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Comment by sadfev | Hacker News Reader

If you are an IITian and still casteist then something is wrong with you!

Look IITians are often entitled, opinionated and in rare cases obnoxious.

But never during my 5 years in IIT KGP, I have ever felt casteism among students and even amongst alumni after that.

Initially during freshman year there’s a slight sense of resentment against quota (affirmative action for lower castes) students but all of that evaporates as quota and non-quota students alike progress.

The whole point of getting advanced degrees is to shed the ignorance and discrimination and pursue what’s interesting, work with the brightest and of course make a better life for oneself.

Being casteist and discriminatory doesn’t take anyone far in life.

I really hope reports like these are media exaggerations and entitled casteist are very very few.

I have worked my whole life to ascend over this garbage. I don’t want this stupid discourse to follow me now!

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Thing is under the veil a lot of caste sentiment is around. There is much closing the ranks among upper castes even in well educated circles. Peoples surnames and colour of skin seems to matter in social interactions, and there is considerable 'them' and 'us' mentality.

Also upper castes continue to propagate caste names in naming children which acts as a badge to upper caste identity.

Important positions in both government and industry seems to be filled with people from the upper castes.

> IITians are often entitled, opinionated and in rare cases obnoxious.

I've worked with IITians and this is very accurate. They also refuse to consider alternate opinions, because if their opinion is not accepted, they assume that it would damage their careers.

I also know of one team that hired all IITians to boost their output. Lots of "white papers" but not much action. After a year, the whole group of IITians were upset because they weren't promoted, demonstrate low engagement with other teams and eventually left. It was funny to watch that team self-destruct because it went from the golden team to the team no division wanted in 12 months.

You have a modern view of the world. You'll be surprised as I was back in the day that not everyone is open minded.

Ppl still want to keep old systems in place because their parents have brain washed them into thinking that they're upper caste and that Hindu Khatre mein hai

I come myself from middle class Brahmin family in Maharashtra, have a engineering degree from a mediocre school in Maharashtra. If at all I witnessed something negative is snobbishness from people who graduated from better school than me. I have been in silicon valley for over 25 years now. I worked in 2 startups and 4 mega corporations/public companies with friends/superiors/colleagues (some of whom are Brahmin IIT graduates) from various parts of India - I personally never asked anyone's last name to find their caste and neither I witnessed anyone making any derogatory remarks about anyone's caste/religion. I have never experienced or seen any of this that is being reported in this article. It is truly shameful and disgusting if it is happening now or before. Let's stop this right now and right away!

I appreciate people like you. But the thing is, if you are an upper caste person then it is very less likely that you'll be discriminated against as far as caste is concerned.

Overtly discrimination will happen less but covertly ot happens a lot.

But the good news is that not everyone is like that so we are slowly progressing

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