The White Tribes’ Pride and Prejudice

Or Who Decides What is Primitive and Barbaric and What is Enlightened and Advanced?

Erasure of the Artists Who are People of Colour: Photo is of a painting lodged in the British Museum not’ by’ British Library on Unsplash

I had a ton of things to do this Monday morning but, I could not stop myself from reading another of Andrei Tapalgo’s articles. The title fascinated me: ‘The Tribe Where Women Raise Their Husbands’. I confess I didn’t even try to resist but immediately dived into the article!

As a student of social anthropology, I’ve always been motivated to understand the rich panoply by which we human beings fulfil our needs and express our aspirations and the huge variations in social arrangements that ensue across time and space, across all the continents and over many generations.

So it was indeed, fascinating to read Tapalgo’s well-researched article about how in North India, a practice developed whereby the norm was that a 25–30 year old woman, would marry a boy aged around 10–12 and only on maturity would they actually consummate the marriage. The understanding in this ancient culture, is that while the male is a boy/teenager, his wife teaches and takes care of him; and then, when she is older and more infirm, it’s his responsibility to take care of her.

Looking at the way millions of women under the patriarchal systems are often abandoned, lonely and poverty-striken…