Brown Sahib is a term used to refer to natives of

South Asia South Asia is the southern subregion of Asia, which is defined in both geographical and ethno-cultural terms. The region consists of the countries of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.;;;;; ...

who imitate

Western Western may refer to: Places *Western, Nebraska, a village in the US * Western, New York, a town in the US *Western Creek, Tasmania, a locality in Australia *Western Junction, Tasmania, a locality in Australia *Western world, countries that i ...

—typically

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national id ...

—lifestyle. It is also used to refer to those have been heavily influenced by Western—usually British—culture and thinking. It is mostly used as a derogatory term. By implication, a Brown Sahib goes beyond simply mimicking the Western lifestyle. A Brown sahib will usually have an unfair bias towards West vis-à-vis East. Now, down the years sometimes—albeit rarely—it is used just as an affectionate term for an anglicised south Asian, without any colonial critique.

Details

Brown Sahibs invariably dressed in Western clothes, loved Western food, music and the arts and professed a particular affinity for the

English language English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to t ...

. Though not geographically discrete, they were and are most often found in the three British

presidency town The provinces of India, earlier presidencies of British India and still earlier, presidency towns, were the administrative divisions of British governance on the Indian subcontinent. Collectively, they have been called British India. In one ...

s of

Calcutta Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , the official name until 2001) is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal, on the eastern bank of the Hooghly River west of the border with Bangladesh. It is the primary business, comm ...

Bombay Mumbai (, ; also known as Bombay — the official name until 1995) is the capital city of the Indian state of Maharashtra and the '' de facto'' financial centre of India. According to the United Nations, as of 2018, Mumbai is the sec ...

and

Madras Chennai (, ), formerly known as Madras (List of renamed Indian cities and states#Tamil Nadu, the official name until 1996), is the capital city of Tamil Nadu, the southernmost states and territories of India, Indian state. The largest city ...

, now the cities of Kolkata, Mumbai and Chennai, respectively. They also usually hailed from a higher social stratum than the mixed race

Anglo-Indian Anglo-Indian people fall into two different groups: those with mixed Indian and British ancestry, and people of British descent born or residing in India. The latter sense is now mainly historical, but confusions can arise. The ''Oxford English ...

s. Today they are also often jokingly referred to as '

coconuts The coconut tree (''Cocos nucifera'') is a member of the palm tree family ( Arecaceae) and the only living species of the genus ''Cocos''. The term "coconut" (or the archaic "cocoanut") can refer to the whole coconut palm, the seed, or the ...

' – brown on the outside, white on the inside or more recently

Oreo Oreo () (stylized as OREO) is a brand of sandwich cookie consisting of two biscuits or cookie pieces with a sweet creme filling. It was introduced by Nabisco on March 6, 1912, and through a series of corporate acquisitions, mergers and splits ...

Examples of usage

* "Founder and prophet of the Spadecarriers is 60-year-old

Inayatullah Khan Inayatullah Khan (Pashto/Dari: ), (20 October 1888 – 12 August 1946) was the King of Afghanistan for three days in January 1929. He was the son of former Afghan Emir, Habibullah Khan. Inayatullah's brief reign ended with his abdication. I ...

. A brilliant student at

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge beca ...

, Inayatullah talked

Urdu Urdu (;"Urdu"
''

* with an Oxford accent, became known as "the brown sahib (white man)" in India." — ''Time'' (1941) * "Nor does he want to become one what in Asia is called a 'brown sahib', a person who apes the mannerisms of the British." —William Ivor Jennings, ''The Approach to Self-government'' (1958) * The writer Tarzie Vittachi (a political exile from

Ceylon Sri Lanka (, ; si, ශ්‍රී ලංකා, Śrī Laṅkā, translit-std=ISO (); ta, இலங்கை, Ilaṅkai, translit-std=ISO ()), formerly known as Ceylon and officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is an ...

) subdivided the category into "Brown Sahibs", "Black Knights" and "Off-White Blimps" in his 1962 book.

References

British India Pakistani slang Pakistani English idioms {{SAsia-stub