We are being seduced to believe that colonialism really didn’t happen. This series adds insult to injury. The portrayal of “Kate Sharma” as a countess muddies the waters for those who are already poorly educated in history.
Bridgerton romanticizes the aristocratic society, the Victorian, stiff-upper-lip culture. The elite culture that often treated its own people with such contempt and disdain.
When I refer to the aristocratic society, I don’t mean the common British people, who were left out of the elite privilege.
Not the ones of Charles Dickens novels, not Oliver Twist.
The more likely scenario in the the old British Empire, “Kate” would have been raped or used as a blow-up-doll in her colonial master’s home. Any child she conceived from this union, would have been rejected by both the mainstream Indian culture and the Brits. That child would be called a half-cast and be marginalized. Kate and her child would have learned to self-loathe. They would believe they were less than human for many generations.
Remember how the British colonists referred to Mahatma Gandhi as a “coolie?”
I wonder if these actresses even know who Gandhi was. It is shocking to believe that those who know their past would betray their own history.
During the the British rule, Indian Hindus and Muslims were forcefully divided. These divisions did not exist to the extent they do now prior to colonization. Both Muslims and Hindus valued their shared cultures. They ate together and worshipped together.
Approximately 90% of crops grown by Indian farmers had to be paid in taxes to the British Empire.
Women were often gang raped in the most brutal way by officers. They even killed Indian babies. I can go on and on about the atrocities done to brown bodies by the British elite. That’s another post.
Bridgerton seems like an attempt to whitewash British genocidal past, or it is simply shallow irresponsible story telling. Just as the narrative on the weapons-of-mass-destruction in Iraq is no longer remembered.
No one even remembers those nuclear weapons were NEVER found to this day. Iraq’s destruction happened in the last two decades.
As someone coming from a colonial past, this woke agenda is far more dangerous to our consciousness. How can we hold these elites accountable if we don’t even remember what they did? If our own memories are so vague and the past is lost in the fake stories of Netflix, how do we begin to heal and create a world where integrity, community, justice and love can reign again?
