How India's ancient caste system is ruining lives in Silicon Valley | Hacker News Reader

How India's ancient caste system is ruining lives in Silicon Valley

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https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24552047

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This is probably a reflection of the recent Cisco scumbaggery committed by two castist idiots that discriminated a fellow employee who was allegedly reporting to them.

On the other hand, as an Indian myself, I've seen some really backward idiots spread all over America that try to reinforce the notion of caste and propagate that idea to others. Most of them are really uncivilized with narrow and closed minds. I know for one that the idea of "caste" makes no sense, at least not anymore. In India there is still a lot of mess and trouble that happens because of it, which only pulls the country back in terms of development, but when people, after setting foot in America which is a much forward country still do not get enlightened, it is beyond me.

I personally have taken a pledge to spread the word against "caste" and Caste discrimination here. I was able to change a few minds among my friends which I'm happy about. To anyone reading this, please enlighten yourself and help others.

I know caste is for historical reasons, but is there some constitution amendment in India to do away with Caste for the whole country? considering India claims to be the largest democratic country on earth, if Caste is not strongly forbidden it can last forever and yes, it will be here in USA where more Indians are either working here, or acting as management roles these days. It's bad.

There is not one yet afaik. The problem is the majority of people aren't ok with the removal - they want special rights, reservations, and treatment. The sheer power of all these people combined will overthrow any decision made by the government in that direction. These people aren't stupid but just uninformed/uneducated. It then goes into politics - the leaders are way too dumb or just don't care. They fail to spread awareness to anyone whatsoever.

To be clear, Article 15 and 17 absolutely prohibits any discrimination based on caste and abolishes untouchability respectively. [1] The issue is that the culture still imbues caste system. All you have to do is peruse the matrimonial or see the popular netflix show Indian Matchmaking to get an idea. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20120402064301/http://lawmin.nic...

Thanks for clarifying, this lines up with what I heard from my Indian friends as well -- that caste discrimination is legally prohibited by the Indian constitution, but it is still embedded in the culture due to historic reasons.

I think it is not about reservations or benefits majorly, but rather about the symbols that the Upper Castes are reluctant to let go of, like using caste names as surnames, and wearing of symbols, even the manner/affectations of speech, that they use to keep themselves distinct from the other Castes. And also the stigma the Upper castes, (often very subtle) exhibit towards the lower Castes. And also the fact the higher social strata comprising of top most government officials and industry executives still seems to be majorly drawn from the upper Castes.

Sometimes I'm amazed at the skill some have to infer another persons caste, from the subtlest of hints/clues... As long as people keeping doing this, it is going to remain a problem.

Caste based discrimination is illegal. We have many programs which give preference to students and job applicants from historically oppressed castes.

Though people prefer to stay in their own groups (caste), you cant really ban that.

Negative discrimination on the basis of caste is already banned in India (since 1948).

The constitution bans any discrimination based on caste. However, casteism is imbued in Indian culture today. As an Indian, I know this for a fact. All you have to do is see the matrimonial ads. Also, one way to sniff out casteist behavior is when Indians start making an apologetic claim of it "made sense in the ancient times". It made as much sense as slavery did in the ancient times.

How is casts different from slavery in ancient times?

I don't know India, but I know historically other cultures often didn't really have the concept. There might be slaves that were more free than others, but the concept was slave.

Doesn't matter. Here in the US blacks have had equal status. However right in my neighborhood someone put anti-black literature right on the mayor's door just a few weeks ago. Anonymous of course, they are too cowardly to do this openly (I'm reasonably sure the majority of this town would socially outcast them if it was known who they were, but it only takes a couple in a million to cause harm)

Man, this is really hard to stomach as a first generation Indian-American. I'm American, but my parents are distinctly not; the ideas of caste discrimination certainly come up often (we're Brahmin, FWIW, so you might imagine in what context these ideas come up).

One hopeful thought I can add is that I've never once talked to a American-born Indian-American about caste, except to ridicule it as a horrific system of discrimination. There's lots of Indian-born American citizens, which might contribute to the issue; I hope the institution of caste completely vanishes in America as our ethnic group assimilates into broader American society over the next few generations.

American born Swedish Americans are mostly oblivious to Sweden's caste system. So I'd say your optimism is well placed.

Most Swedes are also oblivious to Sweden’s “caste system”, in my experience of living in Sweden my whole life.

Pertinent John Doe line 'When John Doe indicated to Cisco's human resources team that he wanted to file a complaint, he was allegedly told by the department that "caste discrimination was not unlawful".'

Pertinent Cisco line 'We have robust processes to report and investigate concerns raised by employees which were followed in this case dating back to 2016, and have determined we were fully in compliance with all laws as well as our own policies.'

So, in my reading, Cisco's HR lawyers decided Caste discrimination was legal and easier to let continue than shake the tree under their managers.

> Cisco's HR lawyers decided Caste discrimination was legal

Sounds like a fun point to make over a disbarment proceedings, because that's what I think they should be subject to.

From a human perspective, caste discrimination is really the same thing as race discrimination, discrimination based on your ancestry.

I'm pretty sure caste discrimination is unlawful in India (other than their reservation system of affirmative action). However, I don't believe caste is in legislation as a protected class in California or at the US federal level, nor do I believe there is judicial action on this. To me, that says, caste discrimination in the US is lawful and reprehensible. A lawyer should not be disbarred for making a determination that seems to be accurate.

Ok maybe disbarment is too heavy

But I'd say it would be not too hard to argue that it would fit race or national origin discrimination

But regardless of the legality of it, it is extremely poor judgement to allow such discrimination in place of work.

There are many things that are not unlawful but people assume they are, for example workplace discrimination(like forcing extra workloads on people on work permits) based on immigration status is 100% legal.

> Cisco's HR lawyers decided Caste discrimination was legal

A risky decision, since it's effectively ethnic discrimination:

These groups remained genetically distinct, and the linguistic history of India suggests they spoke languages with dramatically different origins. Nevertheless, it appears there was a good deal of intermarriage [..] But then there is a sea change about 1,500 years ago. [..] People had to marry within their castes. And suddenly, we no longer see signs of intermixing between different groups.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/01/the-caste-system-has...

Ethnicity is not a protected class in the US or in CA.

Caste is not a protected class under US or CA labor laws, so they are legally correct.

In a nutshell: discrimination on the basis of one of the enumerated protected classes is unlawful. This list includes sex, gender, race, religion, and nationality, among the big ones. (Note: the list does not generally include ethnicity, which is roughly defined as "cultural identity.")

All other forms of discrimination, while potentially actionable for other reasons, are not prohibited. Thus, for example, in most states, you can be fired based on your political affiliation (though not in CA). As the US and CA do not have histories with caste systems, and potential cases represent such an insignificant fraction of possible cases, it was never made illegal here.

Arguably, caste discrimination is just a form of racial discrimination, but the plaintiff will have to connect the dots for the court to show the tie between caste and race.

I find myself wondering why someone from one of the lowest castes does not simply claim to not be that when they are halfway across the world from the society that has a tradition of maintaining this?

I can assume there’s a bunch of subtle class signaling that people do reflexively (speech patterns, dress preferences, whatever, I mean I live in a city with like five different distinct dialects that immediately tell a local what social stratum someone is from), as well as maybe an element of defiant “fuck you I am proud to be someone from the lowest caste who can run rings around your Useless Aristocrat caste ass”. Possibly some distinctive physical features due to centuries of it being forbidden to marry across caste lines?

I apologize if any of these questions are offensive, I know fuck-all about this. I also know it ain’t your job to explain all of this to my white American ass, a quick link to a good Caste 101 For Stupid Americans would be fine :)

At least for Indians, names can be an effective signal for caste.

Fair question. Your last name is a clear give away of your caste in most cases. There may be others, but I am not sure of what they may be.

is it difficult for it to be changed when you immigrate to the US?

As a simple example: look at people from eastern europe that "americanized" their names when they came over from the old country at the end of the 19th/beginning of the 20th century.

Part of the reason people fly away to "greener pastures" is that they think that the new country will be more accepting of who they are. Yes, they can. No, they didn't think it would be an issue, and now it is kinda late.

> Iyer was a graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), and grew up in Bombay as an upper-caste Indian. He also completed his PhD at Stanford, founded two companies that were both acquired by Cisco, and has been named MIT Innovator of the year. A man of science and reason, and a person who places a premium on ideas, you would imagine.

> Much like Iyer, John Doe also graduated from IIT.

> The lawsuit alleges that the upper-caste Iyer recognised John Doe and instantly began ridiculing him in front of all the other higher-caste Indian employees at Cisco, saying that John Doe was a Dalit and only got into the engineering school because of affirmative action, which India implemented in 1980 under the then-Prime Minister VP Singh.

This behavior is absolutely not acceptable.

I want to provide some context to avoid the narrative being dragged into areas that are unproductive.

IITs are like the Ivy League Universities in India. Admissions into IIT are based on a notoriously competitive entrance exam - it’s common for people to take a multiple year break after high school just to prepare for this exam. For those who end up scoring high enough to get into the IIT, it ends up being the defining achievement of their lives.

There’s also an elitist attitude that plagues many IIT graduates. Wrap your head around the idea that there are dating/match making services that are exclusive to IIT graduates. It’s pretty bad.

The implementation details of the Indian affirmative action programs are such that underrepresented communities are ranked separately from the rest. On these lists, the competition is less fierce.

There is a lot of resentment around this from multiple sides - it’s sort of similar to the recent lawsuits against Harvard for discriminating against Asians.

For various reasons, Brahmins have a multigenerational advantages when taking the IIT entrance exams. They are over represented in the top 500 scores for example.

I say all this because it’s important to understand the nuances of India’s cultural problems. It looks similar to Racism in America at first glance, but on a closer look, it’s a very different (and a more serious) problem in many ways.

I worked for an Indian-based contracting company for a few years. I witnessed this first hand. I believe every word in this story.

I see this everyday (before COVID) when my Indian colleagues go to lunch but don’t ask that one guy bc he’s from a lower cast.

I can't reduce anyone's experience and don't know about this specific situation. Cisco is an American company and while I worked there in San Jose, I didn't encounter any notion of birth-based caste discrimination, which in any case I and others would have opposed resolutely, simply because we were in the "land of the free". Even in India, Dalits are empowered by law to report against discrimination and avail of Indian equivalent of affirmative action. Their situation, while not perfect, has improved considerably over the several few decades. That being said, there may be some anachronistic idiots in responsible positions of power who could have caused this. I hope that courts investigate and reach the right conclusion and nip this from the root and Cisco, if involved, learns the right lessons.

A major conflict recently broke out in my (uk, academic) organisation between two colleagues originally from India. The aggressiveness of it really stunned everyone, especially as we thought they were friends. Turns out that none of us had recognised the caste difference between them, which was how the one from a lower caste explained it. It hasn't been resolved. If the one from the upper caste was white and the other black, it would certainly have been swiftly and directly resolved. I don't really know what to do.

"Last name" of any person across the world has something to do with. The argument to identify two ppl with same firstname stands the same for both first and last names combined. Countries like India, carry the caste names as the last names. Abolishing that alone is solving only one part of the problem. The right fix is to make these down-trodden to tread back what they lost over decades (even centuries). These lawsuits to punish an isolated event will stop nothing.

At-will employment probably doesn't help the issue. With proper labour protections, the low-caste guy can tell the Brahmin to go fuck himself, but good luck without unions and on H1-B.

Why is this getting re-posted ?

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