I asked if this was a holdover from colonialism and V says he doesn't think so. I had to explain what I meant anyway, though as soon as I explained, he nodded vigorously. What I don't get from V is any sense that there is much resentment over colonialism. Inded, there was, rather, resentment over those who wanted to drum up resentment. He thinks that the caste hierarchy has always glorified the Eurpean of IndoEuropeans. That the upper castes were always lighter and more european because of rather ancient human history -- which I have bothered to look up to see if this was so. Something about Indo-eurpean history, anyway.
No expert either, but for the two men I work with (which is just told as a side note, not representative of anything), it is an issue and, when I ask about it, they don't see any shame in it being an issue, either. They're dark and it's too bad they aren't lighter but dems da breaks, so you work harder at having more money. I was kind of amazed that the conversation was so casual. The interesting thing is, they don't seem to select wives or point to women they find attractive on the basis of skin color. Rather, they see it as something they, as males, are measured by. It's weird. Women are measured by other things -- and for V, the traditional things are, of course, altered by the presence of other issue. His desire to stay in the US means he thinks more carefully about a wife who will bear having tohave no job. Which means that he wants to find an Americanized Indian woman or an American b/c he's pretty certain that a woman from India would be able to stand having nothing to do all day. Which would be fine were there children, but V's decided that there are to be no children right away -- a huge departure from his brother who was whooping it up to see to it that his new bride was pregnant within days of the wedding. Patriarch looked to V for more of the same and V informed him: no.
btw, I notice that, with K, who's from Hyderabad, which seems to mean a lot -- the north /south distinction in India -- that the piousness of religiosity is very much like that seen in the u.s. V is no less devout than K, but K, from the south, is mortified that anyone drinks or smokes or sleeps together when not married. V merely blushes over the sleeping together and will drink and smoke, though he's careful to do so in small quantities. The beliefs still haunt him, IOW, but he's feeling pressured on two fronts: India's elite and Americanization directly in the US.
V will laugh that his father would be mortified at his smoking, he'll do so not long after standing near my car, waiting for me, striking a pose in his sunglasses, trying to look like an actor posing for a shot, smoking and looking "cool". The beer? eh? Not so much glamour built up around it, so he simply has one every early evening with his first meal of the night, what we've come to call the "warm up meal": 4 eggs, veggies and a huge paper plate piled high with potato chips. Always, a beer.
Beer is not accompanied by stories of the patriarch's disapproval.
On the other hand, K from the south, when K's eyes grow wide to learn that someone he otherwise likes and/or respects, does something he considers wrong, he has been quick to correct anyone and say that _smoking_ is bad, not the person. If anyone should suggest that K thinks someone is bad because they smoke, he jumps right in to make that supposedly comforting distinction.
lo! "love the sinner, hate the sin!" :)
I also notice that attitudes like those of K are scorned by the more Americanized Indians at work. I can't tell whether it's out of embarrassment, like a second generation immigrant in the US is often embarrassed by a first generation relative's behavior or opinions or if it's more about internal struggle in India, the more "wordly and secularized" part of the country and more worldly and secularized castes looking down on their country bumpkin countrymen. I'm sure it's a complicated combination of both plus more. E.g., I notice that V is very devout and committed to the principles of his faith but that he also denounces Indians as very superstitious and thinks this isn't good. He also denounces those aspects of India culture that have made lives horrible for women there, though I wonder if he was bringing this up a lot because he could see, from my books, that I was a feminist.
I will debauche poor K, though. Next weekend, I'm taking him to Costco or Sam's Club. He asked that I would. That or we'll take him to the military base, to the commissary. Then, he wants a car, so I have to teach him to drive! I'll ruin that man before his next trip back to India.