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But he's right; I don't know if I would call it colonialist, but you are applying your current perspective of how the poor lives to a culture extremely far removed from our own. I think our current situation of extremely disproportional wealth is a new phenomenon and we should be careful in blindly applying our current viewpoints backwards. India has always been an extremely fertile and arable continent; it isn't far fatched that being massaged in oil could have been widespread.
Isn’t it more an old phenomenon coming back? All over Europe you had the kings, which were very rich, under them a rich upper class with big houses and staff, tradesmen as the middle class and peasants doing all the work living in extreme poverty.
That's a weird view.
(Urban) tradesmen were sort-of next to peasants, not above them. And many parts of Europe had quite wealthy peasants during many periods.
someone was doing the massaging, and it wasn't the same people who were being massaged