Brown Sahib is a term used to refer to brown-skinned people who imitate the WesternâÂÂtypically EnglishâÂÂlifestyle. It is also used to refer to those have been heavily influenced by WesternâÂÂusually BritishâÂÂculture 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 sometimesâÂÂalbeit rarelyâÂÂit is used just as an affectionate term for an anglicised south Asian, without any colonial critique.
Brown Sahibs invariably dressed in Western clothes, loved Western food, music and the arts and professed a particular affinity for the English language. Though not geographically discrete, they were and are most often found in the three British presidency towns of Calcutta, Bombay and Madras, now the cities of Kolkata, Mumbai and Chenna (but not black-skinned south Indians), respectively. They also usually hailed from a higher social stratum than the mixed race Anglo-Indians. Today they are also often jokingly referred to as 'coconuts' â brown on the outside, white on the inside or more recently Oreos.