THE COLOUR BAR IN BRITAIN [To the Editor of TirE
SPECTATOR.]
Sin,—This colour bar of which Mr. Karaka complains is merely history repeating itself, The Aryan invaders of India, now the Hindus, were originally white, and they intended caste to protect themselves from too close associa- tkm with the coloured races whom they found inhabiting India when they arrived. Caste is an infinitely stricter and more inhuman bar to intercourse than the colour bar between Englishmen and Indians. .
Actually culture has little to do with it—he would be a bold man who could compare' the 'culture of an educated Indian unfavourably with his own—the real bar is the different status of women.
Equality of status between Englishmen and Indians would
involve the admission of Indians on an equal status with ourselves with our own women ; that is what gives us pause. Indians cannot but look on our women as they do on their own ; naturally they are at liberty to treat their women as they like, and the method they adopt is entirely their own affair, but equality of status would also involve free inter-marriage between the two races. Once married to an -Indian an Englishwoman would find herself in the same position as an Indian woman, and that is what we wish to avoid.
There are, of course, exceptions to every rule, but, in the main, it is this difference of glatus between the women of the two nations which is the; basis of the colour bar.—! am,
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