Who are the Boston Brahmins? The Term Resurfaces after Peter Navarro’s Sinister Comments

New Delhi: India has reacted sharply to Peter Navarro’s sinister comments, after Donald Trump's trade adviser accused “Brahmins” of profiteering from the country’s oil purchases from Russia. Speaking to Fox News, Navarro shocked the world by saying that “Brahmins were profiteering at the expense of Indian people” – remarks that have drawn criticism across the political spectrum.  

It is not the first time Navarro has made insulting remarks against India. His claim that New Delhi was “nothing but a laundromat for the Kremlin” had already ruffled feathers in New Delhi, casting a shadow over ties between two nations that frequently call each other “natural allies.”

Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Priyanka Chaturvedi condemned the comments, writing on X: “Invocation of a particular caste identity in India to make his point, even if it is to imply the ‘privileged lot’ vis-a-vis the rest, is shameful and sinister.”

Yet Navarro’s choice of words has also triggered a spike in searches for “Boston Brahmins” – a phrase coined in the 19th century by American writer Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

A patrician elite in New England 

The Boston Brahmins were not Hindu priests, despite the name, but the white Protestant aristocracy of New England. Families like the Adams, Lowell, Cabot and Lodge traced their lineage to early English settlers, and by the 19th century had become the cultural, political and academic establishment of Boston. 

They endowed universities, libraries and museums, most famously Harvard, and cultivated an image of restraint, civic duty and moral seriousness. As Holmes’s phrase implied, they were also an insular group. A famous quip captured the clubbishness of their world: 

“The Lowells speak only to Cabots, and the Cabots speak only to God.”

Critics saw them as aloof guardians of privilege, hostile to Irish Catholics, immigrants and the city’s working class. Yet they also produced writers, politicians and philanthropists whose influence stretched across the United States. Today, the term lingers as a cultural reference to an elite whose sway has faded as Boston has become more diverse. 

The Coldplay Controversy

If you remember, Kristin Cabot and Andy Byron’s loving moment at the Coldplay concert that later turned into a soap opera, you might have a better understanding of the word Boston Brahmin. For the uninitiated, Cabot, the HR head of Astronomer, and Byron, the then-CEO, were caught in a loving embrace at the concert when the cameras put the spotlight on them. Soon, the world found out that the couple were separately married and were leading one of America’s top data firms.

So why Kristin Cabot now? Kristin is married to Andrew Cabot, a descendant of the prestigious Cabot family — one of Boston’s super-rich families with a storied lineage. Author Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. coined the term Boston Brahmins in reference to the elite Cabot family, likening them to India’s highest caste, the Brahmins.

The scandal revived interest in Boston’s Cabot lineage, a family long associated with the term “Boston Brahmins.” Holmes’s coinage – meant to capture the hauteur and exclusivity of Boston’s old elite – continues to surface in moments both serious and frivolous.

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