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> You are the anti-brahmin hypocrite [...] People like you are why

Please do not cross into personal attack, even when provoked, and do not take the thread further into flamewar even when baited. Doing those things only makes the thread even worse. And actually the bulk of this thread, when I looked at it last night, was doing relatively well considering the difficulty of the topic.

For over 2 millenia dalits were not even allowed to enter schools or gain education. Ambedkar was famously the only dalit student in his school.

If dalits and other lower castes were not allowed to enter schools for more than a thousand years , then doesn't that mean that brahmins and other upper castes had 100% reservation in education for more than a thousand years? Why complain about reservation now when it was you guys who started it?

> For over 2 millenia dalits were not even allowed to enter schools or gain education.

I agree. But reservation as it is in practice currently is rather a knee jerk reaction and not a scientific system. The problem with all these SJW "empowerment" plans is they empower the people who are already empowered.

A retired judge told that the only way to ensure reservation won't be misused is restricting it to one member in one family, and I agree with that, or even restricting reservation to those with less income. The problem with second approach is people easily fake income in income certificates.

The misuse of reservation system is why there is lot of complaints against it, even for people who would score a low amount in tests, reservation would become a scapegoat when the other person with similar economical status gets a job or seat in good college with similar scores.

And your generalization isn't true either. My dad learned till 4th standard, which is almost the average in the area regardless of the caste. My grandmother told she didn't go to school, and I have not seen my grandfather to ask how much he studied.

At this point, you may consider me biased because I don't know about harsh realities in other regions. But keep the data point.

This is the biggest fallacy peddled by upper castes against reservation/quotas and to deny that caste discrimination in India. Reservations in India are not meant to equalize income or opportunities among the castes. They are meant to keep the government machinery unbiased against the 'lower' castes through representation - so that their services are not biased against lower caste citizens. It has nothing to do with the economic status of the reserved castes. Why is it needed? Precisely because of the type of incidents explained in the news article. It's extremely common for dalit officers to be harassed and denied opportunity by upper caste groups playing politics. Same goes for recruitment. This is far more common than the incidents where a reserved category person is promoted without merit. Just imagine how prevalent that is in India if they are willing to take such toxic practices to a corporation in US. That my friend, is the harsh reality. I didn't want that whitewashing narrative to go unchallenged here.

Fuck, does that mean you can ignore merit and let the guy who grew up with more privileges and less qualifications still get better opportunities than one with better qualifications just because the former is from a caste that is oppressed by someone else somewhere else? This will just increase dissatisfaction among non-reserved castes and reinforce the discrimination.

Even then, what is wrong with the retired judge's suggestion I mentioned?

The story of how a merited upper caste lost out to an unqualified reserved caste is another misleading anecdotal argument. Even merited reserved caste people face the same accusation. I have anecdotes for that as well, but I've never seen the accusers accept that there are merited lower castes. But what is revealing is the demography of the upper hierarchy of the government positions. There are progressively more upper castes as go up the hierarchy -with almost all institutional heads being a sharma, verma or gupta. And it has nothing to do with merit either. It's a result of systematic discrimination, harassment and office politics against lower castes. It's evident in their discrimination against the customers too - if you ever accessed a government service. It's all too evident to even deny. This is prevalent even in elite educational institutions [1]. The instances of this injustice far outnumber the ones you talk about - even neglecting that meritorious lower castes face discrimination. Even the rich lower castes don't get to compete on a level playing field - your caste determines your opportunities, not economic status.

As for the supreme court judge's comment - they are not all that righteous or infallible. The SCI is infamous for decisions that favour super rich or conservative ideology. The same problem of upper caste domination politics exist among the judges too - just check the list of chief justices [2]. The solution the justice gave doesn't address the representation and bias problems that reservation is supposed to solve.

[1] https://theprint.in/opinion/brahmins-on-india-campuses-study...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_chief_justices_of_Indi...

You are just arguing what's on your mind without even properly understanding my arguments.

> As for the supreme court judge's comment - they are not all that righteous or infallible.

There is no point in talking about the person. Point me what is wrong in his comment.

> The story of how a merited upper caste lost out to an unqualified reserved caste is another misleading anecdotal argument.

Because you don'taccept that it happens, it is misleading, lol. In NITs/IITs, some people get seats with JEE rankings of 100K, which are otherwise allotted within 10K without reservation. And it is well known that most of people are economically well-off to pay for coaching and study materials (self studying candidates are extremely rare).

Some years ago, a scheduled caste student from a middle class family who got All India Rank 1 in JEE Mains and got lot of publicity got 100+ rank in JEE advanced. If he was a general category student, he couldn't get CSE in IIT Bombay, but he got CSE seat by reservation. Now imagine a person who got 90th something rank in JEE advanced, coming from similar or worse economical background, and still missed the seat in top institution because someone thought that is the way to do reservation.

India's literacy rate in 1947 is right below 10%. It was not just Dalits that did not have education. Education for a long time has been limited to few people and vast number of those people are not western educated either. They got traditional oral education well into mid-19th century.

As an American with an interest in South Asian culture, I found this ten percent number striking. A quick look at the US Library of Congress via Google search, shows these major newspapers of India in the 1940s.

https://www.loc.gov/newspapers/?all=true&dates=1940-1949&fa=...

I believe there were more than 15 languages in India with newspaper circulation of 1 million or more, in addition to English and Hindi, in the 1980s. Even illiterate Yemen had a literacy rate greater than 50% in the 1980s, by my understanding. So I am very sceptical of this ten percent statement about India.

India's population in 1950 is roughly 400 million. 10% of that is about 40 million.

15 news papers with million or more circulation and 40 million people who are considered literate, the numbers show how high news paper penetration rate was (in era of limited radio and no TV in India).

Edit: Found this graph abt literacy in India around 1950, it is about 13-16% ball park.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_India#/media/File:...

> For over 2 millenia dalits were not even allowed to enter schools or gain education.

Any source for the 2millenia part?

> A person with ½ of my competetive exam scores, and double the income easily gets a seat in NIT because reservation based on caste. The generalization that all upper caste people are oppressors and all lower caste people are oppressed is wrong.

Just wait for it. Even certain 'upper castes' have now started getting reservation and getting a seat on a merit in the open category is only going to get more difficult. Certain states have already crossed the 50% reservation limit set by the Supreme court[1][2][3]. So much for Supreme court's power.

While this has happened at the state level, it's only a matter of time that these demands will go to the national level.

1. https://www.news18.com/news/india/reservation-for-economical...

2. https://www.thequint.com/news/india/mapping-quotas-how-india...

3. https://m.timesofindia.com/t10-nov-30-2018/1-what-happened-t....

Well they stopped going against reservation and started demanding some percentage for themselves.. peak social justice /s

That doesn't really help. Even Modi's so called "10% reservation for general merit" scheme is a cheap votebank trick. With income limits as high as 8 Lakh, it is just like taking 9.9% and giving 10%.