How To Be An Anti-Casteist
npr.org
npr.org
Bonus clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTx-sdR6Yzk (unfortunately not Kneecap, because if they have anything to say about religion, I wouldn't have noticed, having no gaelic myself.)
If you were born the son of a street sweeper, but excelled, you would be fully accepted by your peers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility
Not so in India. The Caste system freezes everyone in place for their life time.
For someone to move from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lower_caste to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forward_caste is denied.
https://www.amazon.com/How-Be-Antiracist-Ibram-Kendi/dp/0525...
Is there? It is very easy to find instances of poor black kids that are now multi-millionaires due to sports. Lebron James, for example, grew up without a father figure and in a poor household. He is now a billionaire.
There are also rich "low caste" people in India - it doesn't mean there isn't caste discrimination.
The opposition, Congress, which is secular left, has been dominated by Brahmins including the Gandhi family. For all the anti Brahmin nonsense spewed by the Congress, they could have remedied it by the Gandhi's stepping aside instead of ruling India for 40 year out of its 70 directly and another 10 by proxy in the 2000. Ironically even the politburo of Indian communist parties are dominated by Brahmins.
Just step aside!
In my country it is pretty common for Turks and Russians to live in separate communities if they are concentrated in an area, especially if that isn't urban, but it can happen there too.
I believe the motivation can range from pride to a bad conscience of having better living conditions or a feeling of having left their former countrymen behind. And probably a lot of other reasons.
At least, this is my experience with non-cultural interest groups.
This might be taboo, but every time I see a situation where there are multiple Indians in a reporting chain, I run. If you have an Indian above and below, you will be bypassed on work, undermined, and given absurd directions, almost designed to drive you out. Then there is the case where if an Indian gets into management, they will start filling everything with their friends. Other management positions, they will start fighting to bring in some contractors from some place like Infosys. Its the death knell of the IT division at the company.
Being on a team where you are the only non-Indian means you will be an outcast. You'll not be invited to meetings, they'll talk in their native tongue to exclude you. I've been the only white guy working with Chinese, and they don't do that. I've been in similar situations with Africans / and African Americans and they will welcome you right along.
This is the truth, no matter how politically incorrect it is, and every time you walk into an IT office and there are 80% Indians, that's the reason.
There's entire ecosystem of chat groups of higher-caste Indians in American firms who systematically hire based on it and even go as far as to expose others.
* Indians from India like old ways of addressing superiors. They appreciate if you call a manager Sir. Address him as Dear Sir.
* Religious Brahmins would not tolerate being around a Dalit because it will adversely effect their purity. There are terms for all this. Aversion to Dalits is deeper than culture, it's a religious belief. This might even be protected by religious freedom. Less religious ones I don't think care as much. Very religious Brahmins in general do not get high paying jobs and do not have a lot of power but also would hold the most discriminatory views.
* Indians have a culture of going the extra mile at work. So I think in general they don't appreciate the American view of work.
* Indians from India prefer being around other Indians but I think they also don't understand Americans well and think the American work environment is strange.
* There are a lot of horrible things that happen in India and it's not just one group that does it. There isn't really any one universally accepted victim group there. There are billionaire Dalits.
No more or less than any other group. I’ve seen, and promoted, hard working Indians. I had to fire an Indian that thought his freshly minted MS degree made him too good for any actual work other than spending his 2 hours of non-nap time per day telling others what to do. And I have worked with everything in between. Law of large numbers should come to mind here.
It's not. Religious practices in violation of social duties or subversive of good order are not protected under free exercise of religion (Reynolds v. United States).
In particular, it's a nigh-certainty that discrimination in matters of employment based on caste will be ruled illegal under Title VII (a fortiori, even employer or customer's preference for individuals of a particular _religion_ cannot be taken into account; a fortiori intra-religious preferences will not be taken into account either. This is almost certainly what will happen in California v. Cisco).
So whenever there are any caste issues, it's always two Hindus involved. Upper caste hindus don't probe the caste of a person if they hear a Christian/Muslim/Buddhist name because they know that it won't exist.
Because of how easy it is to give up caste, lower castes have been doing religious conversions in India in large numbers. The so called upper caste , only make up 30% of Hindu population and if all lower castes were to convert then Hinduism would become a minority in India. To prevent this mass exodus, various states of India have been coming up with anti-conversion laws which make it really hard for people to convert. Though I really don't understand why lower caste dalits in the US continue to stay Hindu, when they could just change their religion and avoid the whole caste discussion altogether.
Perhaps it's just they have strong religious belief in Hinduism? I don't have more than a surface understanding of the religion or how devoted people tend to be, but if I think about the various sects of Christianity, many people of certain sects wouldn't even consider switching to a different sect because they are so invested in their particular flavor of Christianity. And I'd think being Hindu and considering converting to Christianity or Islam would be an even larger jump in belief systems. It's not like switching brands of car.
I guess in my experience (in US culture at least), "just change your religion" is actually a super big deal and is a huge decision that takes an extraordinary reason. Even discrimination doesn't pass that bar for many people.
Besides, let's just be honest - today Hinduism/Hindu is a religion - there is no two way about it - practically and technically! This reasoning, that "oh, it's just a way of life", is often provided by people who try to deflect the argument away from Hindu nationalism, extremism, and fanaticism - especially of today. (This might not be your intention though).
So caste discrimination, while it's not a simple as, say, preferring Christians or opposing Muslims, is inherently religious discrimination?
Link to first random thing I could find
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/the-last-unt...
While the Indian concept of "caste" (varna/jati/etc) isn't a native part of Christianity, Christians have varied in their attitude to it – some Christians have insisted that the caste system is incompatible with Christianity and that in becoming a Christian you have to give up your caste identity; other Christians have been accepting of the caste system, leading to the establishment of Christian castes such as the "Roman Catholic Brahmins" or "Bammons" – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Catholic_Brahmin
Likewise, regarding Islam, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste_system_among_South_Asian...
The reason this system persists, may be that it’s acceptance facilitates proselytisation.
You might argue that at least there is reduced toxicity in daily interactions at least, but it’s easy to find instances of abusive interactions as well.
As such, this whole topic is becoming a flaming pile of shit with bigoted descriptions of all Brahmins and “upper castes”. Also, I wonder if any here realise that there is no similarity between left-right divisions that you see in the west and whatever it is that exists in India.
The left-liberals in India seek to emphasise caste differences among Hindus in order to uphold, what they call “secular” values. An Indian leftist will never let caste differences, and consequently the discrimination, die. Only by dividing Hindus by caste can the theological leaders of the significant religious minorities of India remain politically relevant.
The non-left-nationalists on the other hand are spending huge amounts of resources to court middle and lower castes, while seeking to isolate and “otherise” and demonise the Muslims and Christians (to some extent).
Then there are the “gurus” who also seek to exploit caste, namely the fact that a significant subset of the population - both lower and upper castes - are fed up of this system, in order to set up cults.
The Dalits, over time, have adopted different approaches to fight discrimination. Initially they tried to give up their Hindu identity completely and move into other religions like Islam and Christianity. Seeing that this approach has largely failed, because caste is too strong in India and the bigotry just follows them. Proponents of this approach are failing in India and are now emigrating to advanced countries.
So Where is the discussion of this complexity in this topic here? All I see are braid-dead, uneducated direct substitution of the western anti-racist struggle/movement onto the Indian context.
Frankly, this is just immigrants from India, who feel left out by BLM, saying “this looks great, and we want in”. In conclusion Americans and westerners will always be ill equipped about caste in India and can only worsen the conditions here. You should realise that this issue is coming up as a reaction to the existing social movements in the US, and only ignore the possibility that cases are being slapped by people trying to hide their own incompetence and inability to do the job, at your own cost.
While there is a necessity to stamp out toxicity, the way forward is to investigate all claims and not just be pressurised to virtue signal.
But labeling all Indians of a particular caste this way and asserting "this is the truth" is just flat out bigotry, no matter how intellectual and self-effacing your comment sounds. Are there people like this? Sure. Are there a lot of them? Maybe? Even probably? There are also people of other races who act in similar discriminatory ways against other groups, often in much more insidious ways. Is it the same? Maybe not, but it doesn't matter: painting an entire ethnic group with the same broad (negative) brush based on your limited anecdotal experience is just not okay.
I have to say, though, if I saw an org chart with a disproportionate number of Indians (relative to nearby & similar companies, or other parts of the same company) I would take that as a warning sign. As you say, in my experience, less political and more open-minded Indian tech workers will tend to be drawn to more diverse workplaces. It just seems unlikely that a whole bunch of cool, modern, forward-thinking Indians just coincidentally happened to fill a whole management chain.
Frankly, I'd think the same thing if a management chain were overly-dominated by any particular group, be they Chinese, white, or, I dunno, UC Berkeley grads. It's a sort of organizational smell. It just seems to happen more often, anecdotally, with Indian management, either just because there are proportionally more of them or because they're used to a more old-school corporate culture.
The language issue is slightly separate factor, of course. Still, insisting that English be the language of business is a pretty huge privilege in favor of native speakers, which can be detrimental to the business when people are forced to communicate in their second language which is slower and less accurate than their native ability.
I worked for an Indian manager in a game studio. I don't know what caste, except that he wasn't Christian or Muslim, probably because he didn't think it worth mentioning. He hired based on demonstrated skill, so we had a diverse group of coworkers. He actively encouraged the group to eat together, arranging meals out with careful consideration for the group's preferences. He was approachable, personable, considerate, friendly and kind.
People are people and stereotypes do not always fit.
> Then there is the case where if an Indian gets into management, they will start > filling everything with their friends. Other management positions, they will start > fighting to bring in some contractors from some place like Infosys.
This was not my experience. I also felt that the overall tone of the comment was negative, so I wanted to share that not everyone has had a negative experience with Indians in management.
I’m very disappointed in how HN views Indians - it seems like they are not treated as other minorities in America, and aren’t afforded the advantages of being white in America either. Instead a different standard is used against them, labeling standard professional practices with ugly terms. I wonder if the HN crowd also regards other Asian coworkers similarly.
I'm glad these topics are brought up to the surface and being discussed, because the strategy of voting with your feet is no longer an effective one, given the proliferation of Indian management across the industry.
It never quite made sense to me why non-American Indians (or any other foreigners, for that matter) are allowed to manage Americans, unless of course company itself is Indian or foreign to begin with.
Managing people is an inherently cultural and people-oriented job (and it's NOT an easy job, with consequences cascading well beyond one's tenure). Foreigners are very unlikely to hold enough of the same values as their team as to be qualified to be the manager. The exception here are folks who have already become fully Americanized, in which case there wouldn't be the kind of problematic behaviors you described above.
It's the same reason why new immigrants to a country don't go straight into becoming MPs and Presidents, regardless of their backgrounds and qualifications.
I don't think it's a good idea in the first place, but it doesn't even work, because it tends to crush weaker cultures while only preserving the more resistant ones: Islam, Hinduism, Judaism, the current form of Han-centric ethno-nationalism promoted by the Chinese Communist Party, etc.
I really think we need to do globalization in a different way: free trade between nations, but mostly ethnically homogeneous nations, as it used to be until the 1970s/1980s.
Ironically, you, with your wish that foreigners would just be straight-up banned from management, have very different values to the average American.
This is also bigotry.
But I should agree that the people who come to become managers are likely to have the attitude that favours nepotism. These people are not interested in what they are doing. They just want to be a manager.
Your first paragraph is very poorly put generalisation. As a resident non-upper caste Hindu Indian I couldn't disagree more. While lower caste and Muslim oppression has skyrocketed in India since 2014 (esp. among low income groups of society), this is far from true in professional setups especially in the generalised way you've put it.
> But the higher castes are extremely insular, and treat anyone of any race poorly.
This is just untrue!
> This might be taboo, but every time I see a situation where there are multiple Indians in a reporting chain, I run.
I have never worked abroad/in the west (other than short stints in SK/JP) so I can't comment on what you've said directly. But coincidentally most of my friends (different caste groups) who work in the USA (or even EU) avoid this as well - but because of some other reason. Work culture - as in timings, out of work hour calls and forced unreasonable expectations. They know that (and I agree) work-life balance will be shitty in a team full of Indians up, down, and around.
Hell, years ago I got an MS accept from MSU but I ran away seeing pretty much the entire CS department manufactured in India and China - PhD scholars, profs - all of them (I had applied w/o checking that). Yes, is this another generalisation but to be honest that's how I felt at that time. Apologies if it came across as offensive.
Coming to the cast issues, there was a post here last week on the same topic. I extended the discussion to a WhatsApp group of 70+ colleagues/friends who come from different backgrounds. I wanted to validate if I am the odd one, who has almost never observed cast based issues either. After two days of long discussion, we came to a conclusion that we tend to show more affinity to the people who speak our native language or/and come from same regional roots, than our cast and religion.
Not denying that that the later doesn't exist at all, I feel this whole topic is too exaggerated.
Disclaimer: My experience is limited to 20 years of while collar profession (only).
I took no action, but wasn't sure what to do. After I learned more about it, I started to wonder where I was in this hierarchy.
If you ever overhear something like this, what would you do?
Although, the OP's case, the person did quickly realize her mistake, but bias might still be present.
Perhaps not explicitly, but I could easily see courts ruling that it is. To me, it seems covered by the ethnicity portion, although I get they are not the exact same concept.
Caste itself isn't explicitly protected (axes of discrimination that weren't widely recognized as actual things people cared about in the US when the law was written don't tend to be) but there are arguments that caste discrimination runs afoul of existing US protection regarding color, ethnicity, national origin, and religion, among others, and some of these are currently being actively litigated in federal court, IIRC by both private plaintiffs and state fair-employment authorities.
So “might be fine”, but very much might not. And HR is usually about avoiding risk of exposure, not steering the company into “might be fine” waters.
It makes me angry now even reading it. Why would this have any impact on the work the candidate would be able to perform?
I think you did the right thing in this situation. She did not express anything malicious and she corrected herself (at least partially).
It sounds like your colleague was doing something anyone would do (assessing someone by the social strictures they are familiar with) and did something wrong (devoted effort to it in a hiring context, said something aloud.) Yes, everyone does this sort of thing -- in American society overall we don't have good names for the subtle side of our class system, so we can't express the puzzle as clearly as some other societies, but we do see the world (consciously or unconsciously) along these lines.
When I hear people say inappropriate things -- usually less fraught ones like marital status -- I point out that they cannot say such things. It serves as a reminder of proper procedure. I do not escalate the situation if they seem to be acting without malice and, like the person in your story, seem to desire to do better.
(Full disclosure, I am a white-presenting man.)
I believe she did the exact opposite. (You could argue she meant "shouldn't have done that" - I guess you'd have to be there to know) Acknowledged that she wanted to do this, so it was conscious, not just a bad habit. And acknowledged that she shouldn't talk about it - not that she shouldn't have done it.
Well, imagine that you, a white-presenting man (what does _that_ mean) were on a phone interview with someone you couldn't see, and afterwards, you said something like, "I was trying to determine if they were Black."
I'm not going to make judgement on whether that's a fair statement or not - what I am curious about is whether you think that you'd get the same kind of defense - would there be someone saying that you weren't malicious?
If you met most of my family members, you would not think they were white, but if you met me personally, you probably would.
Only once in a long while does someone seem to read me as 'not white' (and unless I'm speaking my heritage language they usually guess wrong about what flavor.)
> were on a phone interview with someone you couldn't see, and afterwards, you said something like, "I was trying to determine if they were Black."
If I'm on the phone with someone, I am sure I am trying to figure that out. Folks who claim otherwise are most likely incorrect about what they are doing.
I would certainly know better than to say that aloud, since I grew up in a society where I know how it would be perceived, and have intuition around it. I don't have to think much to realize the implications.
If you were an Indian, this would immediately raise a red flag. The intent of bringing up caste in a professional setting is clear - to discriminate. There is no other practical use for it. And the system is a hideous one with the potential to seriously damage professional environment. Signs of its practice like this should be considered threatening.
Yes, it's illegal to discriminate based on religion, but in many parts of the country it's a big curiosity about other people (is he presbyterian?) and so many people may not be able to help privately trying to suss it out.
The difference is that cast is a rigid hierarchy, based on society-accepted discrimination, and there is no reason to try and figure it out other than to decide where they are in the pecking order.
It's absolutely not okay to discriminate candidates by something like caste, or social status. It's like if your lead said she was trying to determine if they were an inferior race.
Yes, it is.
Caste no, social status? Absolutely, happens all the time. It’s very easy to proxy social status based on interests, hobbies, mannerisms, etc. Those that don’t pass the sniff test, are deemed “bad culture fits”.
If racial discrimination doesn't exist why Blacks are economically poor across in west?
1. Ongoing discrimination 2. Different starting points + law of large numbers.
If you start one racial group off in a country with property and let them acquire wealth for a few hundred years, then free another racial group from slavery with absolutely nothing - even after a long while those wealth differences will persist.
IMHO trying to find cultural fit is a form of ongoing discrimination[1] and it strengthens the effect of different starting points[2].
India is countering [2] by enforcing a 50% quota in education, Jobs, and politics. AFAIK West on the other hand is wishing it to vanish without doing anything concrete.
India is taking right steps in the right direction and I am hopeful this will vanish as generation born with caste concepts die off slowly.
I was recently talking with someone in China who claimed that the Uighurs could not be oppressed because they are given advantages in hiring/education, and that America would never do the same for black people.
Suffice to say, the US does engage in extensive aff action in education and hiring (although neither are directly legally mandated).
Yes there is discrimination but India is fighting it on policy and social level. Reserving 50% in education and jobs is one such big step. India's constitution was written by a a Dalit. Many people from the held high offices. Current prime minister and president are from the same community.
> Suffice to say, the US does engage in extensive aff action in education and hiring (although neither are directly legally mandated).
Is it measured? If not than how you know?
Absolutely, not my intention by my comment - more just recounting a similar phenomenon in a different discussion.
> India is fighting it on policy and social level
I'm not contesting that either! But of course there is still more work to be done.
> Is it measured? If not than how you know?
Affirmative action is quite well known in the United States. You can see the documents from the SFFA v. Harvard lawsuit, for instance, to see how the SAT score cutoff differs by race & ethnicity.
Thanks I didn't knew that. Having said that Harvard and Stanford is last rung. Those who are able to reach those places are already prevailed I would argue. Is there similar affirmitive action in place on lower levels as well?
India has it across the board which help more IMHO. Some communities have used it so much that now debate within the lower sections have started that reservation should be taken away after 3 generations.[1]
Given that 90% of people from India in SWE seem to be from higher caste (I don't really know the exact statistic but it is something like that), then it seems like the reservation is still needed.
Yes Reservation is still needed. India is big and people who got oppressed under colonial rule would take a few generations more to come up.
Bigger issue is exploitation of caste lines for politics.
I don’t think it’s great that this happens, it insulates elites from those with working class backgrounds and accelerates inequality.
This also has to do with the fact that, in consulting and finance, it is the perception of intelligence by the customer that is much more important than the actual intelligence. Managers would rather hire the team of consultants from the Ivy League and rich people would rather pay the management fees for the Ivy League team to manage their money.
In industries that are more directly merit based and less "customer perception" based, you don't have as large of an over-representation.
I don't think GP was trying to justify the practice, but noting that this exists in domains like finance because the product is an image, not actual performance.
> Caste no, social status? Absolutely, happens all the time. It’s very easy to proxy social status based on interests, hobbies, mannerisms, etc. Those that don’t pass the sniff test, are deemed “bad culture fits”.
Isn't that pretty much the definition of caste-based discrimination?
I don't ask about these in interviews, and don't use them to make decisions. You like My Little Pony or have a massive collection of guns? Or both? I literally could not care any less, it's none of my business.
> mannerisms
I'm not really sure what you'd see here in a regular interview beyond being literate and maybe nervous. The signal here is murky at best -- other than red flags, you shouldn't be measuring here.
So, to reiterate: it is absolutely not okay to discriminate candidates by social status.
I’m not saying it’s okay to discriminate candidates by it, doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. Go to any finance firm on Wall Street and tell me how many people employed there grew up on food stamps.
Those are all qualitative things that tell me about the person's intelligence, social acumen, experience, worldliness, etc. Those things usually matter for hiring. Has nothing to do with caste or race or gender or identity or age or sexual orientation any other protected status.
You could say they're smarter because they're doing what's needed to game the system... but that's only needed because people are judging them on those aspects. Chicken or egg?
Does a thick German or Scandinavian accent count against them? What about Mexican/Spanish? What about Ebonics/Black English? That has well understood rules for how it's used, even though many people don't realize it.
Presumably what you actually care about when hiring is their ability to work well with their peers and managers, and how well they accomplish the work they are given. If so, you are using mannerisms to help inform about these attributes you actually care about because you think those mannerisms correlate in some way. But what do you have to go by to actually support this evidence? If it's from personal experience, how rigorous have you been in making sure you note the data, and didn't subconsciously discount or ignore instances counter to your expectations?
I was born in India and moved here when I was in school. It was shocking to me as well when I heard stuff like this.
I'm not Indian, but have heard these used in a derogatory setting. It's hard to disentangle from casual conversation, but if these questions arise suddenly and unprompted (like the first thing you're asked) it's a flag. Another is being asked a question in a specific dialect to see how you respond.
> Are there terms in English I should look out for?
Not really. But you have more of contexts and where the questioning is going whether it's in a professional or personal setting - the line of inquiry.
If the person is taking a very shallow interest (or a misplaced interest) in knowing where your roots are, who your ancestors were and possibly specifically asking names of your parents or grand parents (maybe profession as well) then you might want to treat it as at least suspicious on these lines.
And in the region, your last name (sorry, it's just a knowledge I picked up while growing up) is endemic to, it's called "jaayat" or "jaait".
> In Hindi I think
I assumed you are either not Indian or not from that region in the North.
Also, what I meant by saying there are not really terms one should look out for is in professional setups, at least these days, caste is not asked openly but indirectly.
Unless your concern rises to whistle-blower levels with external agencies, that sounds like a quick way to be fired.
Indians have a deeply engrained culture of noticing caste. This is true whether they are ok with discriminating on that basis, or staunchly against it, caste permeates the culture.
So either she was only interested in hiring Brahmins, and realized that she shouldn't have tipped her hand... or she was curious about it, and then realized that was a shitty thing to say during an interview, and decided not to make it worse by explaining that of course it wouldn't make a difference in her judgement.
She's right, though; she shouldn't have said that.
The fact that it would be top of mind at all
Could be curiosity or it could be a status play. Are there castes she would/would not hire from, would it be a problem to getting work done?
Edit: I’ve worked with indians my whole career and only recently learned via HN that caste system “carried over” to the US
I'm flawed, but I used to be more so. A big part of that improvement is thanks to the people that judged my actions and not every aberrant thought that entered my head.
[1] responsibility is there of course, and I work to reduce their future frequency. But that change takes time, and until then the best remedy to unwanted ingrained patterns is to not act on them.
Was the interviewee of Indian origin? Unless you are of Indian origin, it's not applicable to you.
If the interviewee was of Indian origin, and she didn't already know the interviewee's last name, I would probably give her the benefit of doubt, and ask to clarify what she meant.
We here in India hear the "caste as abhorrent discrimination" side from a very early age (and that's certainly important), but it's taken me years of experience to learn that in practice it's more than that. People think of caste as a form of extended family, or as shared culture, or of understanding someone's roots. That person might have said that just as someone might say "I can't figure out if their accent is from New York or New Jersey": that might be an intent to discriminate, but might also well be idle curiosity about the person.
I don't mean to say it's hateful to say you want social castes out on the table for identifying who you share connections with, but that obviously comes with the fact that you identify those who don't share that connection. It's a justification for extending social problems.
Discrimination has many forms.
Some are codified in law (age, race, religion, sex, etc.) and some are informally observed.
When in doubt, I prefer to address perceived discrimination directly with the person thought to be engaging in such nonconfrontationally and in the presence of at least one other coworker. If you choose to do same, document the encounter when it happens along with whom was present and be prepared to escalate to management.
It's not universal though, or even a majority - a lot of people still are mononymous, and many are confused when Facebook and the ilk ask for "Last name" (and sometimes fill in hilarious things).
Is actor Vijay's first name Joseph, Vijay or Joseph Vijay? Just asking.. :)
Many odd dutch surnames date back to dutchies, who had previously been using patronymics, having fun with the first census, taken under Napoleon in 1811.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3ACaste%2FArchive_1#Forei...
there is the quote: "if memory serves, Westerners (particularly English) are held to be Brahmin, "
To be honest.. I can see it working as a scam of some sort. As long as the “white man” has money you might as well be of the highest caste right?
Here we’re trying to eliminate caste, but some geniuses want to give a caste to all sorts. You might as well give gold a caste...
again as I understand it strictly speaking a foreigner should be casteless, and hence untouchable.
But that discussion implies that the actual behavior towards foreigners does not match that, which would seem reasonable to me. Indians will need to interact with foreigners, if they are without caste that would be a problem, so how to fit the foreign into the social system.
Caste system, on the surface, seems like hereditary fixing of labor roles. If applied universally, it should be easy to accept a member of a strong foreign army, or any army as a Kshatriya. So it makes no sense for every Englishman to assume a high caste, irrespective of profession.
But then, many “castes” are also, basically regional/ethnicities. In short, the rules which apply caste, are not uniform in any way and I would rather ridicule such an exercise than aid it.
A foreigner doesn’t need to have a caste, even if they wish to convert to Hinduism, when our argument is that we need to abolish caste in India in the first place.
And I don’t know who are the “we” trying to eliminate caste oppression. Some claiming to do so are clearly demagogues using it to divide people and seize control. Like communists claiming to speak for the working class when in fact they just want all the power for themselves.
The existing laws don’t eliminate caste, instead they make some of them more desirable.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24552047
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23697083
Also these, which have dozens of comments but not hundreds:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24555492
> One peculiarity of Andhra society is that many of the leading warrior families made no pretensions to ksatriya status but instead proudly proclaimed their descent from the creator Bramha’s feet. This is an allusion to the famous origin myth first found in the Rig Veda wherein the four varnas are said to have originated from different portions of the body of Purusha, the primordial man. It was from the creator’s feet that the fourth, or sudra, class sprang, and another way of expressing sudra status was to say that one belonged to the fourth order of society. The pride in sudra origin is especially prominent in two records from the fourteenth century, in which sudras are said to be the best of the four varnas because they are the bravest or the purest. Families in what was theoretically the lowest social category, and not the ksatriya lineages of the costal subregion, possessed the greatest degree of actual political power in medieval Andhra, despite their relatively humble ancestry.
India’s history of caste in society is far more complicated than what’s portrayed in popular depictions of India. Add to this, India’s insane cultural diversity. When Ibn Batuta was traveling through (presumably north) India recording how women were uneducated, forced into marriage and how Brahmins held the highest social status, the Bhakti movement (sort of similar to Europe’s protestant movement) was brewing in the south[1], the Virasaivas were trying to form a caste free society in what is now Karnataka[2] and you have sudra rulers over modern day Andhra Pradesh.
This complicated history has largely been forgotten, Indian textbooks do not come anywhere close to exploring the complexity of the origins of Caste.
I appreciate NPR taking an interest in talking about Caste in India, but this treatment is extremely disappointing. Indian society can not discuss caste freely - there is too much political baggage that gets in the way (notice how all the references below aren’t from Indian scholars). NPR has an incredible opportunity to be the swiss neutral ground when talking about caste and how it impacts every day life in India.
I really hope they don’t bring that baggage over to America and end all possibility for level headed discourse.
[0] Cynthia Talbot, “Precolonial India in Practice - Society, Region and Identity in Medieval Andhra”. Chapter 2, page 51. [1] John Stratton Hawley, “A storm of songs” [2] Gil Ben-Herut, “Silva’s saints - the origins of devotion in Kannada according to Harihara’s Ragalegalu”
India suffers from this colonial system and unfortunately media takes every single opportunity. Like recent rape cases. Only case with victim from lower class and culprits from higher class is getting all the media attention.
I am not saying it's unnecessary but having a dialog requires honest intentions. Just like BLM these media hype cases don't help.
In my 20 years of experience I have seen caste discrimination in villages but not in modern offices. People from all creed and caste work together and progress together.
As far as marriages are concerned , how many Europeans marry outside their social class? I would guess not many.
If you try to do a class analysis of Western capitalist societies, pretty much everyone is of the same class, which is the working class and comprises anyone from foodstore clerk to tech lead. There are at the margins different classes, like the owner class, the landlord class and the destitute class, but those account altogether for less than 10% of society, and actually see a lot of class mobility.
So while people tend not to marry in such a way that their income will be drastically reduced, it's not really fair to say that outclass marriage is rare, because it generally isn't, and because western societies are fully proletarized and dominated by the working class, which is actually a good thing in many ways.
Or maybe it was because of the exceptional brutality of the crime itself, and the shocking behaviour of the police - cremating the body at 2:30AM without the family's approval.
[1] https://www.google.com/amp/s/indianexpress.com/article/india...
You can say that the crime has now been politicized, but in a democracy, crimes are always a political matter.
I hope that, if nothing else, it leads to law and order becoming a major election issue.
> Just because there was no outrage for X doesn't meant here shouldn't be outrage for Y.
Yes it is. What would be your thoughts if you are consistently fined but your neighbor is simply ignored for the same offense.
> I hope that, if nothing else, it leads to law and order becoming a major election issue
Ofcourse that is the entire story. There is no desire to change the system. For argument sake this will lead to the change in Government, what will change with that? Bringing back SP and Congress will improve the system? UP under SP was a horrible place. These 2 parties have destroy UP over the years. Land of poets is now land of petty criminals.
And if this is the intention why spare Rajasthan and Kerala? Change their government also for the same reason. We will be changing Government every other day.
Once again I am not against outrage I am against using rape for political gain. But seems like you are ok with it.
I have Indian heritage but it’s not a topic that my relatives enjoy talking about, and I have also observed the myopia you note, in the most readily-available material on the subject. I’d love to read something more scholarly and impassive that you might recommend.
He addresses caste more directly in a later book “Castes of Mind” - but I haven’t read that one either.
* Modern caste system isn't the same as the one in 19th, 18th and 17th Century. Different groups climbed up and down the ladder, aided by the socio-political movements.
* The modern version of caste is more about social prestige, and status. In my experience whenever people were curious about my caste it was to know what tribe you belong. Just like people asked me regularly where I was "actually" from in EU and US.
* A lot of rural Indians aren't well versed with the metropolitan western concept of egalité, because the Dharmic system functions differently. This means the closest frame of reference is the caste system to know one's place in the pecking order. Same structures can be found in Japan and Korea.
* The Dalits are a formidable political force now and a lot of caste based discrimination is done by non-Brahmins who fear the reduction of their share of the pie. I've seen brahmins being on receiving end of the caste based discrimination, countless no. of times.
* Caste system in corporate world is cloak-and-daggers game and goes hand in hand with using language, region, culture etc to further their aims. A Marathi Kunbi might be favoured by a Marathi manager over a Bengali Kayastha.
* I studied in a Govt. college which has more than 50% seats reserved for SC/ST/OBC/NT and I have first hand experience that caste is not an indicator of talent.
This is a point I feel many people miss out. The non brahmin upper castes are never pointed out in the discussions related to caste discrimination. Somehow it's always the brahmins vs lower caste. As if there are no "upper" castes apart from brahmins.
For example, in Tamil Nadu, there are a lot of non Brahmin upper castes namely nadar, vanniyar, mudaliyar, thevar, gounder, kallar, vellalar, naikkar, chettiar, reddy and many more.
These non brahmin upper castes spew the misinformation that brahmins are the reason for caste discrimination when they themselves practice it. They would advocate that their (non brahmin) community should marry a brahmin girl to show superiority since male > female. But the same community would oppose, even use violence to prevent marriages between themselves and a "lower" caste, esp if the girl is from the "higher" and the boy is from a "lower" caste. These are the same hypocritical retards who keep saying brahmins are the only ones who show caste discrimination.
People should start noticing and acknowledging this aspect of discrimination too esp since they are the majority of the population who drive the narrative.
Bonus clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DF6W1XD25Dc
But you would think with the breaking / separation of family system to due immigration, opportunities and general cultural shift it would be a lot harder for a family to marry off their daughter to someone else against her preferences? I mean surely if she wanted she could go away to SF to live with him? Hopefully violence wasn't involved but the whole parental wish thing worked because of family system, lack of opportunities and culture - so I am sure plenty of things have changed for the good even if it didn't work out in this one case.
This mentality is the exact point GP is trying to make. If your preference is for people of your own caste/race/etc. then those divisions will be reinforced. I don't think anyone here is saying that you shouldn't marry based on your own preferences. Just that people not considering caste as part of marriage decisions would be a good signal that caste is losing relevance.
Caste is essentially the same as feudalism, but unlike other regions of the world where feudalism was a societal concept, it became a religious one in India. Buddhism for example is an Indian religion but Buddha was explicitly against the concept of caste-by-birth. Abrahamic religions are also devoid of the concept of caste.
So whenever there are any caste issues, it's always two Hindus involved. Upper caste hindus don't probe the caste of a person if they hear a Christian/Muslim/Buddhist name because they know that it won't exist.
Because of how easy it is to give up caste, lower castes have been doing religious conversions in India in large numbers. The so called upper caste , only make up 30% of Hindu population and if all lower castes were to convert then Hinduism would become a minority in India. To prevent this mass exodus, various states of India have been coming up with anti-conversion laws which make it really hard for people to convert. Though I really don't understand why lower caste dalits in the US continue to stay Hindu, when they could just change their religion and avoid the whole caste discussion altogether.
(I am not calling out North Indians. Keralites can make out my caste/denomination from my name)
If Brahmins can be identified by wearing a white-thread – do any non-Brahmins ever try to pass as Brahmin by donning a white thread for themselves?
Also, I dont think people really ignore people of color being racist within their countries. Most of the time when people bring up arguments stating that the people being racist are white people, its in the context of western countries with a colonial/slave trade past where systematic racism doesnt target white people.
> Years ago, these invitations to go swimming with American friends and neighbors were a sign of acceptance. But now the same invitations for his fellow Indians felt like a trap to out him as a Dalit.
Not trying to defend casteism or anything, and Maybe I understood it wrong, but this makes it seem like if Indian guys are inviting him for swim then it must be ascertain his caste, but if Americans do it then its a sign of friendship. This makes it seem like its more in his head.
After you endure enough discrimination and persecution, your trust in others are eroded. You start to irrationally question the motives of others. Eventually you lash out preemptively because you’re afraid.
This is why discrimination and oppression is bad. It tears at the fabric of society.
And that makes it a very bad anecdote for an article like that, and in general weakens the point the article is trying to make.
But it's really weird to see that there's not overt cultural movements to shed this stuff. Trying to hide the fact that you're a lower caste, in a way, seems to embody the fact that you're a lower caste, shifting it from an outward identity to a hidden identity. Seems like the obvious thing to do is to get ahead of the issue and state that you don't have a caste. Or make up a post modern American one. I get this is hard to do when you're in a position of weakness relative to the other party (like manager's as described). But like, this is clearly a social movement waiting to happen. If someone of equal social standing starts probing you for your caste, you should confront them on it and say you don't subscribe to it, because otherwise you do, on some level, subscribe to it.
I won't pretend it's not much, much easier said than done, but geez. Is there really such a collective power by upper indian castes that you can't bring the issue to the table if you're reasonably well established? Say, a second generation citizen, with a multi racial network?
Racial discrimination between people of color and whites is a frustratingly stupid problem to deal with. Caste discrimination seems, somehow, even dumber, because based on non-obvious, made up facts.
What am I missing?
It takes energy. It brings out aggressive opposition. It may impact people's lives. There needs to be a bigger shift and it can get messy. You can declare yourself free of the stupid discrimination, but then you have to be prepared to be even more publicly discussed and face backlash in private. Most people want to live their lives, not become martyrs.
Also if you say "system X is bad" it's close to certain you're not the person who is at the top of system X. By not identifying yourself, you identify yourself as close to the bottom.
I don't disagree, but it seems like that would happen if you just dodged the questions like the interviewee too. I guess it just sounds to me like getting in the front of the issue would be an effective strategy because a lot of the social stigma around it means the discrimination is supposed to be subtle and unacknowledged.
Okay but where are you really from?
If you don’t know, many non-white people get asked that question all the time. That dance you say you can’t imagine, well, it happens quite frequently.
The dialogue being discussed here is about a trait which is not externally evident. It's also a direct question. Where are you really from is more or less directly asking country of origin pre-family immigration however far back that is, which would equate to outright asking someone what their caste is.
Whenever you are very surprised during promotions the reason is always the manager is a brahmin. No matter how friendly, i never want my manager to be brahmin, but it not possible always.
If I am a Brahmin, why wouldn’t I want to know if my co worker is also a Brahmin?
Ivy League, for example..is the caste system of the US. Are we going to abolish them?
This is an absurd article. It is absolutely cringe worthy. Shame on NPR.
An egalitarian society is one which is open and people accept others despite their differences. And not because it would be politically incorrect or legally vulnerable to do so..this kind of nonsense narratives is why we have acrimonious and hostile societies.
If there is a wound, let it build up pus and burst open. Letting it fester until a suppurating wound kicks you into septic shock is really not advisable.
There is no diversity without differences. If we are all same, it’s called being homogenous. Not diverse.
Caste is a system designed based on the "division of laborers", not labor(very important distinguishing) to promote privilege by birth and monopoly of education to some and denial to the rest. By "division of laborers" i mean if a person is born in a non priestly caste they will be denied education and its impossible to change caste. This was the case until the Britishers arrived to india and you see majority of the indians are first graduates in the family now because of denial of education to their forefathers.
This is the reason caste system must not be encouraged at all.
There is no indian text on caste that says that non priestly class must be denied education. Many priestly classes go without formal education. One must remember that when the Indian caste system was formalized, ‘education’ as we know of it now was not the same.
Before the British arrived in India, nobody was a ‘graduate’ because that kind of educational system doesn’t exist.
Priestly classes were educated in religious texts. The warriors were well versed in combat and kings with governance. Merchants knew math and sciences. The working class did manual labour.
The priests were not allowed to own property and should only live on charity. They had the ear of the King who should be willing to die for his people. The merchants were rich but they bore the burden of taxes so the whole machine can be funded. The working class was integral because without them nothing would move ahead. Everyone had the other by the balls and unless they played along nice, the whole set of cards would come tumbling down. Everyone had power. The priestly classes were not ‘special’.
The Dalits were outside the caste system. They simply didn’t belong because they neither had the protection or balance of the caste system in place. Everyone exploited them. The narrative that the priestly class were the only ones with access to education or that they were wealthy is beyond nonsense.
If anything the priest class was vulnerable because historically and religiously they were not supposed to accumulate wealth. Their only job is to study the religious texts and offer it for public good. When the British eliminated kingdoms, they lost their benefactors and were also poor and didn’t bear arms. Their only strength was the generational dedication to education and accumulation of knowledge. That they used as an asset to survive and create a living for themselves.
This is the 400 year old story of my lineage and family tree. Not all Brahmins could be ‘smart’ and climb the social ladder with education. Because of inbreeding due to the religious laws in place, you will find genius and extreme intellectual retardation in the same family tree. It’s the same with genetic diseases. It is similar to Judaism and Zorashtrian Parsis.
I am honestly surprised where the more common kind of information about Indian caste system comes from...it is inflammatory and untrue to divide indian caste system as Brahmin vs Dalit. Dalits are not even part of the caste system. They were ‘outside’ society’s ladder.
It is utter nonsense that Brahmins are ‘privileged’ class. The only privileged class were the merchants. When the British got rid of kings..you know.. the East Indian TRADING company...the sought the merchants as allies and turned one weak vulnerable caste against another weak vulnerable caste shattering the equilibrium with their tried and tested divide and rule strategy. 70 something years later, they are still winning..indians are still fighting and divided.
Why isn’t anyone looking at the role the British played and their meddlesome shenanigans of turning us against us? Anywhere they went, they divided the people...India used to include Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka etc. Israel and Palestine. Ireland. Job done and no one is talking about the real villain. Machiavelli would have gone, ‘well done’’
> When Sam Cornelius (ph) first arrived...
(ph), a notation used in transcripts to indicate that the transcriber does not know the spelling, usually of a name, and has spelled it as it was pronounced (phonetically)
At first I thought sure the issues must be similar, but then it seemed too exactly the same and I decided it must have been copied from some US site and then minimally translated to use Indian groups.
There are a issues that are important in India/casteism but not in US/racism, like job applications that require a biography of the applicant's parents.
When Europeans colonised the Americas 500 years ago, they established a casta system in Mexico. France had three castes - nobility, clergy, and peasants. This unjust system came to and end with the French revolution. The Dutch established a caste system in Sri Lanka. After colonising Philipines, Spain started a caste system there. The unehrliche Leute were the outcastes of Germany, the latrine cleaners, skinners and grave diggers.
England had four castes - king, nobles, knights and peasants. Gongfermours, the toilet cleaners were outcastes in London. The Romanis were outcastes for thousand years.
Caste is quintessentially European.
For non Spanish speakers or people not familiar with the Spanish casta system, it's synonymous with breed and lineage. Before the "Conquista", the lineage was focused on nobility Vs peasants. During the conquista, it shifted to a racial pecking order. The idea that the Spanish casta (castizo) was at the top of the pyramid, and any mixtures with other races put you at different levels in that pyramid. For instance a white castizo mixed with a black person would be mulato, but a white non-castizo like a Dutch or English white mixed with a black would give you a lower but similar caste. Your caste had implications in social and political life -- access to property, being able to hold certain jobs, etc. It quickly became unworkable because of the ever growing degrees of "mestizaje".
I don't know if India has a similar idea (what caste are you when a dalit mixes with a Brahmin?), but as you've mentioned, it's worth noting that the word we use for the Indian Varna does come a Spanish word (which in turn probably has Nordic roots) for a very different race/lineage based caste system.
I am not sure if he sounded regretful or just was sharing a fact of his life, but that really was weird.
Where do you see injustices? Since everyone in (at least rural) India belongs to some caste, does every injustice becomes a "caste injustice"? In south India, Brahmins, Ksatriyas, Vaisyas (the standard Manu story) are not powerful at all. Some castes from Sudras are powerful in some villages; not every caste is powerful across the cross section of India: caste A in village X is powerful; however, the same caste A is super weak in village Y.
The powerful have two characteristics: they have more land or they have more relatives in village who can come to aid you or both. Whenever there is an irresolvable dispute between two parties in villages, this leads to fights. Imagine this dispute between a muslim farmer and a hindu farmer, and this hindu farmer goes and moves the land border by 10% more. Muslim farmer goes to the village elders, who belong to neither one religion nor one caste. Elders also agree that it is "anyaaya" to take that 10% land, however this hindu farmer doesn't listen. What's next? A fight ensues. Is this fight caste fight? Is this fight communal? Do all hindus in the village support this hindu farmer? Definitely not. Do all caste members of this hindu farmer support him? Not at all. In fact, his caste members also say "it is anyaaya".
So, what happens in such cases is: just raw power wins. In some cases, this raw power also helps 'oppressed castes'. I know many cases where "oppressed castes" just use the legal threat to do all kinds of "anyaaya". In one case, they are sending sewage of all their streets to a farmer land. When this farmer complains, these 'oppresed' people threaten with some SC law. Even govt officials can't do anything.
About the system. Any system requires reproduction, continuity, some kind of dynamic. Which social scientist has laid bare of such mechanism of caste system? Let me paste this thought experiment from here[1]: ---------- As an example, consider one of the things that Europe ‘knows’ about India: the Indian caste system. Almost everyone I know has very firm moral opinions on the subject. Many see in it the origin of all kinds of evils in India: from the denial of human rights to oppression; some see in it obstacles to progress and modernization and so on. I suppose we agree that we need to understand a phenomenon before making moral judgments. With this in mind, if you try and find out what this famous caste system is, and why people either attack or defend it, you discover the following: no ancient book exists that tells us what the principles of the caste system are; no Indian can tell you about its structure or its organization; no scientific theory has been developed that explains how or why it continues to exist. Simply put, nobody understands what it is or how it functions. In that case, how can anyone be pro or contra the caste system? If we focus on how people normally describe this system and understand how easy it is to turn such a description upside down, the absurdity of the situation becomes obvious. While emphasizing that I do not attack and much less defend the caste system in what follows, let us look at the existing descriptions and their consequences.
(a) Caste is an antiquated social system that arose in the dim past of India. If this is true, it has survived many challenges – the onslaught of Buddhism and the Bhakti movements, the Islamic and British colonization, Indian independence, world capitalism – and might even survive ‘globalization’. It follows, then, that the caste system is a very stable social organization.
(b) There exists no centralized authority to enforce the caste system across the length and breadth of India. In that case, it is an autonomous and decentralized organization.
(c) All kinds of social and political regulations, whether by the British or by the Indians, have not been able to eradicate this system. If true, it means that the caste system is a self-reproducing social structure.
(d) Caste system exists among the Hindus, the Sikhs, the Jains, the Christians, the Muslims… It has also existed under different environments. This means that this system adapts itself to the environments it finds itself in.
(e) Because new castes have come and gone over the centuries, this system must also be dynamic.
(f) Since caste system is present in different political organizations and survives under different political regimes, it is also neutral with respect to political ideologies.
Even though more can be said, this is enough for us. A simple redescription of what we think we know about the caste system tells us that it is an autonomous, decentralized, stable, adaptive, dynamic, self-reproducing social organization. It is also neutral with respect to political, religious and economic doctrines and environments. If indeed such a system ever existed, would it also not have been the most ideal form of social organization one could ever think of?
[1] https://www.hipkapi.com/2015/10/01/what-can-india-offer/
Either Hindus must rewrite the theology of Hinduism to accept an interpretation of the concept of varNa in a way that is concordant with humanistic and egalitarian ideals, or Hindus must accept that Hinduism will be reduced to a minority religion in India. I can't imagine why anyone would agree to be part of a religion that formally considers him or her as a lower class human by birth than certain other humans in the same religion.
1. Caste system was a thing of the past
I was born in India in a Hindu family and lived there for most of my life, until recently. I left the country because, among other reasons, I did a inter-caste marriage and was afraid of the repercussions. I was raised in a big city but had close ties to my ancestral village where my grandparents and extended family live. I can attest that the caste system does exist in all spheres of life and it is more pronounced in rural areas but less visible in urban centers. The caste system decides who you can marry, where you can live and even where you will be buried when you are dead. I have faced casteism at school, work and personal life. I have seen, as clear as daylight, numerous other incidents of caste based discrimination and violence both subtle and overt.
Some recent incidents in the news throws light on how invasive these practices are.
Hyderabad, a tech hub on par with Bangalore, had an incident of Honor Killing last week, which is just one of many such incidents. [1]
Low caste people are still forced to live in secluded parts called Dalit Colonies and are not allowed to freely enter the main sections of the village, where the upper castes live. [2]
There still exist separate burial and cremation grounds for low caste people.[3][4][5]
These are just some of the manifestations of the system. There are many day to day practices that are considered normal behavior by the society.
India's popular matrimonial sites has separate sections for each caste.[6]
You can see many house lease offers in popular classifieds websites saying "Vegetarians only". This is a form of Dog whistling as most upper castes are vegetarian.[7]
2. Caste system was introduced by British rulers to divide Indians.
Most people cite to the census carried out by the British, but conveniently forget that the census just formally documented the existing caste demographics for administrative purposes; not invent it. The caste system has roots in vedic culture and existed for at-least two millennia before Europeans ruled India. The religious laws such as Manusmriti and Dharmasutra extensively documents the caste system. Any one who reads those scriptures can understand that the ancient civil laws were entirely based on caste. I see this argument as a way to deflect the blame on foreign rulers without accepting the flaws that were inherent to the Hindu religion.
1. https://www.deccanchronicle.com/nation/crime/260920/man-hack...
2. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/coimbatore/path-to-...
3. https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/denied-access-cremator...
4. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-india-landrights-caste-tr...
5. https://sabrangindia.in/article/dalits-obcs-forced-bury-thei...
6. https://www.shaadi.com/matrimony/reddy-matrimony
7. https://www.nobroker.in/property/2-BHK-apartment-for-rent-in...
My grandparents were farm labor, their children were merchants, and their grandchildren are professors and scientist. What caste are we?
If you misunderstand the problem - conflate caste with varna and jati - you will never understand or solve it.
There are countless references both in Hindu scriptures and social practices to prove that a rigid caste system was the basis of Indian society for millennia.
Look for my earlier comment in this thread. When the British codified jati+varna into Caste they acknowledge that there was mobility at the bottom though not at the top. The Census of Indian in the 90s acknowledged the same thing. This is not and never has been as rigid as you think.
"Middleton, one of the two Superintendents of Census operations of 1921, made eloquent remarks about the effect of the British Administration on caste in the Punjab. He observed, I had intended pointing out that there is a very wide revolt against the classification of occupational castes, that these castes have been largely manufactured and almost entirely preserved as separate castes by the British Government, our land records and official documents have added iron bonds to the old rigidity of caste. Caste in itself was rigid among the higher castes, but malleable amongst the lower. We pigeon-holed every one by caste, and if could not find a true caste for them, labelled them with the name of an hereditary occupation. We deplore the caste system and its effect on social and economic problems, but we are largely responsible for the system we deplore. Left to themselves such castes as Sonar (goldsmith) and Lohar (blacksmith) would rapidly disappear and no one would suffer . .. Government's passion for castes and pigeon-holes has led to crystallization of the caste system, which except amongst the aristocratic castes, was really very fluid under indigenous rule ... If the government would ignore caste it would gradually be replaced by something very different amongst the lower castes."
The key point to take away is "caste" was mobile at the lower strata but locked in at the top. I remember reading the Census of India in the 1990s and it had the same conclusion - as one ascended the economic ladder, the caste evolved too, which makes sense.
The British were the first one to categorize everyone into 4 castes which is map every Jati (Birth) into the 4 castes in some Hindu texts. The hierarchical & rigid classification of the 4 castes in India is a figment of the Western Mind. The 4 varnas exist in some Hindu texts as a conceptual formulation but Hinduism has hundreds of texts none of which is central unlike Judaism/Christianity or Islam who each have one central book. A practicing Hindu can choose to believe in any, some or no text sometimes within the same family. There are Hindus who eat meat and ones who foreswear it, Hindus who worship murtis (idols) and ones who are against it, Hindus who believe in a creator god (astika) and Hindus who don't (Nasktika) and so on and so forth. I know practicing Brahmins who will eat meat (and beef!) and non-practicing Hindus who are vegetarian. The variety is bewildering until you realize Hinduism is about seeking your own path. Most Hindu texts are ignored by the vast majority of Hindus and they are unaware of their existence let alone their contents.
There are temples today where priests are only drawn from Dalit "castes", which are the lowest castes. Even a few decades ago there were villages, especially in South India, where Brahmins could not go to Dalit neighborhood on fear of death and vice-versa. Jati is a complex practice that defies simplistic categorization and understanding.
You can infer the Jati of some one from their last name, the closest translation of Jati is Clan. Discrimination based on that is similar to discrimination based on Nationality, Ethnicity, Religion, Alma Mater or Fraternity. Idiotic and parochial. Should be condemned unequivocally. South Indian Reddy(s) who are often found in IT professions will as much discriminate against a Dalit "caste"" from Western India as they will against a farmer caste from Bihar in favor of their kind of castes. Again, stupid and parochial but similar to Japanese discriminating against Korean-Japanese or Han Chinese discriminating against Mongolians and Tibetans or Ivy Leaguers preferring other ivy leaguers, etc.
Conflating all the problems of discrimination in India to a 4-level hierarchy is just a imaginary and lurid construct of the Western mind.
[1] https://www.hinduamerican.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Cas...
[2] https://www.google.com/books/edition/Welfare_of_Scheduled_Ca...
[3] https://twitter.com/BharatDharma/status/1162977793224802304/...
"Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data."
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
India is struggling hard to get rid of this menace introduced during colonial era. We have reservation in education, government jobs, and politics to bring backwards at par. Almost 50% of seats in education and government jobs falls under this category. Seat are also reserved into politics.
But the the irony of India is that caste as a system was introduced by European. Word caste itself is of Portuguese origin. Here is a quick read.[1]
All mature societies need skill based division of labour. India had Varna based system which meant society needs four classes of people to run smoothly. These weren't hard classes you were enforced in. People changes their classes as they changes profession. For example Rishi Vishmamitra was a born warrior but later on he turned into a academic. Here is a famous shloka from [2]
<quote>
जन्मना जायते शूद्रः संस्कारात् द्विज उच्यते |
वेद–पाठात् भवेत् विप्रः ब्रह्म जानाती ब्राह्मणः |
Janmana jayate sudrah, samskarat dwij uchchte,
Veda pathnat bhavet viprah, brahma janati brahmanah
Sloka means everybody is born a Sudrah. One who follows the right samskaras has a second birth, one who reads the vedas and understands them becomes a wise man and one who realises the brahma or the source of creation becomes a Brahman. Those seven mind born Rishis of Brahma are real Brahmins ancestors- parents of humen.
</quote>
In brief, all knowledge work was supposed to be handled by academic class Brahmins. Being born in a Brahmins family wasn't enough to get you into academics though. If you became a warrior you will be called kshatriya. Similary business class vaishya, and Shudras class existed to take care of rest of the social functions and creative endeavours. Profession like engineering, arts, temple building, city planning were all done by the 4th class.
I would argue this isn't any different from today. In order to become professor or researcher(Brahmin) you need a qualification. In order to become a soldier you need to join army. Entrepreneurs and business people drive the world of commerce. Similarly rest of the professions exist too.
Colonial Europeans turned this system into rigid caste based system. which slowly changed over to rigid system as society went into preservation mode as noted by dilippkumar in a comment.
India was the only society without slavery as noted by various travellers. Until English colonial forces destroyed it systematically, India had an education system in which major beneficiary were the so called lower caste of today. Here is another short summary with further references.[3]
[1] https://scroll.in/article/882736/caste-system-in-india-has-i...
[2] https://qr.ae/pN4tBC (Skanda Purana Vol.18 Book VI , Nagar Kanda , Chapter 239 , Verse 31-34)
[3] http://www.indianscience.org/essays/DHARAMPALINTRODUCTION(Pa...
“Caste” is an English pejorative used to describe a system in India that was largely in place for economic division of labor, stable passage of knowledge/skills generationally, and other cultural reasons. It wasn’t made for discrimination or classist reasons, but ignorant casual racists (many of whom are posting here) are painting that picture based on very recent history. It’s important to remember that India was the victim of divide and conquer colonialism. “Caste” as a discriminatory concept is a very modern issue, against a background of thousands of years of history.
Understanding this topic in depth and with clarity, rather than in typical Western tones, is exactly what is demanded when people fight for “decolonization” in Western academia. And yet no one here seems to want to decolonize their own perceptions and comments.
You were not "merely stating the origins of [the] caste system." You justified it, by stating that "all mature societies need division of labor." Firstly, that is a very vague claim, and secondly, you neglected to explain why on Earth that "division of labor" should be hereditary.
My other comment quotes shloka from Hindu text clearly saying everyone is born lower class unless they earn their place.
How is that unfair?
> Profession like engineering, arts, temple building, city planning were all done by the 4th class.
What's the use of this "class system" if one class covers such a broad area? Isn't it so broad as to be useless?
> clearly saying everyone is born lower class unless they earn their place.
Was this ever true in practice? It's definitely not true in the present, and I find it hard to believe that parents were ever so enlightened as to compel their children to "earn their place" through such struggle.
Hinduism is evolutionary in nature. It anticipated emergence of new profession as society progressed ahead with time . Having said that first three classes were fixed in terms of duties of education, defence , and business. They were responsible for providing stable environment for rest of the professions to bloom and evolve. That why last class wasn't fixed. It is impossible to predict emerging professions anyways.
Moreover The Varna system was merely a loose way of classifying the society. These weren't categories you have to live your entire life. Many people moved up and down. Vishwamitra was a king who turned into a sage as an example. There is a long list of such cases.[1]
> Was this ever true in practice?
Yes to a large extent. Please read comment of dilippkumar quoting from the books describing practices of pre-conial India.
If you have time please read Bhagwad Gita for an introduction to Hindu philosophical system. Many Westerns like Bethovan, Robert Oppenheimer, Thoreau have drawn inspiration from it. Remember this book was written 5000 or perhaps before that. Only a stable and developed society would've thought about these ideas in such details I would argue.
The BBC seems to believe that the caste system is 3000 years old.
https://news.ycombinator.com/upvoted?id=drieddust&comments=t
I don't believe the British introduced the caste system in its current form (division of importance) to India - more likely it was a very normal evolution during the phase just before the Mughals took India over. Having huge inequality weakens countries and allows people to target oppressed demographics.
The sadness of India being unable to get rid of the system now is that it leaves us open to being attacked again for such a stupid reason when Vedic/Hindu scripture doesn't condone this.
And this is what is happening in the West and especially in the US now. We don't have the caste system in the West per-se, but we've left many people behind. This has become our weakness as they can be easily provoked and guided elsewhere, away from our founding principles. I can only imagine how gleeful enemies of the West feel when they see what we've done to ourselves and how easy we've become to manipulate.
I didn't downvote your comment but I will venture a guess.
It sounds like you are condoning and/or possibly endorsing the caste system. If you say "all mature societies need division of labor" does that mean you believe that everybody should be pigeonholed into a particular occupation forever?
It seems like there is a bigger point you are trying to makie but you need to write a little more to make it clear. Some of your spelling and formatting could be improved as well. It is strange but you can make a really excellent point but if it is poorly formatted or you have spelling mistakes, people will downvote you.
I say that as someone who grew up in a Brahmin family - my dad was discriminated against in his business ample times to cause him to give up early. Both me and my brother had to be academically score perfect grades without fail in order to get into an Engineering college when most disadvantaged cast folks got in for a lot less. The rob Peter to pay Paul thing hasn't quite done any net good for society except maybe in times of explosive growth/expansion which is to say not too often.
The fraction of wealth and power Brahmins hold is still disproportionately high when compared to population.
Also even if we assume for a moment that they are slightly better off than the rest of the population could it not be due to their own merit - it's not hard to see that caste puts more emphasis on education and competence even when it's lot harder for them to get into it without reservations.
The point missed by the narrative of marks scored by upper caste student vs dalit's is that role of privilege. The fact that dalits are discrimintated severely and denied opportunities before ever being able to ever reach college is something that's carefully neglected. Not to mention the fact that even meritorious dalits are breated in the name of reservation and subjected to organised harrassment all too commonly in universities and government services: https://theprint.in/opinion/brahmins-on-india-campuses-study...
“Selection of secretary, additional secretary and joint secretary-level officers is made from the pool of officers who are empanelled for that particular post. If there isn’t an adequate number of officers belonging to the SC/ST/OBC categories in the pool, their number is obviously going to be smaller,” said the retired civil servant who did not want to be named.
A serving IAS officer, who belongs to the general category, said: “At times, senior IAS officers do not want to come to the Centre on deputation or the state government does not relieve them, resulting in a lesser number of SC/ST category officers in the upper echelons of government.”
The "upper caste people are successful because they are wealthy" meme needs to die. Many upper caste people are poor as well.. It also doesn't explain why Tamil Brahmins (an upper caste) are seen more successful educationally despite being much less in number than North Indian Baniyas (Also an upper caste).