re: What would India be like now...

I wonder what country you would get when you pressed 1 for English?

Actually a number of Brahmins are South Indians. In fact Brahmins only make up a tiny portion of the Indian population. But when I say there are fair skinned Indians, I mean you will find rich and poor Indians that are fair skinned. Now most North Indians aren't fair skinned but they're on a whole not nearly as dark as South Indians generally are. But you're probably right about the Indo-European part but it's not just the upper class.
Even Hindi has some connections to European languages.

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Like Indonesia

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Where would they be without the Dutch?

Billy Joe Hobert

The British built the Indian rail system and much of the government infrastructure but also looted and pillaged india to the point of financial ruin. The country is a shite hole in many respects mainly because of over population, lack of rural education and massively rampant corruption and civic apathy but is also becoming an economic giant with a top 5 ranked armed forces.

So it's hard to pin what india is really about. About as paradoxical a nation as you can get.

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You do know that discrimination under the caste system was outlawed years ago, right?

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you think this would have happened if not for Western influence in their culture and government?

It happened because of the growth of the massive middle class which in turn happened because of a deep focus on education which was the only way out for the poor.

As for western influence, India until the early 90s was a defacto socialist state. They were very close to Russia from an economic and military perspective. The US backed Pakistan as it's regional ally and soviets backed their old friend India. Western influence is still a relatively recent development and has little to do with the ongoing dismantlement of the caste system.

Barring very very few exceptions, some really idiotic views being expressed here.

All other shite aside, just remember that the British were the main reason for creation of the evil nexus state of Pakistan, providing grass roots to the whole terror movement we see prevalent today.

Whether India would have been better or worse off without British involvement is debatable, but no debate that countries like Pakistan and Bangladesh would not exist were it not for the Brits!

The real question is how nice would India be right now if it still were run by the Brits

Yes but it's more of a class system (wealth gap) than a caste system (religion) now. There are Brahmins (used to be the highest in caste system) that are in the lower class.