Colonial officials racialized the Karen as superior and quasi-British to justify their loyalty

Evidence

Their loyalty was mixed with nothing less than reverence for the white colonists. As the first Karen convert to Christianity put it: “Through the goodness of God, my nation, sons of the forest and children of poverty, ought to praise thy nation, the white foreigners, exceedingly; and we ought to obey your orders.” This “favored group,” as the Bengali civil servant expressed it, was not of indigenous stock. “The skin is naturally fair, like that of the Chinese; and the features of those of pure blood are Caucasian in type—a characteristic which has been deemed by some to support their claim to have been one of the lost tribes of Israel.” The Karen were not only perceived as being racially superior; their very traditions seemed almost British in nature. Their religious practices were considered so akin to British ones that they “could be recited with propriety in any Christian church in England.” Their culture, too, was reminiscent of British culture: “their music is nearly all wild and plaintive like that of the Scottish and Welsh highlanders.” — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 323

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to how colonizers manufactured racial affinity with subject peoples as a governance tool — parallels the ‘favored minority’ dynamic in Burmese/colonial contexts and modern ‘model minority’ constructs.
• SHARE: The detail that Karen music was likened to Scottish and Welsh highlander music to prove British affinity would delight anyone into colonial racial theory.