Rules Above Blood

Why Westerners are Correctly Suspicious of Feudal Cultures

I recently saw a couple of posts where people tried understanding why Westerners have a distaste for Indians. As an Indian myself I may have some thoughts on this, especially because I have the unique experience of a westernised upbringing, spoke English as my first language (pretty unheard of for a non-Christian in small town India of the 90s) and was at one point called “English Dog” by a senior in high school.

I saw a piece by DeepLeftAnalysis🔸 which seems to start with questioning Hanania’s simplistic take that westerners don’t like Indians because we are dark skinned and don’t play football (mea culpa!). But he then goes on to admitting that this is probably right and that Indians could stand to be more light skinned and do more sportsball :) He did elaborate on further reasons why Indians could be disliked and I personally think it is a good piece. Still, I wrote a note saying that he almost gets it right. Which then behooves me to write my own thoughts, no?

So here’s what I think — the vociferous right and a suspiciously quiet left and liberal factions of the West have an inherent distaste for feudalism, for particularism and that drives their irritation against Indians and many other feudal groups. Even the most racist of substackers often only want the freedom of expression to make racist jokes, not to be racist people, so when they see Indians practice our particular feudalism so openly, it jars.

Westerners believe in Fair Play as the ideal method by which we interact with each other. It can best be described as justice and integrity filtered into daily human interactions. It is what makes people queue up for a bus, or park within the lines, or stand aside on the escalator. This is a belief system that has filtered through centuries of peasant wars all over Europe and America — what was the civil war if not a final stamp in the march against feudalism? It is a belief system that is hard won through successive breaks from the Church, from the Kings, from the Old World, until the greatest achievement of Western Civilization — America as a Republican Democracy.