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Comment by chanakya | Hacker News Reader

In recent times, I've seen several news stories of widespread caste discrimination in Silicon Valley, but the standard of evidence by which this is claimed seems to be poor. It's basically asking people who claim they've been hurt or discriminated against. The only actual legal case in all these stories is the one against Cisco, and that's still in progress. Of course there will be casteists among the Indians in the Bay Area (India has enormous numbers of them). But it's not clear they have any ability to inflict discrimination on the lower castes.

If they do, I haven't seen evidence of it. Stories claim that lower-caste employees have had their Indian upper caste managers discriminate, hurt their careers and even sexually harrass them, but HR departments say they can't do anything because caste is not a protected category.

I work in Silicon Valley, and have a hard time with this picture of the culture and HR departments in the area.

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Something I've also noticed in Western media is that when covering issues about other cultures (ie India, Middle East, etc), the bar for evidence is pitifully low, especially if the story matches existing confirmation bias.

For instance, when there was a major rape in India, the media was scrutinizing Indian attitudes towards sexual violence. As evidence of such attitudes, they mentioned a BJP politician who said that "rape is sometimes right, sometimes wrong"

https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-india-rape/mp-minister-ba...

In the actual video where he says it, (in Hindi), he says that the "rape allegations are sometimes correct, sometimes wrong". I don't agree with the assessment (I think all allegations should be taken seriously), but it COMPLETELY different fromwhat is reported by Reuters (and other news sources). There are many instances of this. This is why I typically don't trust Western media coverage of other countries. Best source would be a local English language newspaper.

John Oliver claims (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qVIXUhZ2AWs#t=12m10s 12m10s) that India has (at least some) public school textbooks that explain that Africans are god's burnt toast, and Caucasians are underdone, and Indians are the proper color. I found that suspicious. Have you heard about that? Is the translation accurate?

This sounds like perfect example. The story isn't 100% false but it probably needs some context.

I've actually heard the oven story before. Its an absurd (and very racist) aphorism, but I think calling it a "lesson" from a textbook would be a stretch. What likely happened was that the school selected anthologies that kids could read to develop their reading skills. It probably included that absurd story.

I think the American equivalent would be if a 2nd grade reading book included an old fairy tale with some outdated racist undertones (ie Zwarte Piet), and then the media ran with "American textbooks claim a black elf will kidnap children if they misbehave".

PS. I'll need to check of the textbook story.

The books are written by Dinanath Batra, a well known history revisionist and Hindu supremacist. Let's not try to cover them up as "absurd aphorisms", these books are targeted at children and their intended purpose exactly is to show India and Indian civilization as a pinnacle during ancient times.

The context behind the specific passage referred to in the show (about the races baked in the oven) is that it is a conversational exchange (banter, if you will) between an Indian and a Briton. I believe the protagonist of that passage was "throwing shade" at the Briton after he makes a haughty statement.

This entire exchange sounds ridiculously stupid and implausible to us now. However, in the 1940s (I think thats when the protagonist of the passage is from), casual racism towards Indians made that a plausible situation. I think this aphorism dates back to the 1930s/40s as a standard reply to casual racism from Europeans. Its obviously outdated (and racist) in today's context. However to claim that this is a "lesson taught in Indian schools" is a mischaracterization.

The video doesn't show that part of the textbook. I found some pages from the series but they're pretty innocuous. [1]

But it's probably accurate. It's not a history textbook but a literature textbook for primary school students. It was probably meant to be used in Hindi classes. So this kind of bullshit would fly under the guise of "it's just a story". [2]

[1]: hxxps://www.exoticindiaart.com/book/details/lamps-of-inspiration-set-of-4-volumes-NZE671/ The "Look Inside the Book" section. The first few pages are just a preface talking about how the book has collected tales to bolster moral values and duties in the reader. Then there are a bunch of contents pages.

The third contents page does match the two short scenes from the video that show the titles of the stories - "8. Nirlobh adarsh jivan" and "17. Parishram ka koi vikalp nahin" (though the latter in the video is titled "Parishram ka vikalp...", no "koi").

So presumably this is the contents page for Prernadeep 3. I can't tell just from the contents page which story might be the one in question, though. The video says it's on page 22 but the contents page doesn't have page numbers. It might be #36 - "Bahin, ham bhaaratiya hain" "Sister, we are Indian" - or #53 perhaps - "Kya aapne ishvar ko dekha hai?" "Have you ever laid eyes on God" ?

The last page has one story and the start of another one (listed in the very first contents page, so preumably from Prernadeep 1 rather than 3), but they're pretty innocuous.

[2]: The larger context around that story is even more amusing, because it's being "told" by Dr Radhakrishnan (President in the 50s and well-known for liking teachers; his birthday is celebrated as "Teacher's Day") to a white person who claims to be very "close to God".

Thanks for looking this up. My hindi is really bad and I could not decipher the name of the book from the video.

Only people on here can justify books written by Dinanath Batra as "pretty innocuous".

Don't put words in my mouth. I was talking about the one-and-a-half stories I could read on that website, not the books or the author as a whole.

I quoted you. Read the preface of the book, and the story number 52. How is that "pretty innocuous", and especally a book that is aimed at kids?

No wonder caste discrimination has carried on for centuries in India with learned people like you able to charitably justify the oppression.

>I quoted you.

No you did not. Nowhere did I say that the books written by Dinanath Batra were pretty innocuous. If you had quoted me, it would've been quite obvious I didn't say what you claimed I did, because a proper quote would look like:

>>I found some pages from the series but they're pretty innocuous.

"some pages from the series". It doesn't get any clearer than that.

>Read the preface of the book, and the story number 52. How is that "pretty innocuous", and especally a book that is aimed at kids?

I already summarized what the preface says in my original comment. And #52 is not in the pages I linked to. The only ones are #55 and the first half of #56. #55 has a Mughal emperor praising a Hindu man for giving the emperor's daughter an Islamic education despite his religion, and #56 starts off with the son of a Naval officer in a war between England and France before it is cut off. I say again, that just these one-and-a-half stories that I have access to are pretty innocuous.

>No wonder caste discrimination has carried on for centuries in India with learned people like you able to charitably justify the oppression.

Incidentally, the rest of the comment that you're misquoting clarified pretty clearly that I'm against the story that the Aljazeera video talks about. But you do you; don't let facts and reading comprehension get in the way of your spiel and slander.

I have studied through the curriculum of one of largest board of public school education system in India (CBSE) and I can attest that I have never read such a thing in any of text books. That does not mean it does not exist, but its definitely not a prevalent notion.

> HR departments say they can't do anything because caste is not a protected category

The whole idea of "protected categories" just sounds wrong to me. The current system makes it seem like it's always OK to discriminate, but only these reasons are not OK. It sets the default to "we're all considered unequal before the law except under these circumstances where we are considered to be equal".

That's working with a blacklist in world where the number of reasons for discrimination is infinite. It would make much more sense IMO to use a whitelist instead: you may only legally discriminate in these cases otherwise it's illegal = "we're all considered equal except in these cases where we have to be allowed to differentiate".

Issues like the current one would be prosecutable without adding another protected category.

I've (anecdotally, FAANG, SF) seen a few cases involving Indian interviewer/interviewee given special treatment/favouritism/easy interviews or a formality, stuff like "hey you are from same village" or similar.

That does sound more plausible. Hiring people you feel comfortable with happens everywhere, and in India that often means people who speak your language or are from your region.

> HR departments say they can't do anything because caste is not a protected category.

That is a cop-out. Most HR policies have a somewhat broad use case where if someone is creating a hostile work environment, that is not OK, whether the reason for it is protected or not. Maybe HR cannot fire them in some jurisdictions, but they absolutely can step in in other ways to fix the problem.

It's either a cop-out by HR departments, or a false claim that HR departments do this. Knowing the cultures in large Bay Area companies, it's hard to imagine someone going to HR to complain about discrimination or harrassment, and HR saying: "Go away, you are not in a protected class".

It’s different for women. We have already bonded over the debilitating condition of possessing XX genetically. Caste, creed, skin colour, class doesn’t matter after that point.

yes, in the era of fake news, what can you expect. Working in SV as an Indian person, never heard or experienced it.

Things that I don't experience don't exist. Reporting on things I don't experience is fake news.

>Joshi.

With that surname you will not experience it either in your lifetime, mate.

What’s your name?

Don't worry, you won't be able to tell my caste through my name. Your incisive question though validates the whole point of this article.

You should have learnt by now to not ask for evidence for virtue signalling contest stories. Just accept the narrative unquestioningly and move on.

We are living in a brave new post-Truth world.

Indians go against the narrative of systemic racism in the US , so it is only time that the left came after them.

Once again, instead of attacking me or downvoting, ask yourself logically: where is the evidence for this?

I am not saying it does not exist. All I am asking for is some data of large scale caste discrimination not anecdotes.

We can find anecdotes for discrimination by every permutation of labels.

You are denying caste discrimination and then washing it off as "post truth" world. That's atrocious actually. Caste discrimination is not some kind of narrative building either, these are lived experiences spanning centuries.

Their comment includes the phrase "I'm not saying it doesn't exist", so I think you're being a bit uncharitable with this retort.

"post-Truth", "virtue signalling", and "accept the narrative unquestioningly" are all (barely) coded flags to say "This thing doesn't exist/isn't true." Following those up with "I'm not saying it doesn't exist" is just a rhetorical feint to seem reasonable.

More charitably, you could read that as "doesn't widely exist", which would track with my experience working with dozens of Indian developers over the last couple decades.

I think OP was being curmudgeonly because they saw this as people trying to drag Indians into the existing culture war stuff as a pawn, after basically pretending they don't exist for decades while getting all sorts of mad on behalf of different minorities.

I think requesting the most charitable reading of something that starts from a decidedly uncharitable position is an unfair request. If cscurmudgeon wanted to have a real conversation about it, they could do their own research; this information is pretty easy to find. In this thread, there's a link to a survey of Dalits and Shudras in the US where they report experiencing widespread discrimination. Instead, they came in throwing rhetorical bombs. That's not the behavior of someone who wants to have a reasonable discussion, it's the behavior of someone who wants to derail the conversation using the language of the culture war they're claiming to oppose.

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