I had a discussion about this with an Indian colleague some time ago - while we both conceded that the British Empire was far from an entirely benign entity she was pointing out to me that India pre-Empire was a pretty shit place to live for a woman. Utterly inflexible caste structures mandated your place in life from birth to death and for a woman, that place was "having babies".

The British made efforts to smash the Indian caste structure; it seems that in the name of dismantling white privilege some are hankering after their own historic privileges. Anyone complaining about how poorly it served anyone not in the highest caste must obviously just be a racist...

Oh, have faith; they DO have a fundamentalist in charge. I'm just waiting for him to work up the balls enough to declare the banning of both the caste system and suttee as being an anti-Hindu move by white supremacists forcing their wicked culture on real humans, and then relegalizing both with a vengeance. In the name of Hindu pride.

And no, they don't "honour" non-humans. Remember, if you get reincarnated as anything but a human, you failed, and you deserve to be treated badly (which is why you NEVER go to an East Indian veterinarian!) and killing you just gives you a chance to "try again" to be a human. If you tell them their granny is now a cat, they get ANGRY that you just accused their granny of being a piece of shit. This is why they had no problem seeing Prince Charles and friends wipe out the tiger on their behalf (meanwhile, the large cats would be Man's natural enemies, so a tiger eating a human is doing nothing wrong according to its nature. But Hindus are just as human-supremacist as the Christian. And National parks and wildlife preservation/conservation are white ideas, even so.