Colonial empires deployed subject peoples only as locals, never as transferable rulers

Evidence

It is true that Indian officials were employed in Burma; but Burma was administratively part of British India until 1937. Indians also served in subordinate capacities – especially in the police – in British Malaya and Singapore, but they served as ‘locals’ and ‘immigrants’, i.e. were not transferable ‘back’ to India’s police forces. Note that the emphasis here is on officials: Indian labourers, merchants, and even professionals, moved in sizeable numbers to British colonies in Southeast Asia, South and East Africa, and even the Caribbean. — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 415

Categorization

• XREF: Concrete mechanism of the Barmecide feast: non-transferability encodes who belongs where — a racialized bureaucratic logic the Islamophobia field’s biopolitics readings will parallel. — connects to: Colonial administrators used assimilated natives as agents to erode national culture — Frantz Fanon, A Dying Colonialism, 244; Transferring civil servants on clan grounds only strengthens tribalism

Broader Connections

• Colonial administrators used assimilated natives as agents to erode national culture #complicates (0.85) — Frantz Fanon, A Dying Colonialism, 244
• Transferring civil servants on clan grounds only strengthens tribalism #exemplifies (0.80)