Black as Evil

[S Roy]

The etymology of black and white in "hindoo" context is rather interesting
- the common words for them being "kala" and "gora" respectively. While the
former is,putatively, derived from mal etc and may well have a dravidian
(tamil) origin, the latter appears related to gaura,gaur etc (the ancient
city in bengal/bihar area?)
moreover, the grouping of brahmins themselves is,historically, split along
the Vindhyan range as typified by the pancha gaura in the north and pancha
dravida in the south with the konkanastha being an exception (Only 3
groups, as far as i know, are meat-eaters and are in the periphery)
while white (zveta,zukla,dhavala,gaura) etc was, evidently, much prized in
ancient india, a trace of brownness in the hair- much like the red hair in
the north-west Europe - was thought very unbeautiful and inauspicious (The
wonder that was India, Basham).
In modern india, kala/kallu/kalia etc do not signify, or evoke, same degree
of contempt implicit in blacky/nigger etc in europe/america for obvious
reasons and such terminology is considered "normal" and stated matter-of-
factly.However, much like the western world, the negative association
persists as in "kala-pani","kali-kaluti","kala-dil","kala-akchar","kala-
bhaisa etc...