lbo-talk-digest V1 #4706

[Wojtek Sokolowski]

At 11:48 AM 8/9/01 -0400, ravi wrote:
>Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:
>
>> At 09:51 AM 8/9/01 -0500, Michael wrote:
>> 
>>>The Brits certainly milked sati for all the propaganda value it was worth,
>>>
>> but any notion that they "suppressed" it has to be taken with all the
>> grains of salt you can afford, given the heavily taxed imperial salt
>> monopoly.  It's simply an urban legend that sati was anything like a
>> universal practice, even in Bengal, before the Brits got there.  Even the
>> Brits saw it from the first as a practice of particular high-caste groups.
>> And there's the rub.  Since the Brits were also engaged in sorting out who
>> was high-caste and who was low-caste (and treating them accordingly), they
>> created perverse incentives for the more widespread practice of sati.
>> After all, if your widows threw themselves on funeral pyres, it was prima
>> facie evidence for the Brits that your caste was twice-born.
>> 
>> Yeah, that's it, the man made them do it.  
>> Wife burning in India is also an urban legend, I presume.
>> 
>
>
>
>you sarcasm is well received. i presume we should start bombing
>new delhi forthwith?
>

The target of sarcasem was not New Delhi but the tendency in the American
discourse to exonerate pet minority groups from culpability by portraying
them as vicitms of outside threat or aggression.  The argument goes as
follows: "whatever group X is doing, no matter how reprehensible, is
justified because this is just a response to grave external threats X faces." 

wojtek