A head scarf became a symbol of backwardness, of being uneducated and under pressure from conservative husbands.
By 1906 he had come to view the mandarin bureaucracy and the Vietnamese monarchy as symbols of a backwardness that would forever prevent technological progress and the development of an autonomous state.
One of the right-wing tropes about Islam in Europe, which is making alarming inroads into the mainstream, is that it represents a "culture of backwardness, of retardedness, of barbarism" and has made no contribution to Western civilization.
For every story about feudalism, caste repression and the ongoing backwardness of a largely rural country, Mr Das counters with optimism about a bright, fast-rising, urban middle class.
I kept waiting for him to catch my eye in the middle of one of his clinical descriptions and shake his head over the backwardness of a society obsessed with virginity and prostitution.
Most of "The Known World," which takes its title with irony from a 300-year-old map and reflects the backwardness of such a document, is set on Henry's plantation.
During her stay at CES from January through May 2012, she will work on a project that examines the backwardness of the German market for socially responsible investment.
From time to time, he would break into pidgin English to drive home a political point about the backwardness of Africa or the corruption of its leaders.
For Bin Laden, as for the grand masters of the Assassins, the technical backwardness of the Middle East is not a hindrance but a tremendous opportunity.
Starting from the assumption that blasphemy can exist only in a backward society, critics point to blasphemy as evidence of the backwardness of entire religious cultures.
