How Colonial Era Famines still Effect us

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The effects of colonialism on us South Asians has been catastrophic. This is a known fact, and the cultural, moral, material, and even spiritual impact of the white man on the subcontinent has been so detrimental that the effects are being felt to this day. 

Our artifacts still sit in museums in England and bastardized versions of our food is being eaten in English pubs and restaurant (though we would gladly trade the latter for the former). As incredibly baffling as it is, the multitude of invasions and dominations the subcontinent had to face at the hand of outside powers, the slowest and surest ways India had ever been taken over was through trade and political influence. 

Perhaps this was the reason why any and all efforts that we took to remove the outside threat were so disorganized and ineffective-that we were the frog left in tepid water that was slowly boiled instead of being thrown into scalding water at the beginning. In any case, the most influential and shattering of the myriad of outside invasions has been at the hands of the English and the EIC. Most of the subcontinent communicates via English and our militaries still to this day communicate in a distinctly British vernacular, that even being seen as a sign of polish and superiority. 

The same goes for our other institutions and society in general, with fairness creams abound and parents taking pride in their children unable to speak the local language so far as they are able to twist their mouths in an acceptable parroting of the foreigners that came to take everything away from us. The tirade about colonialism is one that any brown/black people are very familiar with, however, there are some more aspects of this that have recently become known to us that stoke this decades and even centuries old anger towards the English and the ills they wrought even further. 

Apparently, the material and spiritual losses that we suffered were not the only ones. Apparently, there have been genetic repercussions of this as well. Research has come out that shows that there have been detrimental effects to the genetics of those facing the conditions created by the White man years ago, and we are paying the price to this day and for years and years to come. 

Background

During the “Age of Discovery”, or as we know it, the age of when the Europeans decided it was time to bring culture to us lesser beings, India came to become a European colony. Vasco da Gama was the first individual to truly open the floodgates for European influence in India. He was the first to re-establish mainstream trade links with India after the Roman collapse, and was able to do so by circumnavigating Africa to reach India via the sea. The rest is a continual downhill of the region at the hands of these European powers (especially at the hands of the English) that we are all too familiar with. 

The Portuguese were followed by the Dutch who landed in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) but the latter were a bit too ham-handed in their approach towards gathering influence in the region, and were beaten back by the Kingdom of Travancore. This was followed by the simultaneous collapse of the Mughal and Marathan Empires and the ingress of the English, Norwegian, and French into the subcontinent. The 17^th century saw these powers gain influence locally via trade agreements and manipulation of smaller, more dependent rulers against one another to gain tracts of land and economically beneficial deals in order to cement their foothold in the region. So much so, that local rulers soon came to be pawns in proxy wars on behalf of the British and the French against one another. This came to a head in 1799 when Tipu Sultan (being backed by the French) was defeated in battle. Thus the British came to be the biggest power in India and it officially became the so-called “jewel in the British Crown”. 

But where does the genetic impact of the British raj come into play? It was not that we became the target of some epigenetic manipulation or some sort of intentional attack with our children in mind, no. This is largely due to the horrific treatment of the local population to the point that we, the children of that population, are actually suffering the consequences to this day. And these are linked to the various famines and malnutrition that the locals suffered due to the negligence and outright malicious policies of the British Raj. 

Famines of the British Raj

From the beginnings of British influence on the Indian populace, there was an outright tinge of cruelty when it came to resource allocation especially when it comes to the distribution of food. The infamous denial of rice policy  of the EIC is one of the first signs of what was to come in the latter end of the British Raj. 

This was followed by a series of famines caused by British negligent and obvious racist policy that caused malnutrition and disease in a population that was already at risk, with a history of low lean mass and susceptibility to famine and malnutrition that was aggravated through these series artificially caused famines. 

World War II saw a heightening of this issue where food crops were redirected to British forces in the war leaving the local populace to essentially starve and die. We were already starvation adapted (or famine adapted) as we faced 31 famines in the 18^th and 19^th century. Then we were subjected to the Bengal famine in 1943 where three million people died of malnutrition. These had a horrific aggravated effect on our genetics where we suffer from horridly low amounts of lean mass and our genetics force us to hold onto fat and badly regulate the modern diet. 

Diabetes and the Thrifty Gene

James Neel, a professor of Human Genetics at the University of Michigan Medical School, proposed the “thrifty genotype” hypothesis in 1962 in his paper “Diabetes Mellitus: A ‘Thrifty’ Genotype Rendered Detrimental by ‘Progress’?” 

Basically, his hypothesis of the thrifty gene has been shown to be true in the modern South Asian populace. India is fast becoming the diabetes capital of the world with Pakistan and Sri Lanka and Bangladeshis suffering similar effects. It is a horrid reality where despite being less fat, and more malnourished, we also suffer the consequences of much worse diets consisting of richer food that we do not even eat. This is because our thrifty gene makes lower lean mass and is worse at regulation. 

This all means that even when skinny, we are going to suffer from diseases associated with obesity. Which is really, really, unfortunate.