern academic racism and "the most influential academic racist of the nineteenth century."
Gobineau had a loose relationship to French aristocracy and although he had no proper right to it, he adopted the title of "comte" (Count). He served most of his life as an official in the French diplomatic service, but his aspirations and claim to nobility colored Gobineau's views of the world. He saw the overthrow of the aristocracy during the French Revolution in 1789 as a major symptom of an ongoing deterioration of civilization (Bidiss 1970; Poliakov 1971). In fact, during the eighteenth century, prior to the French Revolution, many writers had set out to explain why certain groups had a divine to superior status, or nobility. One of these renditions was the "Nordic" myth that may have begun with the writings of an earlier French nobleman, Henri comete de Boulainvilliers (1658-1722) (Poliakov 1971; Smedley 1999). In this myth, the noble classes of Europe were thought to be originally German Franks and Anglo-Saxons, and Germanic peoples were claimed as most superior. In this argument, the claim of superiority had shifted from being theologically based to being more dependent on biological qualities, although these qualities were seen to be divinely endowed. These writers proposed an inherent biological superiority of those in power. As Smedley (1999, 254) states: "The racial theories of Henri de Boulainvilliers was essentially rooted in the class conflicts of the times, but they carried the invidious notion that each class had distinct and unalterable hereditary qualities derived from separate origins. The weaker classes were naturally inferior to the stronger and owed obedience to them."
Through these writings, there was a popular belief in France that three racial strains inhabited the country: Nordics, Alpines, and Mediterraneans. The light-skinned, tall, blond Nordics were assumed to be the descendants of Germanic tribes, the originators of all civilization, and the only peoples capable of leadership. Gobineau's Essai expressed these popular myths vividly and inserted these views into the popular science of the day. His book fed a developing idea that not only were whites superior over all others but also that a certain group among whites was even more superior to other whites. He used the term Aryan, coined by a British colonial administrator, to designate the common ancestral language of what is now referred to as the Indo-European language. Around 1819, the term began to gain widespread authority due to the lectures and writings of Friedrich Schlegel, a German poet and scholar. The most influential promoter of the Aryan myth was Jacob Grimm, of Brothers Grimm's fairytales fame, in his
History of the English Language (1848), which reached a large public audience in the second half of the nineteenth century (Poliakov 1971). Gobineau, however, attributed innate biological and behavioral qualities to Aryan speakers (Biddiss 1970; Brace 2005). He argued that there was a hierarchy of language that corresponded with a hierarchy of races and that race was the driving force of human history. The "Aryan" race was supreme and constituted an aristocratic caste. However, his views were mainly a synthesis of currently popular ideas (Weindling 1989). For example, anti-Semiticism, existed in Germany long before the Aryan myth, and this just gave the myth a stronger hold (Poliakov 1971). As the historian Leon Poliakov (1971, 233) pointed out, "Gobineau merely systematized in a very personal way ideas which were already deeply rooted in his time. His own contribution consisted mainly in his pessimistic conclusion, which sounded like the death knell of civilization."
To Gobineau, the Aryans were the most noble, intelligent, and vital branch of the white race. Thus, he essentially created a fictitious race of which he imagined himself a member (Hankins 1926). As Marks (1995, 66) stated: "His general theory of the rise and fall of civilization by recourse to the different inborn propensities of human groups, his isolation of the single group responsible for all civilizations, and his identification of cultural decadence and decline with biological admixture, was an original synthesis and made his theory attractive for its simplicity and apparent scholarship." In his Essai, Gobineau proclaimed that the success of civilization was directly dependent upon purity of "Aryan" blood within it. Those designated Aryans were seen to be the founders of civilization; as more interbreeding occurred, the genius for civilization declined and dissipated. Gobineau believed that the white races, and especially the Aryans, could remain in command only if they could eliminate interbreeding with the morally and intellectually inferior yellow and black peoples (Gobineau 1856).
Source: The Myth of Race: The Troubling Persistence of an Unscientific Idea Chapter 1. Early Racism in Western Europe p. 36-38