Comments by "" (@RedXlV) on "A Tale of Two Islands" video.

@heinzdoof1575 The "Hindu" caste system in form known today doesn't actually originate from Hinduism. It's a creation of the British colonial administration. They took what was previously a looser concept of castes (not all that different from how class stratification develops in every society) and made it a much more rigid system. This was one of the ways the British divided the Indian people in order to prevent any unified rebellion from developing. They also deemed some Indian ethnic groups to be "martial races" who were to be used as colonial troops but always kept uneducated so they wouldn't be able to command armies. While other races that the British deemed "more intellectual" and less loyal to the colonizers were to be kept out of the military and derided as cowards so that nobody would follow them. And then when Britain left India, they opted to divide it into two nations (one of them, Pakistan, not even being contiguous, which would cause massive problems for what later seceded to become Bangladesh) on purely religious lines between Muslim and Hindu regions. Completely ignoring the Sikh religion, and also ignoring regions like Bengal with a long history of identifying more on the basis of shared ethnicity than religion. All because once they decided they were through with colonialism, Britain just wanted to abandon the mess they'd created as quickly as possible and leave it purely the Indians' problem to solve.
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