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Comment by la6471 | Hacker News Reader

This interview seems one sided though. I know that for last two decades Brahmins and other so called upper caste Indians have been protesting India’s quota system which is basically affirmative action whereby certain percentages of college seats and job vacancies are reserved only for people who do not belong to the upper castes. So there have been numerous occasions where meritorious but poor upper caste youths did not get seats in colleges or were not selected in government or non government jobs and they went to the people from non Brahmin castes who were financially better off. Not trying to make a judgement here but just want to expose both sides of the argument. And even in California we are planning to do the same where a certain percentage of college seats will be reserved for people from only certain ethnicity or background.

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There are not two sides to this. The lower castes have been violently discriminated against for millenia and need protection to have any hope of not being viciously held in their place by the Brahmin hegemony.

No they haven’t been violently discriminated against for millennia. This is a common colonialist trope spread about India. Your language alone, using Western words like “caste” to describe a system that doesn’t fit that word, is influencing your perception. Caste based discrimination (and all the negative issues that come with it) is very recent, and was nudged into existence by British imperialism, which relied on divide and conquer to control large populations in countries they ruled. Historically Indian separation of these different groups was more like specialization of economic/cultural roles, and did not have the modern sheen of disrespect/classism/discrimination. Please don’t spread ignorant falsehoods like this.

A social system akin to brahminism and caste can only be created and held together by violence. That you can’t see this is because you are benefitting from it, either in the Indian version, or perhaps in the flavors of the same thing developed in the western world.

Everything in this comment is without evidence. A claim of the form “if you disagree with X you must be Y” is a Kafka trap, a common logical fallacy.

Yes, I can you and your compatriots here getting quite frazzled that someone might actually call into question the social order that you sit atop

Today a similar discrimination, of some people, based on birth, in government jobs in india, is held together without violence, unfortunately.

And since it is held together by violence, it is ok for you and your allies to use violence to oppose it, eh?

Yeah. I can't say that I have experienced caste in same light as the article - in many jobs and across many hiring decisions it was never about caste but rather sometimes about language, geography and compatibility. It's also a matter of preferences as far as marriage goes - Brahmins for e.g. marrying within is not so much of a given today and whatever percentage of it is still happening is more about familiarity and preferences for culture and language than it is because of the belief that Brahmins are superior caste. They no longer are advantaged either. Brahmins really are the new Dalits in India - nowhere to be seen in any power positions, have no affirmative action/reservations for college education or jobs, hold no lucrative jobs and thus if not already disadvantaged then certainly on the way to be so.

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.

This is the regular fallacy that is peddled by privileged upper class - denying casteism and promoting falsehoods supported by anecdotal evidences. Brahmins and other upper castes are over represented in power positions. The names of people at the helms of government institutions is a dead give away. Check this article for the demography of some of the top bureaucrats: https://theprint.in/india/governance/of-89-secretaries-in-mo.... The same goes about universities: https://www.chronicle.com/article/in-india-caste-discriminat....

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...

That article with the data mentions nothing about Brahmins and it also mentions the below. Also do you have any idea how hard it is for a non SC/ST/OBC person to become an IAS officer? If despite that there aren't enough SC/ST/OBC IAS officers by what means do you think the upper castes prevented them from getting there? It's just unproductive to keep blaming everything on upper castes in the 50+ years of reservations while ignoring a whole lot of other issues that have nothing to do with discrimination.

“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.”

> Brahmins really are the new Dalits in India

The fraction of wealth and power Brahmins hold is still disproportionately high when compared to population.

This is untrue, just survey the top earners, top media personalities, news network owners, etc - very few are Brahmins. Even look through past prime ministers.

Do you have any data to back this up? What power and what wealth exactly? Granted they have managed to stay out of abject poverty largely without any help but it's not exactly a story of wealth and power for a really long time now but I don't think the point you're making is that they should be even more worse off?

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.

Why is this downvoted? Affirmative action carried out on caste basis without consideration about economic state of candidate is a real problem in India. It even harms genuine candidates even from reserved categories. But it is not fixed due to political reasons.

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).

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