Did the rise of scientific racism lead to notable changes in colonial policy in British India, French Algeria, or Dutch Indonesia?

I have examined this topic in the past, with a specific focus on the British Army (I use that term broadly here for the sake of simplicity) and its use of 'martial races' in British India, as well as the relationship between caste and race. My finding was essentially that, yes the rise of scientific racism did lead to notable changes but that the groundwork had already been laid so to speak, scientific racism for the most part provided backing/evidence for pre-existing practices and beliefs. I quote here an essay I wrote on the subject, with what I believe to be irrelevant (to this question) paragraphs omitted:

"Although the British may at first have relied primarily on rather primitive racial discourse, as European racial science developed, so too did the ‘martial race’ theory and ideas of Indian races generally, particularly to add scientific legitimacy to the notion of certain Indian ‘races’ as being a ‘close other’. One of the key reasons for the spread of more biologically based (although still pseudo-scientific) ideas and the eventual overwhelming dominance of the martial races was the impending conflict between Britain and other European powers but especially Russia. As ‘The Great Game’ with Russia intensified, the British were very clearly exposed to the fact that Indian troops may be needed for more than simply policing India and preventing native unrest. In particular, the experience of the British in Afghanistan during the fairly disastrous Second Anglo-Afghan War (1878-1880) showed that only certain troops could be relied upon when facing significant and determined ‘native’ (Afghan) opposition. When faced with racially European opposition, it was difficult to imagine the remaining non-martial races offering any effective resistance. Field Marshall Lord Roberts (Commander in Chief of India 1885-1893) observed during the war that “except for Gurkhas, Dogras , Sikhs…there are no Native soldiers in our service whom we could venture to place with safety in the field against the Russians”. Although Roberts was a military man, the martial race theory and strategy was now also deeply embedded within the minds of civilian administrators. The Marquis of Lansdowne, Viceroy of India (1888-1894) stated categorically “we should be culpable if we did not endeavour to replace the worst of our Native troops by men recruited from the warlike races”. This sense of unprecedented urgency and threat spurred on the development of biological theory that would not only further legitimise the recruitment of martial races but would actually develop them into ‘Aryan races’, descended in part from Europeans.

The ‘Aryan’ element of martial race theory was actually predicated to an extent on the old caste system and isolation of the martial races. It was essentially determined that as the Indian caste system encouraged endogamy (marrying within an ethnic, class or social group) the Aryan elements had been protected somewhat against degeneration, although they were not as pure as they had once been. However, the Aryans had largely not penetrated to the South of the Subcontinent and the various less sophisticated cultural and climatic factors already outlined had supposedly destroyed the Aryan elements in all but the Northern ‘tribes’, especially those that lived in rugged and harsh conditions. The Gurkhas, whose features (short stature, lack of facial hair, dark complexion) were clearly the opposite of the general conception of an ‘Aryan’, were deemed ‘Aryan’ of course due to the harsh climate they lived in. Rather bizarrely however, their beardlessness, loyalty and simple nature turned them into a ‘child of nature’ with the perspective of a ‘healthy boy’. Compared to the idea of the scheming, depraved Bengali Brahmin, who had tried to maintain his ‘Aryan’ status for reasons of vanity, the Gurkha possessed a relatively pure spirit and blood. The Sikhs remained a religious group rather than a race but the line was further blurred by the fact that Sikhs were almost inevitably ‘pure’ based on their geographic distribution, climatic conditions, religion and the obvious martial proclivity.

The darkest side of the sophistication of martial race theory is naturally what happened to those races that were deemed entirely unsuitable for military service and a danger to British rule. Here we can once again see a clear volte-face on the part of the British following the 1857 rebellion. In short, the castes/tribes/races the British deemed to be unsuited to living under occupation were classified as ‘Criminal Tribes’ by the ‘1871 Criminal Tribes Act’. It was believed that the caste system, as well as protecting ‘Aryan’ elements within certain groups, resulted in others being habitually criminal. This theory highlighted the interaction between ‘race’ and ‘caste’ and how the line between the two was to become essentially non-existent. However, even more insightful for this essay is the fact that certain ‘criminal tribes’ (i.e. those that engaged in obvious banditry, lived a nomadic existence etc.) were excused persecution (although they were classified as ‘criminals’), as long as they had loyally served the British during the rebellion. A prime example is the Bhils or Bheels, a people viewed by the British as bandits but who had remained loyal during the rebellion, before which they had proved their skills in guerrilla warfare against the Mughal Empire."

Sources (originally used in footnotes, numbers are for ease of separation rather than any particular order, if sources are requested for a particular part of the text, I should be able to provide more specific references): 1.George Fletcher MacMunn, The Armies of India (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1911) 2.Dorothy M. Figueira, Aryans, Jews, Brahmins: Theorizing Authority Through Myths of Identity (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002) 3.Heather Streets, Martial Races: The Military, Race and Masculinity in British Imperial Culture 1857-1914 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004) 4.V.R. Rao, Human Origins, Genome and People of India: Genomic, Palaeontological and Archaeological Perspectives (New Delhi: Allied Publishers, 2007) 5.James Minahan, Ethnic Groups of South Asia and the Pacific (Santa Barbara: ABC CLIO, 2012) 6.Rajit K. Mazumder, The Indian Army and the Making of Punjab (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2003) 7. Mark Brown, Penal Power and Colonial Rule (Abingdon: Routledge, 2014)