California accuses Cisco of job discrimination based on Indian employee's caste
reuters.com
reuters.com
(That's what the 'More' links at the bottom of large threads point to)
I had a guy on my team who was very capable but did not have the right last name, he was being harassed for promotions for 4-5 years. On the other hand the manager class was entirely "jain, gupta, sharma, verma". I know of a specific case where the same manager had one of his relatives transferred from another branch and then promoted to manager on a different team in the same branch. This was all very hush-hush, I know of it because I overheard them talking about it. This is not some local tidbit software company, this is a company you HAVE heard about.
But it is not just caste based discrimination. There's also linguistic and region based discrimination because there is a lot of regional and linguistic diversity in India. If you travel a few hundred miles in any direction, the language and culture completely change. I have seen teams being formed around states and languages, and they will not let anyone else come into their in group. I have seen teams with extreme left ideologies that will not let anyone else in their team.
I don't believe dalits are any different, they also engange in these practices when they can and I know about people who have suffered from that situation as well.
Everyone's naked in this bath house.
He chose "Charles de Gaulle." This was 30 years ago, I don't remember if he was successful.
https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/washington-the-bla...
I hope he got the name, a good job, and maybe some sort of award for "French Person of the Year".
> Male Sikhs generally have Singh ("lion") as their middle or last name, though not all Singhs are Sikhs. Likewise, female Sikhs have Kaur ("princess") as their middle or last name. [1]
In some states, it is impossible to get into good med schools, even if you score 100% in your tests, because there could be only three seats in the open quota, and 4 candidates got 100%
While it is true that the fourth candidate with 100% may not get a seat, the same is true in reserved seats as well. If there are 20 reserved seats and 21 candidates score 100%, the last guy may not get a seat. I don't understand what is that you are calling unfair as.
Yes.
I was responding to "why not change the last name". There is a correlation between some castes and last names, so changing the last name may seem as giving up on the caste-based reservation. ie, a practical reason to retain the family name.
At fist Self-Respect conference held on Feb 1929, Periyar passed a resolution to drop caste names. The press report about the conference reads “The necessity of the resolution to drop caste titles is strengthened because of the practice of discriminating persons on the basis of their names without knowing anything about their character, ability or intelligence. The demand that such discriminatory caste titles and religion-markers are abolished will appeal to all those in favour of unity and equality.” Source: https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/all-in-your-name/arti...
It is rather popular to use the education qualifications after a persons name (like MBA, Masters in Engineering etc), as most seen on wedding invitations behind bride and grooms name, to emphasize on the importance of education and skills as a status marker rather than birth. Example: https://kingofcards.in/media/others/printing/templates/templ...
The major turning point in my life was when I was able to secure a seat at the top technical college of the state through single-window counseling which was introduced by the state govt. the year before. Without that system, I would have applied to individual colleges separately (costs lot of money) and had been at the mercy of racially biased selection committees, dominated by the so called upper castes. I neither had the light skin, nor the deep pockets to pay for a "management seat".
I made use of the best resources at the institution presented by the opportunity I wouldn't have got otherwise. It changed my life forever.
> This was all very hush-hush, I know of it because I overheard them talking about it.
Of course it is. In India, there are some ridiculuous rules related to caste discrimination. For example someone from "lower" caste can sue a person for libel and have him thrown in jail with no FIR. Caste based discrimination is wrong. But arrest-before-FIR is worse and can destroy someone's life.
I know about "victims" who lie about the accusitions in these cases, the local community knows that its a lie but people are still guilty until proven innocent.
I disagree with this, even though I faced such discrimination.
P.S That does not mean discrimination does not take place or that there are no genuine complaints.
> I know about "victims" who lie about the accusitions in these cases, the local community knows that its a lie but people are still guilty until proven innocent.
Both of you are offering anecdotes, and I assume the former far outnumbers the latter, but we would find more anecdotes of the latter on HN, because most Indians here are not low-caste.
P.S That does not mean that discrimination does always take place or that there are no false cases.
>The court also referred to data released by the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment showing that of the 15,638 cases decided by the courts in 2015, 11,024 resulted in acquittals or discharges. Another 495 cases were withdrawn and only 4,119 cases resulted in convictions.
I'm not in India so I have no idea what the truth is. I do know corruption is a problem there and corruption is a hard problem to solve.
I'm also not defending the Indian law, only making clear it is not as fully exceptional as portrayed by some here.
Answering your specific question as to the US and detention without charge or due process: yes, definitely. Guantanamo Bay is an extraterritorial detention centre for supposed terrorists, held without trial and subject to torture, since the prison opened in January 2002. 779 prisoners are acknowledged to have been held at some point, 40 remain. I don't find a statement of longest detention, but that could be as much as 18 years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indefinite_detention#United_St...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_Bay_detention_camp
Tens of thousands of detainees are held by immigration authorities, with nearly 400,000 having been booked into ICE custody in 2018. Detentions are on the basis of (suspected) immigration status, not criminal disposition.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_detention_in_the_U...
10% of country owns approximately 80% of the wealth.
Majority is poor. You don't need to look at the caste.
Anti discrimination laws are important but if we keep focusing on caste, nothing will change if you don't tackle the core problems that is extreme inequality.
I firmly believe the mentality of digging graves for each other is a mindset of poverty and that is what happens in most of India. Scammers exist because scams pay more than real jobs. Stereotypes are formed because some of that disproportionately affect poor communities or specific group. It's a vicious cycle. Poverty makes everyone angry and find reasons to seem better than others. Caste is one of them sometimes when you can't find others.
Yes, the reservation system is imperfect and is abused. That doesn’t mean that we replace it with a system that is caste-blind. Rather, incorporate income into it, so that the lower-caste poor ppl get help
Even the architect of the Caste-based reservation system Dr. Ambedkar (who is also the architect of the Indian Constitution) said that the Reservation in its current form should only exist for 10 years and not be extended. He contended that 10 years is more than sufficient to have a caste-based reservation. But it kept continuing for 70+ years. It is high time we revamp it to only provide reservation for those who are from low income categories. Doesn't matter which caste they are from. That will actually be helpful.
Caste-based reservation only enforces caste system in India. It doesn't help get rid of it! And it also goes against one of the six Fundamental Rights of Indian Constitution: The Right to Equality. Caste-based reservation violates this Fundamental Right. It was a temporary stop-gap measure which we have made permanent not to upset a section of the Indian society. But it is causing more harm than good. That is a fact!
https://legaldesk.com/name-change/procedure-for-name-change-...
The problem is that you need an entire stack of documentation for different sets of paperwork, and that comes with your old name. The only way to get a change done safely in ways that will not show a name change is by getting the name right at birth.
It is easy to cosmetically change your caste, in schools if you are not "lower" caste you do not mention anything and you fall into "general category".
On the other hand you need to prove that you are "lower caste". As government benefits follow.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_left
People with leftist political leanings are generally unhappy with all governments, and have very strong opinions about how the country should be run. They end up forming their own tight clubs.
EDIT: corrected "libertarian economics" to "liberal economics"
That is not what libertarian means.
And people generalizing Brahmins and other upper castes as oppressors are not exactly right. For many of us who are Brahmin by caste but have a rural, agriculture etc.. background otherwise, we have not witnessed such extreme casteism.
Disclaimer: Brahmin by caste / surname but my community is traditionally agriculturist.
I appreciate the experiences that you've been sharing in your other comments, but you provoked a flamewar in this case and should not have done that.
Ok that wasn't much clear. Things like untouchability or fights between castes aren't there. And while in-caste marriage etc.. are a thing, that's not exactly discrimination thing. Eg: there are multiple sub groups in Brahmins based on origin and while they don't have 'lower' 'higher', the marriages are preferred to be within that sub groups because each of them have distinct cultures, language dialects etc..
I do not ask this rhetorically. I am Indian, though raised in America with very liberal parents. I have a cousin in India who can not get married to her boyfriend because his mother won't accept a marriage to someone who speaks a slightly different language. Both are similar caste, same religion, just from different parts of India.
That is absolutely batshit insane.
She can but she won’t, or do mothers have to sign-off on marriages?
At the time marriages were arranged by parents, this made sense because you get to preserve your culture, traditions, language etc.. (in a situation where dialect depends on the place and caste).
> Why not let the two people getting married make the decision if they want to merge the two cultures?
Well that's insane. Maybe, thinking from the place of those elders who are highly interested in conserving their culture, it doesn't make sense to leave everyone to their own causing a mix-mash of different cultures and interests, and that's the generation gap. Although it is more likely attributed to belief rather than such line of thinking.
They absolutely can. Nothing in Indian law stops them from doing it.
> That is absolutely batshit insane.
It absolutely is. Now the point is, what stops your cousin from getting married to the boy she likes? The boy can always move out of the home if his mother is unhappy with it. Ultimately it comes down to preferences. Nothing to do with law. Law is quite clear in this that you can marry anyone as long as you have attained legal age.
Also, are you telling me that such preferences don't exist in America? I am sure you have a mother somewhere in the US right now being pissed with her son for choosing a girl she doesn't like. She might not like the girls face, her family, her status, her location or whatever it might be. This is something that is prevalent everywhere. It is not specific to India alone. Just the excuse for opposing is different. That is about it really. If I want to find an excuse to not like someone I can make up a 100 of them. Nothing stops me.
This is not the generalization I oppose. I agree with this. (Although as far as IITs are concerned it is mostly well-off Bania's rather than Brahmins, but still privilege at play).
What I don't like is the generalizations that sound like all Brahmins were well-off and oppressed / actively harassed other people. While there is some divide between every two castes of India, and some of the traditional ways of Brahmins passively hurt people of other castes, that's not the way to put it.
> https://mirror.uncyc.org/wiki/Indian_Programmers
> The Russian programmers have found the concept of "indocritical mass" - this is the limit of Indian programmers that can work safely in one company. If this mass is exceeded the count of the Indian programmers starts increasing in a geometrical progression until every position in the company is occupied by Indians. Indian programmers are coming!
> It is not clear how the Indian programmers breed but judging by the speed at which they breed there is high probability that they breed by division like an unicellular organisms.
I agree there is lot of such bias. But what I don't like is stereotyping all Brahmins like that. Maybe that's a counter bias from your standpoint; nothing is black and white.
Can you explain then why Dr. Ambedkar asked for only 10 years of caste-based reservations and to be done with it after that? Did he not know of this statistic when he asked for the reservation to be scrapped after 10 years: https://www.deccanchronicle.com/opinion/columnists/290917/ti... ?
We continued to have caste-based reservation for 70+ years. That is almost 3 generations. We are well into the 4th generation. This is more than sufficient time for uplifting lower castes. And let us not forget that access to education and industry has improved exponentially in this period while it wasn't available previously.
The time has now come to move away from caste-based reservations to income based reservations. For how long will we keep enforcing caste in everything? Then the upper castes will also enforce undeclared caste based reservations in private sector because they did not get the same treatment in Government sector. Isn't it? This will just end up being a never ending process of one trying to out-do the other. You now have political parties specifically oriented around Dalit issues like the Bahujan Samajwadi Party. Do you have a political party specifically oriented around Brahmin issues? Nope. This shows that the system has empowered the lower castes well enough already! So we can now move to empowering the actual downtrodden in society: no matter what caste, creed or religion they belong to!
"This is 2020, we are still talking about caste based reservations suppressing upper castes in India. If there has been 70+ years of equality driving measures taken, then this news shouldn't be there. I hope you understand how authority works in India, the lower caste is already in decision making positions now that the caste based reservation has been around for 70 years, i very well know how it happened. I am not supporting upper caste dominance in private sector, but there is always a benefit of doubt thats for the suppressed ones."
You see how easily I can make the same point for upper castes? How can you justify 50% reservation for lower castes for 70+ years? You can't. You can't even say that there is underrepresentation in our Parliament because there is adequate representation. We have reserved constituencies in which only lower castes can participate. They can participate in the unreserved constituencies too. Heck even the remaining 50% unreserved seats can be contested by lower castes by just choosing to not use their caste certificates. There are so many Adivasi parties and political organizations. There isn't even one for Brahmins. I am not saying this is bad. I am saying that this is the progress we have already achieved in 70+ years. We have a stringent SC/ST act which will jail people without prima facie evidence. Are you not bothered about the Fundamental Rights to Equality as promised under the Constitution of India? If everyone is equal then why this special treatment for 70+ years? I can understand one needs uplifting and for that a reasonable amount of time is required. But 70+ years? That is not justifiable by any means.
Just to put it in perspective: Our Honorable Prime Minister of India is from OBC (Other Backward Class). Our Honorable President of India is a Dalit. So no, our Country has progressed a lot and lower castes are actually holding positions of power more so than ever before. Exceptions cannot become the norm. But has the system become obsolete now? I believe it has! You can't keep the system going on and on for a few exceptional cases. Then it can have negative consequences down the road! The system has to evolve and meet challenges that we are all facing currently and not keep harking back to the past. Ultimately Caste System needs to be rooted out of our country. We can't do that if we keep the reservation system in the present state! We need to change it to income based reservation so that once you have obtained it and gotten a leg up you don't utilize that system anymore and let others who really need it take its benefits.
That's a misconception. There are 4 types of reservation.
1. Political reservation.
2. Reservation in Education.
3. Reservation in (Public) Employment.
4. Reservation in promotion.
That 10 years thing Ambedkar talked is about Political reservation. He said every 10 years it should be REVIEWED to end it or not. The other two reservation in education and employment is a fundamental rights in constitution. So it'll go on till there's discrimination in the society. The last one is not a fundamental right, that's why recently Supreme court of India reject it to implement.
20% of reservation in education was given to SC/STs in 1954, who form the 22.5% of the population. Reservation in (public) employment for them started in 1982 with 22.5%. Reservation for OBCs started in 1992 with 27%, who form the 52% of the population. Indian states have their own ratio for reservation with the condition that total reservation percentage should not exceed 50%. Now notice that the public sector in India only provide 3.8% of the total employment. Private sector is free of any reservation. So much for 70 years of reservation.
Before independence there was a strong movement to push india towards a communist revolution like china or the USSR. The indian national congress which is still the main party on the left absorbed many of these radicals. In the cold war, these parties aligned India with the USSR, despite the absurd hypocrisy that india is a member of NAM but also signed a cooperation treaty with USSR. You will find that roads in new delhi are named after thugs from the eastern bloc like Tito, thats something you will not find even in ex-yugoslav states. But zero roads or monuments named after anyone from the western bloc or indians not part of the nehru-gandhi dynasty.
It is mostly orphans of this movement which disbanded after 1991. They're against everything america does but send their kids to the USA for studying in america's best universities.
The new progressive India that you see does not have a real right, because it is mostly still a poor country. Nevertheless it has moved closer to the free market, trying to cut down government interference if not for anything but corruption by the erstwhile leftists.
The extreme left consists of elitists, close knit extended family of the ruling powers. In fact even today much of India's media and who is who political influencers consist of people who attended the same elitist schools in Delhi.
Ironically, they still have not come to terms with a tea seller becoming the Prime minister, so they keep running smear campaigns against him both inside and outside the country.
All parties are somewhat socialist because India is a poor country.
The current government is hard right, its founders were inspired by Nazi Germany and the media landscape today resembles radio rwanda.
Political left was unpopular with the previous centrist government and with this one. But this one is especially intolerant to dissent. Prominent Dalit scholars and activists have been arrested because they "promote enmity between caste groups". Because surely asking for rights for the historically marginalized is 'promoting enmity'. The grassroots left movements are one of the biggest threats to caste politics and current establishment. Unfortunately, it currently doesn't have wide enough traction to change government policies.
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-natio... https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/other-states/sudha-bh...
An "Activist" however is not a peoples representative. In a democratic country, you stand for elections to become a peoples representative.
These "activists" are instead involved in armed violence with the democratic state.If they did that in 1950 fine, there is some justification but not in 2020.
I would call them terrorists, mafia or fascists - the Indian word is Naxal/Urban Naxal.
Democracy is not perfect, but I am not buying the promises of insanely wealthy self proclaimed activists who have enough money & resources to run armed conflicts and hire the best lawyer, but somehow never win in the elections.
Participatory democracy doesn't mean that responsibility ends the moment one gets off the voting booth. In fact, the resposibility starts right there, by casting the vote, to ensure that the representative works for the benefit of people.
Us Indians just find the latter part, of dealing with that responsibility, a lot harder, and just convince ourselves otherwise.
And anyone else would get termed "activist" "leftist".
Left => left nothing. Left out off the mainstream (development, benefits, facilities), for being contrarian.
Not left as in left hand side.
Pray enlighten the rest of us as to how the current regime favouring one particular corporation isn't fascism?
Where is this definition of "urban naxal" defined? Just because one thought so? If speaking against the atrocities of authorities is being "urban naxalism", most of the current leaders also did so, during the emergency in India. Is there a Retired/Erstwhile "Urban Naxal" title too, for them?
Please keep HN civil. Your ultra-right thoughts can find good currency on Twitter/Reddit.
HN being invaded by ultra-right, on a thread that talks about caste-based discrimination.
Guess it is enough Internet for one day!
India has been democratic for more than 70 years. I say picking up guns to disrupt civil society with an intent to capture power through violence is not Activism.
That is the recipe of fascism.
And "emergency" is by definition a suspension of democracy.
1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naxalite%E2%80%93Maoist_insu...
2. https://www.indiatoday.in/india/north/story/chinese-intellig...
It's not considered derogatory in India.
I'm not even low-caste but still faced these issues.
My dad worked for the government for 30 years and he was not promoted even once until this year. this is not because he was not good at his work, the work is actually pretty simple and stupid, but because of affirmative action policies of all governments current and past, left or right.
E.g. government and many portions of academia.
People who don't support it leave, and people who are ambivalent adopt the attitudes of their remaining colleagues.
Yes, all these things might create entrenched groups, but make working viable in many occupations in the first place. I would take the groupthink in that case too.
If you're in a sector that isn't growing, or might even be shrinking, I imagine promotions are a lot more competitive...
Admittedly, 'reassignment' might not be the most precise term for this...
When you need to find that many trusted, competent managers that quickly, you can't afford reject people on the basis of their surname :)
But the lack of process and inexperience basically amplified the bias. There too much guess work going into decisions, so they were primary based on pattern matching like things. People were making decisions on very little information and in ambiguity, which made all the assumptions matter more. Where while bigger company I am in now, while there are people who openly express sexist opinions, in general I think I am getting more equal results.
Mostly because once they are making the decision, it is more likely to be based on my actual track record rather then feelings. Not that it is perfect, but when it is unfair, it unfair in all kind of various ways toward everyone and it seems more random. More likely based on personality conflict or something of that sort.
I've worked and consulted at a variety of companies. Of the ones that had an expectation that you do 1-2 year stints on teams, then rotate to different teams and challenges, I would describe ~100% as having a healthy workplace political culture.
Of the ones that did not have that expectation, and people typically stayed on a single team for 2 years+, I would describe ~25% as having a healthy workplace political culture.
My conclusion is that, more-so than anything else, cultivating and encouraging regular internal transfers produces healthier companies. (And that's not even broaching the documentation and repeatability benefits!)
It seems counter-intuitive, and I never would have guessed if I hadn't seen it again and again...
No one is perfect and everyone makes mistakes, and most of us are somewhere on the scale between great and crap. My partner and I joke about this concept of the mediocre white man, and how their workplace is dominated by these mediocre white men. Whereas if you're a woman, or if you're not white, you're not allowed to be mediocre. You gotta be great.
There are essentially two separate sets of measurements; one for white men and one for everyone else. And I notice this as a white man.
Discrimination has outsize effect on mediocre people. Exceptionally good people will always be able to get far and exceptionally incompetent are likely to be poor.
The discrimination usually shows in lots of small decisions that each separately is very difficult to call discrimation but together amount to making your life more difficult.
Mediocre people don't get many chances to get ahead and they can slip up sometimes. Discrimination makes those few occasions to get ahead much less likely and pay much less and the occasions when they slip up much more unforgiving.
I know one of the MP's involved in getting that through parliament.
Incidentally the person concerned in that article lives in my home town
Its there for real, you can easily see it - If you join a multinational company and find a team with more than 50% of people are from same State - There is something going on. First thing that should be banned in india is attaching Caste as the Last Name.
People think I am south indian even when speaking in northish accent. They make many implicit assumption based on how I behave, talk and look.
Private Sector is not subjected to those quotas even though attempts are made.
The things is inter-caste marriage is the best way for caste to be eliminated, and since that is hardly happening, doubt it'll go away anytime soon. Hell, Indians on matrimonials openly advertise theirs and ask for partners of specific caste.
https://www.scroll.in/article/897802/how-same-caste-marriage...
I have found that one of the quickest ways to be sure that the answer you get for that question matches what you’d like is to open them up to the possibility you might not get married at all. If my parents ever cared about that, they sure don’t now, and they’re nowhere near desperate ;)
I don't know you or your kids. So I'll just leave that as a general warning and hope you can make the right decision as to allowing your kids many good choices while keeping them from making a really bad one.
Also, who someone is isn't set in stone. It can be molded by those around them.
Off topic but this is something that grinds my gears.
India didn't have a post WW2 baby boom, there are no Indian boomers. Etymology aside, Boomer is used to signal generational privilege which also doesn't apply to India.
Edit: splitting this comment into a reply. Please downvote or upvote individually...
I feel like the quest for universal equality is like the quest for a universal compression algorithm, futile. everyone is unique, so you can’t equalize people.
The most productive and happy path forward is to think about the individuals (yourself and your counterparty).
It’s not your group against the world. It’s you against the world. And it’s not your group at your disposal, it’s the world at your disposal.
This test will fail because it doesn't account for what truly is caste in people's minds. Even among those who do not want to discriminate, different castes represent different daily cultures, traditions and even languages. So the question becomes on if they are comfortable with someone from a different culture - and that answer is almost always no.
I mention it because, a spouse of a different culture can be a wonderful thing. Language, food, daily culture are a constant source of enjoyment and growth.
Watch his reply to your post where he cleverly passes off muslims and Christians as invader cultures, without you noticing.
Right I totally forgot about the different languages that exist in India. Or the different religious ceremonies. Or the different Gods people worship. All those must somehow not mean the culture is different.
> Watch his reply to your post where he cleverly passes off muslims and Christians as invader cultures, without you noticing.
Those are your words, not mine. I suggested no such thing. The people of India today, irrespective of their religions, are all equally Indians. But to claim that there were no religious wars in the past (and even the present) and that there was no effect of religious conversion on hardening of stance on culture in Hinduism is naive and ignoring a big problem.
There is also a HUGE difference between talking about people today vs 5 centuries ago. We should be able to talk openly about the impact of foreign conquests in India without negatively impacting the people of those religions in the country today.
Historically speaking, India was once a Buddhist country. Buddhism was violently suppressed and eliminated by the caste based Brahmin kings. Is this what you are referring to when you are talking about - "religious wars in the past (and even the present) and that there was a sizeable effect of religious conversion on hardening of stance on culture in Hinduism is naive and ignoring a big problem."?
The Brahmins took over control with a caste based system - apparently still active in California. Over time the new Indian dynasties which arose after the 7th and 8th centuries tended to support the Brahmanical ideology and Hinduism, and this conversion proved decisive. These new dynasties, all of which supported Brahmanical Hinduism, include "the Karkotas and Pratiharas of the north, the Rashtrakutas of the Deccan, and the Pandyas and Pallavas of the south" (the Pala Dynasty is one sole exception to these). The persecution of Buddhism started as early as in life or soon after the death of King Ashoka (Gonandiya). D.N. Jha writes that according to Kashmiri texts dated to the 12th century, Ashoka's Son Jalauka was Shaivite and was responsible for the destruction of many Buddhist monasteries.[7] The story of Jalauka is essentially legendary, and no independent corroboration of the Kashmir tradition has been discovered.[8] Patanjali, a famous grammarian stated in his Mahabhashya that Brahmins and Sharamanas (Buddhists) were eternal enemies[9] With the emergence of Hindu rulers of the Gupta Empire, Hinduism saw major revivalism in the Indian subcontinent which challenged Buddhism which was at that time at its zenith. Even though the Gupta Empire was tolerant towards Buddhism and patronized Buddhist arts and religious institutions, Hindu revivalism generally became a major threat to Buddhism which led to its decline. A Buddhist illustrated palm-leaf manuscript from the Pala period (one of the earliest Indian illustrated manuscripts to survive in modern times) is preserved in University of Cambridge library. Composed in the year 1015, the manuscript contains a note from the year 1138 by a Buddhist believer called Karunavajra which indicates that without his efforts, the manuscript would have been destroyed during a political struggle for power. The note states that 'he rescued the 'Perfection of Wisdom, incomparable Mother of the Omniscient' from falling into the hands of unbelievers (who according to Camillo Formigatti were most probably people of Brahmanical affiliation).[10] In 1794 Jagat Singh, Dewan (minister) of Raja Chet Singh of Banaras began excavating two pre Ashokan era stupas at Sarnath for construction material. Dharmarajika stupa was completely demolished and only its foundation exists today while Dhamekh stupa incurred serious damage. During excavation, a green marble relic casket was discovered from Dharmarajika stupa which contained Buddha's ashes was subsequently thrown into the Ganges river by Jagat Singh according to his Hindu faith. The incident was reported by a British resident and timely action of British authorities saved Dhamekh Stupa from demolition.[11]
Omvedt states that while Buddhist institutions tended to be less involved in politics, Hindu brahmins provided numerous services for Indian royalty:
However, there is no theological opposition to other gods or atheism within modern Hindu culture. It is in fact a reason why Hindus have millions of gods and are encouraged to make more.
That stands in stark contrast with Christianity or Islam, which has not waged religious wars just in India but in much of the world.
Moreover, the disappearance of much of the ancient religions and cultures can be attributed to just these two religions.
> that is what happens in reality
Are you claiming a "mid" caste family given two marriage proposals:
1. To a brahmin spouse 2. To a lower caste spouse
with everything else being equal (including geographic region) will reject both with equal probability?
If everything is the same, would a rational actor not pick the one which is more advantageous?
On some level it feels to me like it's something Indian folks don't share because they feel it would be misunderstood (which makes a lot of sense). Or maybe it's a kind of "not airing out the laundry in public."
I would love feedback on this. Thanks.
Also all of this in the US; it's almost like many indian origin American (even second gen) Brahmins are far more racist than the general Indian population of the same group. Definitely a lesson in anthropology for sure.
All over South Asia - India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, from Punjab to Tamil Nadu, Gujarat to Bengal - you will find a rough correlation of class/caste along skin complexion lines with higher class/caste people generally being fairer complexioned, and a broad based folk understanding and rationalization of this. Almost every region has a complexion/caste based folk cultural model for interpreting the phenotypical variation among themselves, a variation which is often vast even over small distances - and it's independent of religion.
What you are seeing is the aftermath of thousands of years of collision of peoples who migrated from various parts of the old world with differing phenotypes. Though they all mixed, they did so in differing proportions that were correlated with the dominant power structures and associated mores of beauty, defined by the new rulers, who were frequently people of fair complexion, culminating in the situation you see today. This pre-existing situation was then keenly exploited by the last group of fair skinned rulers of foreign origin, the British.
[1] https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/science/steppe-mig...
I'm not a Brahmin (and am technically from a much "lower caste") and I wouldn't eat lard (I'm a vegetarian). IMO caste and vegetarianism are different concepts. While certain castes/communities/regions might promote vegetarianism and some might not, I'm not sure if they're always an identifying marker. A lot of people in India are vegetarian for a multitude of reasons and a lot of them who are new to the States might not know what contains lard and what not, so he might have been looking out for you in case you didn't know. I for one didn't know about rennet until much later, and am much grateful to an American dude who pointed that out to me.
I think it sucks that people conflate two different things, because it gives someone who isn't from an Indian background incorrect details. I'm not saying that that Indian-origin guy isn't casteist (given that he reacted against your "brahmin" comment that way), but certain nuances are lost here.
But let us be real here, there are a lot of people in poverty following vegetarian diets, especially because meat doesn't always come cheap in India, and dal/milk relatively are. Some follow it because they were raised in a vegetarian culture. Some do it because they dislike the thought of eating animals.
Brahmins aren't always rich/powerful, and the "lower castes" aren't always that hard off, and this has been the case throughout history.
Some of my friends my well-to-do friends eat meat (sometimes including beef) just fine, some don't. Same with people from different socio-economic levels. This just doesn't reflect reality any more.
Really? So no haldi?
The funny thing about infiniteness is that half of it is still pretty infinite - and that also works with garlic, ginger, and potatoes, at least (I don't know if it's true of all roots and bulbs though) in that they'll sprout from a part.
Although I appreciate that's probably not the point. But if it were, one could have parts packaged for sale, with the regulated promise that the rest of it was replanted, analogously to religiously-compatible slaughter.
Animal protein is more expensive to produce than plant protein, the result of nothing less than thermodynamics.
Answering to GP above - I don’t mind talking about it but some bar conversations have opened with it. That’s not pleasant. It’s not a light subject. It’s like me opening with some light chat about racism in America. It requires nuance to understand how deeply and yet subtly embedded caste is in India. You can’t get a house for rent in certain neighbourhoods of even major metros. It’s the reason I don’t use a last name at all. Not even legally. If people shun the practice of disclosing the caste it’ll one day disappear. But that’s not going to happen anytime soon.
And this is the nuance I'm talking about. I understand vegetarianism definitely has positive connotations in India, but it's rarely about caste, which is what we're looking at here.
There's a lot of different opinions in a country of a billion people, but just labeling it as caste isn't going to do any of it favors.
> It’s not a light subject
None of it is. It's not fun being a vegetarian in the States; doesn't mean people have ostracized vegetarianism because they love their meat burgers. Two different things here, we can't get to the root of things if we don't parse them properly.
I’m not sure which part of India does this apply to. As an Indian living in India (born brought up, working now etc), almost every single instance vegetarianism was brought up in a discussion, it was immediately followed up with caste.
Sure, India is vast, but I just don’t know a place where diet is decoupled from caste.
Talking about myself, though I’m a Maratha Kshatriya my parents somehow didn’t prefer non vegetarian. So I ended up growing up a vegetarian dude. Only to be mocked by my relatives later in life “what kind of a Maratha are you who doesn’t eat meat”
It is entirely possible, however it does require you to learn nuances of that caste. Otherwise you will get caught out especially while discussing with elders. That said when it comes to marriage there’s no way to hide your caste. The priest knows your parents their relatives and what not. Their surnames being different will cause all kinds of red lights to go off.
Also, for governmental purposes you are expected to produce “caste certificate” which you can’t forge. So it’s not unusual for people in India to marry into lower caste to reap the benefits of governmental reservation.
So, the answer is nuanced. If you want to take advantage of surname in a private company like say Cisco then go for it. For any other purpose, changing surname alone isn’t sufficient. In fact it’s impossible to hide your caste.
While we are at it, it’s worth noting that “caste” refers to two distinct and intertwined hierarchical structures called “varna” and “jati”. Which means even among Brahmins (the upper most caste, intact Brahmin is a Varna and not Jati) there’s a hierarchy, priest being the top most. Jatis are sometimes referred as “sub-caste”.
This Jati is so pervasive in India that even the non-Hindu religions such as Sikhism and “Lingayat” which were explicitly formed to be away from the Hindu caste system couldn’t escape it. So we now have a few dozen Jati within Sikhism and Lingayats with an overly of Verna.
As an academic topic it’s a fascinating one. The roots of this codified structure is still not clear, it’s an active area of research. Recent advancements in human evolutionary genetics is revealing some interesting insights but long way to go.
So if you aren't a brahmin, you probably haven't had the same childhood experiences of temple-going and specific rituals. If I really want to ferret your caste out, I might casually quiz you on this background, maybe even in the context of innocently joshing about, "hey, wasn't that weird our moms would make us do blah blah blah." And if you didn't respond right away with a story about how your parents did that same thing, I'd maybe start to become suspicious ...
If you ever let slip that someone in your family got a job because they utilized an affirmative action program (called "reservations" in India,) it'd sound weird, and I'd get suspicious ...
If I started a joke about how some brahmins are better than other brahmins (yep, that exists. I know because I am the best Brahmin.) and you seemed clueless about the typology, I'd get suspicious ...
You do this enough times, I'm gonna cross you off my party list.
It's fairly obvious that from the traditionalist point of view of the poster's friend a Brahmin is expected to care more than inferior people from no-good castes about religious and semi-religious precepts like not eating lard (to avoid eating inappropriate animals, not because lard isn't vegetarian).
I talk about vegetarianism because the GP talked about it through the lens of caste, and I stated that I thought otherwise.
You could, historically, spread your "untouchableness" by contacting people of other castes, for example. Marrying your child to someone from a lower caste is seen as a shameful move to many people.
White people would absolutely not understand this, yes, but what is there to understand? This is just discrimination based on your family + skin tone to some extent, and the sooner it dies, the better.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martial_race
Today it's widely understood that this was done to reward those who supported the British during the 1857 rebellion and to utilise caste-based segregation in British Indian army against any future rebellion.
Hindus believe that humans are like dogs and they have a breed. So a person who is born in a higher caste is of a better breed than a person born in a lower caste. Numerous genetic studies have found no significant difference amongst Indian castes. The moment an upper caste person realizes that you are a lower caste, you will be made fun of and ridiculed. Caste is also tied to your last name, so when a Hindu person says his full name he is telling his First name and his Caste. Which is why brahmins will be the first ones in a group to say their full name, while dalits will only meekly say their first name. The entire religion and caste system was built to make people feel shameful of their last name. In fact, some last names of lower castes are commonly used as abuses by upper caste.
It is the worst form of discrimination known to man and it's horrible how hindu society openly supports and promotes it. While slavery lasted only for a couple of hundred years, caste system has been going on for millennia. Dalit atrocities are common in India even today and everyday 10s of lower castes dalits are raped, killed , tortured and humiliated just because they were born a lower caste Hindu. Upper caste hindu managers openly look down on lower caste hindus, even in the US , and will discriminate against them. Caste shame is also inbuilt in a lot of Dalit hindus and they themselves feel embarrassed while even saying their full name.
One of the best things I did after coming to this country was to convert to christianity and a few of my dalit hindu friends have done too. Upper caste hindus have no problem seeing a converted christian as their equal, but they would still regard a hindu dalit as inferior. Hinduism has a huge conversion problem even in India, and it is the fastest shrinking religion in the world.
Also Jesus was born in a poor family, which would have made him a lower caste hindu if he was born in India
This is not really true. If I recall correctly, Jesus was born in the Davidic line as per the bible, which was important for his claim as the messiah. His high "caste" did matter to his followers. Caste is determined by your pedigree, and not by how rich you are.
It's true that caste-based discrimination is a curse that India must do away with. Perhaps it'd be more helpful to let different communities adhere to whatever traditions are important to them without attaching the concept of highness or lowness associated with it.
Not considering hiring people with non-Biblical or clearly "Black" names is one of those things which you can't see. Not showing Black people houses in good neighbourhoods is another. That behaviour is still racist, but invisible.
Casteism plays out along similar lines, with people not being hired, or promoted.
The term implies facing the wrong way
The irony is that there are some upper caste people fighting to classify their class as backward because they have quotas in govt jobs/education.
You see, eons ago, caste in Indian society was not right, it was your job (warrior = Kshatriya, scholar = bramhin, trader = baniya, labourer = shudra).
The first three called themselves upper class and the last one was the lower class.
Among the first three, the first one think that they're upper than the other two. The second one thinks that they're upper than the third.
But this was never hereditary. if you were born to a Bramhin (basically any person who had the brains to be a scholar) and if you didn't have the knack of being a 'scholar' you could become a warrior if you had the skills, or a trader, if you had those skills. If you had no such skills then you were the labourer.
But what happened is, centuries after this tradition started, it was made hereditary. So only sons of Bramhins can be scholars, only sons of Kshatriyas can be warriors, only sons of Baniyas can be traders and all Shudras were forever shudras.
The architect scholar and almost superman historical Dr Ambedkar was a Mahar aka Dalit aka Shudra. This guy graduated at the top of LSE, has written extensively on India and almost all of his writings were 100% spot on (his thoughts about why it was good that Pakistan formed for Indian Army's balance or what'll happen when Hindu nationalism will rise etc)
But he was treated as shit just because he was born a Mahar.
Now the tragical thing is that Mahars were warriors in Shivaji Maharaj's time (he was a Deccan King who was kinda democratic and not cruel like Mughals. Even actual Gods are below him in my state, people, including atheists like me worship him, not in temples obviously. It is like you can insult Gods and it'd be fine but if you insult him then you are done)
During his reign, Mahars were fierce warriors and had their own regiment in his army. But his descendents weren't exactly great and in the 3rd generation king's army, only 'higher caste' khastriyas could be warriors and others were treated as literally shit. there has been documented evidence (thank God for the documentation) that at the end of the Peshwa rule, the lower class people had to attach a broom at their backside so that they'd sweep the land they walked on because they were considered 'filthy' (not physically). No lower class man or woman or child was allowed in upper class wells, temples. they were not allowed to have horses in their weddings etc. Some of these practices are still rampant in India where upper caste privileged people are blind. you can see quite a few in this thread who are either blind or racist.
basically this was just like slavery without higher caste people owning the lower caste people.
My knowledge of India is very basic. I have indian friends and coworkers and have never thought about this being part of their story.
I respect your personal choice, of course, but curious why people choose to convert to a different religion instead of just shunning the Hindu identity, given Christianity also tends to have problematic beliefs. Is it because sharing religious beliefs makes it easier to share a common identity?
A better off dalit is still a dalit. Thats the point. The society will discriminate against you in all ways possible. Right from job applications to finding a partner
Christianity doesn't seem like a great choice then since it teaches God will burn all non-Christians eternally in Hell.
There used to be some kind of exclusivity in being a christian in India. This might no longer true.
I am from Chennai where Christianity has spread rapidly in recent years, a christian doctor who died of covid had to be cremated in a Hindu cemetery because of conflicts between the different christian denominations.
This has been the case in the North-east of India for several years now, since they are more than 80% christian.
Converting is the only way to get rid of your caste. It's common amongst Hindus to ask each other's caste and the only way to say that you have none is to not be a Hindu. If you are a hindu then people will figure out your caste from your last name.
You would end up without a caste, but with higher or lower social status depending on your original country.
I do find it fascinating how a converted Dalit is basically freed from the social burdens of their class. I would not have expected that, as most religious groups heap scorn or actual punishments on those who convert to another religion.
Based on what I've read so far in people's responses to my question it makes a kind of sense. If you convert to a different religion, historically speaking, you are now "out of competition" in terms of marriages, allocation of dowry, so on. So since many people historically never married across religion, there's no problem being nice to people who aren't competing for your same economic resources.
Please note that I don't mean to indicate approval for any of these things, just that historically that's how it has played out.
Hearing about a benefit of apostasy, from members of ones former religion no less, is quite surprising.
The perceived threat is from the claim that all other gods are false, which is one of the major factors in the anti Muslim/anti Christian sentiments playing out currently in India.
However, the attitude of muslims & Christians towards nonbelievers, idol worship and the historical violence and destruction wrought on them plays a bigger role.
A modern western atheist might carry the same "all gods are false", the vast majority of the Hindus will not have any problem with that.
I wouldn't take that statement at face value. They are definitely not freed from the social burdens of their station of birth.
They might achieve some sort of better treatment through their association with a larger group of Christians who together wield some political power and influence, but in matters of marriage and other aspects of domestic life, they will likely face the same discrimination that they did before conversion. Consider, for example, the caste system of Roman Catholic Indians in Goa:
I'm an atheist myself but I don't see many things in Christianity that are particularly bad (...I just don't believe in the supernatural).
This is the country where “Yankee Doodle” started out as an anti-American insult by the Brits and ended up being one of the nation’s favorite songs. The nation that used the N-word seriously until around 1965, then by 1975 it had been completely co-opted by people like Richard Prior, and later hip-hop artists. Just so you know, I am married to someone whose parents forbade her to go out with me because of my race. Before I married her another girlfriend stopped dating me because I wasn’t black. Before that, another girlfriend’s parents tried to stop her relationship with me because I wasn’t Jewish. Now that I have a passel of mixed-race kids... guess who makes endless racial jokes? All of us. It drives our friends crazy.
I’d have a DALIT license plate. I’d have a line of DALIT T-shirts. I’d shove it right in people’s faces for the sheer enjoyment of it. I would totally kill it with the DALIT merch.
My heart goes out to you, and my best to you and yours. What a nightmare.
Caste based conflicts are the highest among the Christians, because the church was way too successful in exploiting social divisions, just like they did elsewhere in the world like Rwanda.
Caste is a poisson, but when it is bread and butter for some people they would like nothing better than to keep it alive.
EDIT: Replaced "origin" with "social identity", which seems like a better fit.
What I'm trying to find out is, if these casts are dependent on each other as if profession running in the family or are simply a way to organize within from top down with no cooperation of communities but exploitation. If the latest is the case, I wonder if there were uprisings and such.
> how hindu society openly supports and promotes it
My 'high class' friends always bring up their caste even when it is not related at all.
'in Bramhins we don't do x'm 'In us Rajputs, we don't do x'
They can easily say, 'I am a veg or I dont' drink or my family is xyz'. But no. their caste _has_ to come up.
A friend of mine had asked one of her friends who used to do this: 'okay, we get it that you are a Bramhin, there is no need to bring it up in every other sentence.' She was shell shocked and never ever did I hear her say "oh we Bramhins we do xyz".
After centuries of cast discrimination, do you think that lower caste people will be 'proud' of their caste? No. they were brainwashed into thinking that they're subhuman, that they are not worthy of it.
Dr Ambedkar was a LSE scholar and he was treated as crap. he was a distinguished scholar, not just any other who was treated as crap because he was a Dalit.
Here is why your equation to GenX and California/British is a false equivalence:
GenX didn't treat GenW like shit for a century
California/British: it is about being proud of _where_ you live. I am proud of India, I was born here and I'll die here. I am sure that all Indians, irrespective of their gender or caste or religion are proud to associate themselves to India.
> Not every mention of caste is about caste discrimination.
It is. How else do you explain that only Bramhins and Rajputs do it? I didn't see any Mahar or Jain or Parsi say "in us Parsis we do x" or "in us Jains we do x" or "in us Mahars we do x"
Mahars were fierce warriors from Shivaji Maharaj's times, they defeated the Peshwas in Koregaon Bhima in 1818.
Only them upper caste folks flaunt it, just like the 'south Bombay' folks can't shut up about where they live
There is a skin colour bias, but that isn't about caste (darker skin is a sign that you have to work in the sun, which signals poverty and being of a lower economic class).
I know nothing about this at all, if you don't mind answering - how do you signal this? Do you wear a cross in a very visible way? In my experience, opinions about someone are formed when you meet hem and it's hard to change afterwards; what happens when people learn later on that you're Christian? Does their treatment of you change?
This isn't true everywhere. There is a fair amount of bias embedded in society, and caste markers will follow you around.
There are always layers within every layer whether someone is higher or lower and even within a caste it depends on genealogy(which mythical ancestor your family originates), sub varieties, socio-economic status locality, education, organizations , roles you worked at etc.
It is persistent and systemic discrimination, while things have improved in the last 70 years, there are still a lot problems. Easiest way to to figure out who someone marries especially if it is an arranged marriage
In Canada, even the priest has to wash his clothes, clean his toilets, and feed the pets and pick up their poo. So, for the most part, the caste system dies the moment an Indian leaves India.
It becomes an important piece of consideration for matchmaking. Parents from upper caste families (priests, teachers) try very hard to get their kids to also marry someone from higher up the social pecking order.
The level of conformance (or even awareness!) to caste is different for different Indians even. Some don't even know much about the system apart from what has been taught in the textbook, being raised in a liberal environment. Some are steeped into it. Most are in the middle, and many are very very confused about the whole thing, which would mean that even if they tell you, their interpretation might be different from someone else.
In my opinion a lot of caste stuff is just hogwash. But certain remnants remain, and these remnants vary from person to person and place to place (some might put an emphasis on diet/religion, some on the education you receive, some on the gods you worship, etc). A lot of it has been used to divide people in the locality against each other, which is essentially just classic politics. But much of the new generation (depending on where they're from) is quite ignorant of/against all this, which is good.
> definitely a major part of marriage discussions
Again, not all of them; speaking from personal experiences. Most of those sites have a "don't know/don't care" field, and many have that option set :) I agree that the field itself shouldn't be there, but I tend to highlight progress wherever possible
I don't deny this happens, but it doesn't happen _all_ the time, or even the majority of the times nowadays (I can only say what I've experienced, I know others would have seen differently).
Consider these lyrics: "They cut me out for a baking bread, but I had other dreams instead".
Now imagine a system designed to completely ignore your dreams and force you to bake bread for now and future generations! And you are not even in chains!
Your guess about not airing the laundry in public is pretty close. "caste awareness" is ingrained from a young age, and you can't lose those circuits even if you yourself don't agree with them. A lot of people, especially higher caste, "understand" at a logical level that this is all wrong, but find it very difficult to change. So discrimination continues in all social spheres, but it's covert.
The silver lining is that there are also those who have distanced themselves from that system, and their number keeps increasing.
Caste system and Varna system in India are 2 different things. Many people including Indians fail to understand this. Caste system and what was written in Manusmruti (some guidelines book for Hindus) was debated even in ancient times but some high-caste-people did take advantage of it and it went screwed up in-between years.
Caste system was based on the work you do. As many are talking about "surnames" pointing to your caste - please understand how they got these surnames in the first place! It's not the other way round. Also, traditionally descendants did the same business as it was easily taught to kids and was believed that those skills are genetically transferred as well. Note that I'm stating what was believed - not necessarily facts.
Please try to relate the concept of "untouchables" in today's pandemic times. Do you intent to go and touch those who work in the hospitals? How would you expect the people in those times to be okay with touching those who used to clean up toilets by hand, carry the waste on their backs? Note that I'm not justifying what followed in thousands of years later
Hoping you get the context. Please don't evaluate the origins on today's level of sophistication
I do believe that the caste system exists through out the world even today. Just that castes are different. How about now we have "Software Engineers" as a caste? There too you are higher if you belong to FAANG, no? How many software engineers like to marry software engineers? Isn't it convenient to marry someone who has similar work life, thought process, education background and such? Wasn't it same in the old days? I know people who - if they work at FAANG, then looking for partner working in FAANG because their status matches!
One more example in the context of "untouchable" and Brahmins to help you understand the point of not touching others - If lady in a Brahmin house is preparing food in the morning (she will always take bath first), NOBODY (her parents, kids, husband, whatever) in the house is allowed to go to the kitchen, touch her or even drink water from there until they take bath. Please try to think about this.
I don't know if 'ironic' is the right word but here in comments I read someone mentioning "HR wouldn't support lower level employees" in the comment in the context of "dalit". Guess what "dalit" are? "lower level employees in the society" (those who cleaned up waste).
Importantly, dalit's were not working in lower level because they were untouchables, but they were untouchables because they worked in the lower levels. Indian society let Mr. B R Ambedkar (who was born Dalit) to write constitution of India - that speaks volumes.
> One more example in the context of "untouchable" and Brahmins to help you understand the point of not touching others - If lady in a Brahmin house is preparing food in the morning (she will always take bath first), NOBODY (her parents, kids, husband, whatever) in the house is allowed to go to the kitchen, touch her or even drink water from there until they take bath. Please try to think about this.
Are you referring to someone who is a dalit servant in a wealthy house? That's how I'm reading it at the moment but realize you could mean it a few different ways.
For example, if a brahmin person has a baby, then that baby is brahmin by birth. But this is not what the scriptures prescribe. The scriptures mention the caste system by the nature of work one adopts.
But as you can see, it was easily corruptible. Even in 2020, there are brahmin people who explicitly state that they are the superior caste with no repercussions when the constitution mandates equal rights to its citizens. If this is not racism, what is ? Calling some fellow human being as inferior ?
Not to say that there is an society without discrimination and social disparity. But only a few take it to the level the Indian caste system does.
That shows how tricky racism is, doesn't it? In the US it is African-Americans, in the UK Pakistanis and Indians, in Germany Turks and in France people from the Maghreb states. In India it is Muslims and castes, in China the Uigurs, in the Muslim world Suunits and Shiits (hope I spelled that right). In Turkey Turks and Kurds. And it all sucks. And it goes on and on, where ever you go.
Just saying, only because one Dalit wrote the constitution doesn't make the inherent discrimination and racism go away.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edo_society
Virtually nothing of it remains today though, although there are some traces of discrimination against the burakumin (Japan's untouchables) and some (rare) names are associated with the nobility. Generally speaking, though, you can't tell somebody's former caste from the name: a Maeda could be a direct descendent of the samurai clan, a retainer or peasant in the Maeda lands who adopted the name, or some random person anywhere in Japan who happened to live near the front (mae) rice paddy (-da) since Japanese names tend to reflect places, not occupations. Those few who care about "pure blood" have to hire a private investigator to ferret out burakumin traces.
It’s worth differentiating here. The experiences and outcomes and attitudes towards Pakistanis are very different to those of Indians in the UK. Indians are by far the most successful ethnic minority in the UK while Pakistanis are the least. Three of the most senior positions in the UK government are occupied by people of Indian descent—Priti Patel, Rishi Sunak, and Alok Sharma-all members of the Conservative Party.
> The data shows those males categorised as black are over 4.6 times more likely to die than their white counterparts from the virus. They are followed by Pakistanis/Bangladeshis (just over four times more likely to die), and then Chinese and Indians (just over 2.5 times).
People of Indian and Pakistani background are not significantly genetically different, but there is a substantial difference in how likely they are to die of COVID.
I am a bit skeptical that the difference is due to differential discrimination. I don't think most British racists are smart enough to distinguish people of Indian and Pakistani background. My hunch is that it's due to different patterns of immigration: if Indian immigrants were more likely to be middle-class, and to move to suburbs and small towns, whereas Pakistani and Bangladeshi immigrants were more likely to be working-class, and to move to inner cities, then that would produce the kinds of demographic difference that could explain the COVID disparity.
[1] https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-its-impact-cannot-be...
What would really be interessting is to break the mortality down by income and poverty. And than compare it to income an poverty based on race, where such numbers are available (so obviously not France). My hunch tells me mortallity is first related to social and financial circumstances, which are themselves directly related to race / being a minority / being poor. Maybe nitpicking, so, because it still tells us something about discrimination, doesn't it?
> We used binary logistic regression models to estimate whether the risk of dying from COVID-19 is greater among the Black and other minority ethnic groups than among the White ethnic population, after taking into account a number of geographic, demographic, socio-economic, living arrangements and health measures from the 2011 Census.
> Adjusting for these factors substantially reduces the odds of a death involving COVID-19 relative to those of White ethnicity for all ethnic groups. [...] In the fully adjusted model (Panel B), Black males and females are 1.9 times more likely to die from COVID-19 than the White ethnic group. Males of Bangladeshi and Pakistani ethnicity are 1.8 times more likely to die; for females, odds of death are reduced to 1.6 times more likely. Individuals from the Chinese and Mixed ethnic group have similar risks to those with White ethnicity.
Adjusting only for age, black men are 4.2 times more likely to die than white men. Adjusting for all the factors they thought of, they are 1.9 times more likely to die.
The fact that even the fully adjusted model still has a large and significant difference between Indian and Bangladeshi/Pakistani people suggests to me that there are other non-genetic factors that aren't included in the model.
> Maybe nitpicking, so, because it still tells us something about discrimination, doesn't it?
Yes, absolutely.
[1] https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde...
Germany doesn't either (by law, not just policy or habit, since the war) - quite an interesting article I saw recently reported that (in particular) black women in Germany are unhappy about it, because it (is perceived to) stymie support or positive action and such. Which, of course, was not the intended effect of banning the collection of such data at all!
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_British_Pakistanis
Eh?
Especially the part about "Paki-Bashing" in 80s.
> How would you expect the people in those times to be okay with touching those who used to clean up toilets by hand, carry the waste on their backs?
The trouble is, this wasn't something people chose to do by choice - it was thrust upon them initially and eventually conditioned to accept as "their duty" to the society through religious conditioning. (Read Gandhi's commentary justifying this type of work)
There is enough written about this and if you are interested you can easily look up about this online and in libraries.
> traditionally descendants did the same business as it was easily taught to kids
Even this was thrust through years of conditioning my friend. They were not "allowed" to take up any other profession - they could be dead, if they dared to do this. The references for this go far back to scriptures and other religious literature my friend.
> dalit's were not working in lower level because they were untouchables, but they were untouchables because they worked in the lower levels
Not true, read the comment above, they were forced into lower level work initially.
> Indian society let Mr. B R Ambedkar (who was born Dalit) to write constitution of India - that speaks volumes.
You haven't read Ambedkar have you ? :) Indian society didn't "let" Mr. B R Ambedkar to write the constitution, he rose to that position through sheer intellectual power! He was very very ahead of his times my brother! He faced many many challenges throughout his rise due to his origins being from lower class, he rose in spite of it.
A man of such calibre, resigned when in a position of power because he didn't believe in certain ideas put forth for discussion while making amendments to the constitution etc. He felt that would jeopardize the efforts he had put in to make the constitution equal for all - and undermine democracy! Such was the man!
You need to look within yourself - with the above comment you are putting yourself down in front of people. Such a bad outlook. Reeks of racist / casteist attitude. Seek some help, and read good books to get out of this pathetic attitude towards fellow human beings.
What role does caste still play in the year 2020? And, specifically, in middle-class society in the US and in India? Does it play any role in tech companies in India?
Marriage, If it's an arranged marriage 99.9% of the time, bride and groom will be of same caste.
People who live in Tier-2, Tier-3 cities and in villages / panchayats - the caste based discrimination is very obvious and explicit. People wear their (upper) caste as a badge of honor all the while discriminating lower caste people openly with no consequences, although the Indian constitution considers all citizens equal.
Lately, I picked up one of the introductory courses from Audible - “Great World Religions: Hinduism from The Great Courses”. It was well put together - a whole chapter dedicated to caste system in India. Particularly talks about restriction of mobility and exceptions when it can happen. Highly recommend it for anyone who wants to learn more about the good, the bad and the ugly of Hinduism.
Apparently, I was born in the artisanal caste of India, specifically Blacksmiths: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panchal
That is because your not "Indian" you are an American, these caste based discussions happen among first gen Indians who were born in India and then moved to another country. The kids of these immigrants dont usually care about caste.
In my experience, it's informally reinforced. I haven't met an Indian American who actively contemplates caste. But family connections; shared customs, rituals and language; and economic disparities reinforce in-group over out-of-group relationships.
These informal factors conspire to cause generations of young Americans of Indian descent to have their Indian-origin friends be, predominantly, of a similar caste to themselves. They aren't selecting for it. They may not even know how to see it. But hidden social factors guide their relationships.
It reminds me of my friends from the South. Subtle social factors that reinforce racist hierarchies. Recognizing, discussing and actively subverting those mechanisms takes personal ownership of the problem. This has not happened, broadly, in the Indian American community.
At a startup, we had a couple of Indian engineers on the team (pretty common), but they would frequently converse with each other in Hindi. Eventually one of them left the company, and in his exit interview he revealed that the other guy was constantly harassing him about his caste.
Because it's a complex topic and one can't condense the lives of 1B+ people so easily. It's also not a solved problem, so most of the folks who speak out do it as form of venting or to bring a change due to some personal experiences.
If this is accurate, that's pretty messed up. If a private company, especially one of Cisco's stature knew of any form of harassment and then decided that this type of harassment is fine because its not technically illegal they should be punished. Harassment at work for any reason is never ok, work should be a space where you are judged on your productivity level and attitude, not on the place of birth of your ancestors.
On paper discrimination shouldn't happen but IRL it does everywhere.
We shouldn't jump to conclusions. If it went to legal, I would venture to guess that people were at least told to cut that shit out. Legal isn't very tolerant of these things because they know there's liability exposure even if it's not illegal.
Indian caste system is probably the longest running abuse,racism, human rights violation in the human history. Even,now in some parts of the country people from lowest caste are made to carry human waste on their head[0].
After independence,thanks to rights offered by constitution & reservation by governments to repent the sins; many from lower caste were able to get educated.
Inequality is often perpertraited by people at the top of the food chain and in the case of caste system its been Brahmins and those acknowledged by them. Brahmin patriarchy is the deep state in India, do a quick search about top CEOs in India, Majority of Company auditors are Brahmins so the company/tax laws are often dictated by them (I just stated one example of brahmin patriarchy w.r.t context of the article).
Ask the lower caste team members of any large IT company in India e.g. TCS, Infosys led by a Brahmin manager(who is not an atheist); you'll hear about discrimination they face.
At the same time, Ex.Brahmins (Brahmins who have denounced their affiliation to caste system) have been one of the top voices in support of human rights & equality this includes freedom fighters, newspaper publishers, several leading luminaries, economists, Nobel laureates and top scientists who have left India for good.
[0]https://www.hrw.org/news/2014/08/25/india-caste-forced-clean...
Is the religious component that large? I'd assume that it's simple ingroup/outgroup, like most discrimination.
You don't need to believe that your group is special by divine ruling, you just need to believe that you'll get a better personal outcome if you strengthen people that are like you, as they'll hopefully do the same for you.
1. Like many other religion, basis of caste system in Hinduism is that lower caste people came from supposedly less important organ & upper caste people came from more important organs.
2. People from upper caste perform cushy jobs, have access to education and all amenities. People from lower caste literally have to carry shit of upper caste people on their head. Obviously caste is hereditory!
Now any tell that to anyone who says 'Hinduism is not a religion', they would say 'Caste system was not hereditory, but way of job management'; but they will have no answer or tell a lame excuse when you ask them "Why caste attrocity exists till date, would you help uprooting caste system and make it illegal? or better will you let your son/daughter marry a lower caste person?"
And there are people who staunchly believe in the caste system as the core of their belief system, so much so that honor killings happen even in western countries by people of Indian/Subcontinent origin; Yes honor killings happen in India almost every other day.
So yeah, casteism cannot be taken apart from religion/ideology.
So which company/tax laws are anti Dalit? The only law about casteism is ridiculously anti Non-Dalit. They can jail anyone with just a complaint, no proofs are required. You have to fight in the court to get out of jail, not go in the jail.
Do you mean that jail where two-third of prisoners are Dalits, tribals and from Other Backward Classes (OBCs), 19% are Muslims?[0]
Or are you talking about the prison/judicial system which is statistically proven to be Brahminical[1].
[0]https://www.deccanherald.com/national/north-and-central/majo...
[1]https://www.huffingtonpost.in/suraj-yengde/theres-a-caste-bi...
India has 1bn+ people, you can't generalize this. There are bunch of Brahmin people at higher level who actively work to uplift others and they do this without being atheist. There are 12 types of beliefs defined in Indian spirituality, it's not binary as in atheist vs believer.
Also, food for thought - are all Brahmins in India are still privileged to earn status of CEOs and managers? The amount of caste based reservation in education to jobs - it's hard for Brahmins to get a seat in college or take a job nowadays, still if these people are on top - do you think it's only some privilege? You are wrong here.
Please provide both the sides on platforms like HN or some brahmins in india will have to have their own version of BLM - "Brahmin Lives Matter"
Have you seen the matrimonial ads in India?
Why am I getting a feeling that you are a Brahmin and you are not happy that people from lower castes have their own quotas in govt jobs/education.
and no, I'm not unhappy for the said reason. If you read my comment properly, I was pointing out the fact that mentioning only one side of the story, because one fell victim to the caste system, on a forum like HN is wrong as it provides very different picture. Most of the people reading this have no clue what it's like. Be responsible.
Shame is good, it will help you change.
[0] Is just the caste violence, even for that data is not complete[1].
Should we talk about discrimination then?
[0]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste-related_violence_in_In...
[1]https://www.researchgate.net/publication/318318717_Are_There...
I am referring to guys from the southern part of India where I am from. Its not a common practice there.
My interpretation of this is these folks have a perceived sense of superiority feeling about their caste and having it in the last name is a form of boasting.
In South India there has been a social movement in the last few decades to allocate quotas for "lower" caste members in universities and govt jobs to stop the domination of brahmins (merits, or lack there of, of the quota system is whole different topic). So having Iyer or Iyergar as last name would be frowned upon/judged endlessly there. May be they feel a sense of freedom here in US that prompts this behavior.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reservation_in_India
Though the percentage of the seats reserved varies with each state.
Yes, dalits. Read the rest of the comments to understand why.
Hindus believe that humans are like dogs and they have a breed. So a person who is born in a higher caste is of a better breed than a person born in a lower caste. Numerous genetic studies have found no significant difference amongst Indian castes. The moment an upper caste person realizes that you are a lower caste, you will be made fun of and ridiculed. Caste is also tied to your last name, so when a Hindu person says his full name he is telling his First name and his Caste. Which is why brahmins will be the first ones in a group to say their full name, while dalits will only meekly say their first name. The entire religion and caste system was built to make people feel shameful of their last name. In fact, some last names of lower castes are commonly used as abuses by upper caste.
It is the worst form of discrimination known to man and it's horrible how hindu society openly supports and promotes it. While slavery lasted only for a couple of hundred years, caste system has been going on for millennia. Dalit atrocities are common in India even today and everyday 10s of lower castes dalits are raped, killed , tortured and humiliated just because they were born a lower caste Hindu. Upper caste hindu managers openly look down on lower caste hindus, even in the US , and will discriminate against them. Caste shame is also inbuilt in a lot of Dalit hindus and they themselves feel embarrassed while even saying their full name.
One of the best things I did after coming to this country was to convert to christianity and a few of my dalit hindu friends have done too. Upper caste hindus have no problem seeing a converted christian as their equal, but they would still regard a hindu dalit as inferior. Hinduism has a huge conversion problem even in India, and it is the fastest shrinking religion in the world.
Indian jatis have usually been endogamous for over a thousand years. We’re talking genetic differences as large or larger than between Ashkenazim and Poles here. Less than one in-marriage per generation.
> Genetic Evidence on the Origins of Indian Caste Populations
> The origins and affinities of the ∼1 billion people living on the subcontinent of India have long been contested. This is owing, in part, to the many different waves of immigrants that have influenced the genetic structure of India. In the most recent of these waves, Indo-European-speaking people from West Eurasia entered India from the Northwest and diffused throughout the subcontinent. They purportedly admixed with or displaced indigenous Dravidic-speaking populations. Subsequently they may have established the Hindu caste system and placed themselves primarily in castes of higher rank. To explore the impact of West Eurasians on contemporary Indian caste populations, we compared mtDNA (400 bp of hypervariable region 1 and 14 restriction site polymorphisms) and Y-chromosome (20 biallelic polymorphisms and 5 short tandem repeats) variation in ∼265 males from eight castes of different rank to ∼750 Africans, Asians, Europeans, and other Indians. For maternally inherited mtDNA, each caste is most similar to Asians. However, 20%–30% of Indian mtDNA haplotypes belong to West Eurasian haplogroups, and the frequency of these haplotypes is proportional to caste rank, the highest frequency of West Eurasian haplotypes being found in the upper castes. In contrast, for paternally inherited Y-chromosome variation each caste is more similar to Europeans than to Asians. Moreover, the affinity to Europeans is proportionate to caste rank, the upper castes being most similar to Europeans, particularly East Europeans. These findings are consistent with greater West Eurasian male admixture with castes of higher rank. Nevertheless, the mitochondrial genome and the Y chromosome each represents only a single haploid locus and is more susceptible to large stochastic variation, bottlenecks, and selective sweeps. Thus, to increase the power of our analysis, we assayed 40 independent, biparentally inherited autosomal loci (1 LINE-1 and 39 Alu elements) in all of the caste and continental populations (∼600 individuals). Analysis of these data demonstrated that the upper castes have a higher affinity to Europeans than to Asians, and the upper castes are significantly more similar to Europeans than are the lower castes. Collectively, all five datasets show a trend toward upper castes being more similar to Europeans, whereas lower castes are more similar to Asians. We conclude that Indian castes are most likely to be of proto-Asian origin with West Eurasian admixture resulting in rank-related and sex-specific differences in the genetic affinities of castes to Asians and Europeans.
Holy shit if there was ever a red flag on an employer and their HR it’s this.
Basically-
“We have determined that whilst we pay lip service to getting rid of good ole US style bullying and discrimination we are ok with non-US people bullying and discriminating against each other in their own cultural way as long as it doesn’t break the US law.”
I can add Cisco to a company I’d never work for.
This is one of those things that my parents tried to enforce on to me, but it didn't work, and if/when I have children they will be taught to consider themselves not Brahmin (because my wife isn't even Indian).
Thankfully I grew up with the Western world schooling system where equality is continually preached. When I was old enough to think for myself, I realized I cannot be better than anyone else just because of birth. In the context of BLM, sometimes it is hard to see that our continual strive towards equality is indeed somewhat working. (It just has a very long long way to go.)
I wouldn't expect HR to side with the lower level employee as generally HR groups are there to protect the company.... but I would wonder what their findings were that found it wasn't illegal.
juxtaposing with
>Cisco’s workforce includes thousands of Indian immigrants, most of whom were born Brahmins or other high castes.
well, wolves determined that eating lambs is ok :)
But I'd expect the state to argue that discrimination against an indian caste is inherently national origin based discrimination since they're unlikely to treat any non-indian as they would a dalit, and even if they did they'd be then discriminating on the national identity of the non-indian (ie, treating non-dalit indians better) OR treating all other indians as bad as they'd treat the dalit indian (unlikely, since Iyer is indian)
That would be stupid. Caste discrimination is pretty obviously not national origin discrimination. But it is race discrimination! Race and caste are identical concepts -- you get them from your parents.
(It is, however, not discrimination against a race that is recognized by American law.)
Discrimination is bad for businesses. Not just if it hits the press, but those employees being discriminated against aren’t going to be as productive as those being encouraged. Fire bad managers. HR works for the company, not middle management.
HR doesn't have a way of seeing the discrimination happening. The managers say X candidate is good so they get hired and then they get promoted because the managers give them good reviews. HR can't tell if the candidate/employee is actually good because they rely on the managers for that. And it's very dangerous waters for them to start making accusations about discrimination in hiring. Both because it can be seen as targetting the managers based on their race and admitting that the company is discriminatory in hiring.
I also don't know how it was at Cisco, but my first job all the lead developers except for one was Indian. How can you punish them if they're all doing the same thing? You can't exactly fire all your leads and if you punish one you risk them all quitting.
And is it really bad for business? Indians make up a huge part of the IT landscape. If the majority want to discriminate then you can either hire them or the smaller pool of people that don't. Most companies will choose the first. Often they don't even know they're making that choice. They hire one and then that person recruits from their network and is the gatekeeper for other hires. If that person discriminates on caste they will likely hire others that do as well.
Because HR generally doesn't have arbitrary hiring and firing power, and because their job in most firms is to protect, first, the company bottom line from unacceptable risk of legal liability for employment actions and, second, the company’s management (who presumably are looking out for the bottom line in other ways).
Happy to see the thing blowing up, so.
EDIT: Fixed Hindi to Hindu
My own brother is part of an Indian clique, which is, believe it or not exclusive only to members of our own caste. He has been living in US for almost 20 years and all his friends are from our own caste.
It bothers me that Indians in US follow all these customs and superstitions blindly after being so educated and having travelled the world. But then moving to California doesn't mean travelling the world of course.
How this shit is legal.
Seriously though, would something as foreign to US be a protected class?
Race. Color. Religion or creed. National origin or ancestry. Sex. Age. Physical or mental disability. Veteran status. Genetic information. Citizenship.
Anything else you can think of is a legal reason to discriminate
The owner, an Indian gentlemen, invited me into the restaurant rather than making me wait until it opened. He was exceedingly polite and even offered me a complimentary cup of tea while I waited for the restaurant to open.
Then he barked something in an Indian language (I would presume Hindi but I don't know there are a lot of languages spoken in India) and a small man who looked older than he probably is came out of the kitchen with the tea for us.
He would not look us in the eye. He had only a few teeth.
I didn't realize until after I left the restaurant that the Indian family who owned the restaurant probably brought their lower caste servants from India with them to labor at the restaurant.
The whole thing made me feel terrible and I haven't been back to the restaurant since.
For example, in the US you can legally bring your unpaid servants to the US on a B-1 visa.
Conversely, if he is a paid employee and legally migrated with the family then there is nothing to be done about it.
Are you sure what you saw was caste discrimination? It may have been a person taking advantage of an illegal immigrant, something that several people and companies in the US are accused of every year.
Further, the fact that such a quota system was supposed to be for a fixed/limited period for upliftment of such groups, has been renewed again and again for vote-bank politics and that has caused even more acrimony. This has nicely played into the politicians' dream of dividing people into clusters that they can manipulate.
This Jati is so pervasive in India that even the non-Hindu religions such as Sikhism and “Lingayat” which were explicitly formed to be away from the Hindu caste system couldn’t escape it. So we now have a few dozen Jati within Sikhism and Lingayats with an overly of Verna.
I can’t think of a religion that doesn’t have this structure in India. Maybe Parsee?
To be honest I'm amazed at all the top level comments around caste, surname etc.! In my career never came across such situations.
At places like Microsoft, Amazon etc the promotions and perf eval brutally gets fought over during calibrations time. All in open, one manager against another, supported by data - who shipped what, how well, who could have done better, and so on. The last thing one would bring about is 'caste', 'surname' etc., even whiff of it would have pulled down the managers among their peers and their managers (typically group head), before even reaching to HR.
I'm not sure what kind of companies all these people worked at. Just so that HN readers does not get a skewed view - in my two decade plus experience I did not see any evidence AT ALL in those FANG+M companies and also do not hear in startups from my friends.
British Caste System isn't active in india https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrTUp2mKbWs
In some ways, it's our ignorance, in other ways, it's really quite mysterious.
Explained a lot cause many of those promoted, didn't deserve it as much as others, who were probably in lower castes.
It's despicable and I fail to understand how educated and technical people can still practice something so inhuman.
To the people saying nothing has changed in India, no, so so much has changed, there are many more intercaste marriages and anecdotal but like 50% of marriage news I hear are all intercaste. Casteism is on a decline as far as I can tell. The young generation seems to care about these things.
Also people saying Indian parents don't allow to marry anyone with a lower caste are being selective. Indian parents don't allow to marry anyone outside their "own" caste whether they are higher or lower, practised by both "lower" and "upper" caste parents.
Have your heard of honour killings where a dalit family killing the upper caste bride or groom?
I'm more surprised 67% of Dalits would have coworkers knowing their caste. Can someone give context on how this happens?
Is this because people from a specific caste tend to concentrate in a specific geographic region?
I've learned as a Westerner that there's no model I've grown up with that's really the best for making sense of India as someone who wasn't born there. What makes the most sense to me is what an Indian colleague told me - "think of it as the United States of Europe -- that many languages, that much diversity, that much complexity and problems."
In old Indian kingdoms, there were warriors, priests, teachers, business people, janitors etc. The caste system basically puts a social value on each of these with priests (who were also teachers) being at the top.
The problem is, you couldn't just choose to be a priest.. or a warrior.. or a janitor. You were born into the profession. You were a janitor because your father was a janitor and his father before him.
Discriminating based on caste for the purposes of education, work, government services, etc.. has been outlawed in the Indian constitution since 1948. It still happens, because people are people, but less so with each generation.
Yeah, it might take you longer to figure out if someone was from Florida or California, but that would probably come out relatively quickly in how they talk about beaches.
Humans group and identify others (often wrongly) really quickly.
Its similar to black people having white sounding to avoid being skipped over while applying for jobs.
Consider how east asians can sometimes have skin whiter than scandanavians but their race is still asian. Or how brown skinned southern europeans can be white while similarly skin-toned north africans are excluded from whiteness.
> U.S. employment law does not specifically bar caste-based discrimination, but California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing contends in the lawsuit that the Hindu faith’s lingering caste system is based on protected classes such as religion.
Or are you wondering if such a reclassification will be allowed? I can certainly see it being so.
We saw cases like this (although not for employment per se) but for service industry in this landmark case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masterpiece_Cakeshop_v._Colora...
So you’re actually fully allowed to discriminate based on the color of someone’s clothes, although probably not accent since it could be considered a proxy for race or national origin.
Discrimination happens any time a choice is made. When we hire one person because we think they'll do a better job or avoid someone because they lack skills we need, we're not hiring indiscriminately -- i.e. we discriminate. Sometimes the criteria make sense and other times they don't.
Like others have said, you can't say "I won't hire you because you have red hair" either for example. If I make up the practical equivalent of a race and arbitrarily deny jobs to people because of it, that violates the equal employment opportunity law. If I deny jobs because of skin melanin content, regardless of sociap definitins if race, the fact that I don't call it race does not change the fact that it is "race" , a classification of humans that identifies behavioral,physiolgical and intellectual traits based on membership to a unique genetic ancestory.
Accent and color of your cloth are not bioligical hereditary properties.
Caste is based on profession.
That's not anywhere in what I wrote.
This seems too important to just throw in unsubstantiated. I have never seen this kind of statistic.
>In 2003, only 1.5 percent of Indian immigrants in the United States were Dalits or members of lower castes, according to the Center for the Advanced Study of India at the University of Pennsylvania. More than 90 percent were from high or dominant castes. About 2.5 million people of Indian descent live in the country, including those born here.
Caste strongly correlates with this, children of higher caste families tend to be richer or have rich relative, have extended family working in well connected places, have well educated parents and grand parents and have access to better schools.
Edit: Having checked, the annual pretax income required to be in the top 1% of earners in India is 77000 USD.
1. access to opportunities, and 2. The denial of opportunities to others through socio-economic-psycho-religious conditioning.
These 1 percenters you are referring to have used the latter to gain the status of the former.
It generally takes resources to immigrate. Poor classes don't have those resources.
There are, of course, exceptions when a wave of immigration is driven by war or asylum seekers from a country leadership change.
Would be cool if article didn't state as fact that some castes are higher than others and/or that people belong to castes.
> allowing him to be harassed by two managers which consider him to have a lower status caste
The prejudice should be attributable to the managers, or better, alleged to the accused.
While I agree nobody should be discriminated against based upon their national origin, race, caste, gender etc., people need to come to terms with the fact that life is unfair. Some day you are the pigeon, some day you are the statue.
I have heard open statements from brahmin students about their "so called superiority" during college - many of them are not really smart or intelligent, but they were of brahmin caste (assumed superiority). One of the YC funded startups has a person who graduated from the same college - he was a prick who would discriminate purely based on caste.
I was hoping workplace would be more meritocratic, but it turns out Indian Hindus are screwed up from the inside. You can easily validate this for yourself, goto any organization in India, and you can easily see the upper caste domination - majority of the managers and higher ups would be from brahmin caste or "other upper castes".
Brahmins like to project it like, people from other castes are not their equals and since these people from other castes are unable to match them, they are throwing stones at them due to their frustrations.
But this is far from the truth, in many organizations if the truly valuable person for the company isn't from this caste or other "so called higher castes", then they don't get promotions, hikes, and end up being harassed and forced to quit if they retaliate - seen too many cases, and am smart to know truth of what happened.
And this is all true for ANY non-brahmin people, not just the lower caste ones.
The real problem though, there is no real solution to this problem except making these people realize they are being stupid for "assuming superiority" and not understanding science.
Many people in the society (obviously from the brahmin caste, especially from south India) have recently come openly stating they are superior and only people born into their caste are brainy. And the Indian government doesn't take any action!
Winston Churchill had said this about brahmins : "To abandon India to the rule of the Brahmins would be an act of cruel and wicked negligence. It would shame for ever those who bore its guilt. These Brahmins who mouth and patter the principles of Western Liberalism, and pose as philosophic and democratic politicians, are the same Brahmins who deny the primary rights of existence to nearly sixty millions of their own fellow countrymen whom they call ‘untouchable’, and whom they have by thousands of years of oppression actually taught to accept this sad position. They will not eat with these sixty millions, nor drink with them, nor treat them as human beings. They consider themselves contaminated even by their approach. And then in a moment they turn round and begin chopping logic with John Stuart Mill, or pleading the rights of man with Jean Jacques Rousseau.
While any community, social or religious, endorses such practices and asserts itself resolved to keep sixty millions of fellow countrymen perpetually and eternally in a state of sub-human bondage, we cannot recognise their claim to the title-deeds of democracy."
Comes from growing up overseas (I live in the US), and having servants.
These were the people that raised us, and were, for all intents and purpose, “family.”
Except they weren’t, and when I found out how they lived, it broke my heart.
I was also raised by a British mother, who was an awesome woman, but came from a middle-class Liverpool (“scouse”) family, and spent her entire early life feeling “not good enough,” despite attending an Ivy-League university, and excelling at her work (http://cmarshall.com/miscellaneous/SheilaMarshall.htm).
Knowing how she felt also broke my heart.
The British have a heavy-duty caste system that isn’t as codified as India’s, but just as pervasive.
Of course, in the US (and, I believe, in other parts of the world), we are currently facing a reckoning about another type of “caste system.”
There seems to be an innate human need to “just be better” than others. I think we all have it, and have to make a conscious effort to suppress the impulse.
I think this is the opposite of a caste system.
I've spent 6 months backpacking all over india in 2008 and 2010, and what I saw there broke my heart many times. The frequent kindness of the poorest folks on top of their misfortunes was very inspiring though
We recently had a woman that works for the State Department give testimony, and one of the things she mentioned, in her prepared remarks, was that she came to the US, because she couldn't get a fair shake in the UK, due to her "Northern accent," despite some heavy-duty cred.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5gmpdtbWB0
The one thing that the Indian caste system has, is something to outlaw.
Since it is so codified, there's a specific thing to point to in a law.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_class_in_the_United_Kin...
e.g. David Cameron, Eton educated prime-minister, described himself as middle class.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25744526
Edit: You could argue that everyone is middle class these days - almost nobody self identifies as working class and there are so few real upper class people (I've never met one).
Edit2: Of course, you used to be able to buy entry into the upper class. But that doesn't happen anymore ;-)
That is my impression as an outsider anyway. I'm sure the details are different somehow.
Those toffs can absolutely shred you, while complimenting you the entire time.
It's watching the English language being wielded as a weapon.
Caste on the other hand is an entirely different beast, as you have rightly pointed out.
European caste system on the other hand is very clear on who is royalty, and who isn't. In fact even today in countries like Denmark, ordinary people are NOT allowed to have royal second names.
God is also monopolised by the church and the clergy, until people (the new middle class) started quitting the church.
Please do not mistake the progress made due to economic development to social changes, and the other way around.
Now America in the other hand, we hold greater respect for self-made immigrant success stories than a privileged rich kid spending daddy’s money.
Even if you become a doctor you still won't be a part of the aristocracy.
The best you can do is upper middle class. That might mean you're the head of a FTSE100 company, which is still pretty good but you won't be upper class until the Queen dishes out a knighthood for all great works of charity you'll do.
...and even then though you'll probably still wear the wrong kind of shoes and hold your knife a bit funny at supper.
Although I work closely with many people in India I don't understand the caste system at all. So I'm just listening to the rest of the conversation and being informed.
The Hindu caste system talks about spiritual evolution of the soul as it goes from body to body in each birth.
You might be a lower-caste in this birth, but you might get upper-caste birth in a next life. And vice-versa. That's how you escape it.
Well, atheists don't believe in anything before or after this life. It's usually such people who have no fear of committing crimes when they are confident they won't get caught.
> why should you not suffer in this current life?
they will suffer. But not because of you or me. But because of reactions to their actions long ago.
Does it mean you can ill-treat them without consequence ? No. If you do so, you will be born in that caste in a next-life and suffer the same oppression they're facing now.
The British system has a lot more to do with who mommy and daddy are, than what the sheepskin says.
It's pretty hard for people raised in the US to understand it. We keep looking at it through our lens, and we have a relatively young, egalitarian, culture that started when our continent was used as an overflow for the prison system.
A lot of folks in the UK try to get ahead by modifying their speaking patterns and accent. My mother had impeccable English (her mother sounded like she came from Liverpool). She was a scientific editor, and was absolutely brutal. I know. She edited some of my work.
I don't think it really got her what she wanted.
I did not mean to offend anyone. I was simply talking about my experience, in my life, and my outlook. I am very grateful for others sharing their experiences and outlooks, and it has helped me to understand things a bit better. I appreciate it. Really.
I understand that this is an emotional topic, and that some people have suffered greatly.
But let's not turn this into a flame war.
'K?
K.
I've enjoyed the responses, and the responses to responses. I've learned a bit from it.
This has been a really good thread, about a topic that has a thousand years of pain behind it.
Caste and class are similar but not the same. Merging the two concepts into one is useful for generating outrage and maybe for bonding, but less useful for understanding the suffering of one society compared to another.
The intent is not social justice, but to splinter the Indian community in the US by legalising divisions and forcing them to declare it in their documents.
As a child growing up in south India where we do not have caste names, I became caste conscious only in high school. Friends and class mates, some of them from wealthy, powerful and privileged families would point out how all they need was a B grade to get in a college of their choices. Whereas I may not even if I got all As.
It is not that I come from a "high caste", my ancestors were refuges of islamic invasion and were subsistence farmers. It is just that one needs the political clout to be classified as a backward caste to enjoy the many benefits of being classified as one including college admission, scholarships and government jobs.
In hindsight I am happy that I made it without reservation, because I do feel less like a free loader.
Ironically, my parents did give me a first name popular among brahmins and in hindsight I do see why some Christian teachers might have been especially harsh on me.
Stop promoting hate & divisions, especially if you are in a position of power.
It seems to me that the American system is more antagonistic, in the sense it really prefers some groups (or classes) to another. And this causes more issues (and more resentment). Am I understanding this right?
Used PE teaching because I can't think of a better example.
https://www.eeoc.gov/statutes/title-vii-civil-rights-act-196...
In the US, it's perfectly legal to fire someone, just cause you think their haircut is stupid, they stole your girlfriend, they root for a sports team you don't like, or you just plain don't like them.
I don't want to over-generalize, because Europe is a collection of many different legal systems, but in general European employees can only be fired for just cause. That is instead of listing why you can't fire someone, they enumerate specific reasons you can terminate an employee.
Therefore to protect against discrimination, the American system requires listing protected classes. The European system does not, because they simply omit "discrimination" from the list of acceptable just causes for termination. However in the US discrimination, i.e. employment termination for reasons unrelated to job performance, is perfectly legal. As long as it doesn't coincide with officially prohibited types of discrimination. Discriminating against employees on the basis of race, sex, or religion is a big problem. Discriminating on the basis of sports fandom, haircut or taste in music is perfectly legal.
IIUC, correlation of any of those with any of the protected classes will land you in trouble though (and I would guess at least the second two from your list are definitely so correlated).
As a result, again IIUC, all the large companies(+) follow, in practice, a European-style approach: there has to be a well-documented, based on some clearly-non-discriminatory criteria (++), reason for firing you (hence performance-improvement-plans, etc, etc).
[+] large companies == worth suing - again IIUC small companies can basically do what you say
[++] I think that still ends up being easier than firing people in many European countries, though
- gender,
- age,
- ethnicity,
- world view or religion,
- sexual preference, or
- impairments.
This law applies in most legal matters, including hiring. Some classes, like the physically impaired, have their own laws.
Source: https://www.oesterreich.gv.at/themen/dokumente_und_recht/gle...
Our constitution simply states that no-one can be treated unequally, without acceptable reason, based on race, sex etc etc or any other trait related to the person itself.
So caste discrimination would be illegal here as it is a reason based on the person. The loophole of ”Acceptable reason” there is mostly to allow them to put only people with testicles in mandatory military service without it going against constitution.
Caste matters everywhere: schools, jobs or life at large in India https://archive.vn/tj8tI
And Casteism is worse than Racism;
Casteism = Racism + Slavery https://archive.vn/mPsqz
There is nothing "Indian" about the caste system, certainly nothing to do with "Hinduism" where even rocks, tree, animals are considered divine.
The modern caste theory was synthesised by British scholar by putting together two separate ideas that existed in the Indian culture.
"Varna" - found in one of many law books called manu-smrithi used by some kingdoms at some point in time. It postulates society and a nation's strength lies in the four pillars of society based on the type of powers and responsibility a person has based on where he/she fell, nowhere does it make the claim that it is by birth. I have never known anyone who has actually read the Manu-smrithi nor have I even seen one, so much for the theoretical indulgence.
And it is very practical and fair in that harsh laws apply to people of power like royalty, clergy, teachers or landowner for crimes committed.
The "jatti" on the other hand evolves naturally based on the work passed on from father-son and communities based on profession, marriage. In fact, different jetties do have their own temples, with their own priests and gods related to their profession. This is in strong contrast to the Church that monopolised god.
Jatti is strong among people who still live in traditional rural settings still following professions passed on from father to son. So ironically jatti is extremely relevant among the poor and weaker sections.
So who benefits from promoting casteism today?
- Politicians who can divide and rule
- Christian evangelists who have done similar things around the world like in Rwanda
- The elitist among the different castes who either benefit from reservations, exclusivity, politics or as bargaining chips
- Even for people who do not care about caste, will find it exceedingly difficult to find a partner for marriage outside their community network
The colonialist did the same in Africa, dividing different communities into "tribes". There is no lower tribe or upper tribe.
If not for reservation (affirmative action), no one would call themselves a lower caste.