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Comment by swayvil | Hacker News Reader

What if you just lie and tell everybody that you're brahmin (or whatever the alpha caste is)?

Do you need identifying papers?

Is there a big market for forgeries?

I wish it were that easy. First of all lying like that is near impossible unless you know every single thing done in a Brahmin household, you'll be caught eventually. In a workplace setting, you might be boycotted but if this were in India, you have a high chance of getting murdered brutally.

Dalits get killed for just riding a horse, walking through upper caste residential streets and many normal things. In this scale a Brahmin name would be deadly

Murdered by which caste? Allegedly of course. Brahmin or somebody else?

Great question. It will be any upper caste who are above Dalits. There is no one perpetrator here but all of them. The main point to note is that the caste hierarchy is sacred and will be enforced by endogamy (arranged marriages) and other occupational rules.

You will be shown your place very very quickly. Love marriages are quite deadly and parents killing their own children and the lower caste grooms are extremely common. You can search for "honour killings in India".

Please read "Annihilation of Caste" by Dr. B.R. Ambedkar. Its around 50 pages of an undelivered speech, later published.

If you want to learn about caste, please make sure not to ask for explanations from an upper caste person. This is extremely important!!

Example of this enforcement: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-15997648

Ambedkar said similar things to muslims as well, you can stop hating on Hindus. Hinduism does not condone honour killings, it’s a cultural thing. The amount of hate and comments from you is appalling, while everything you say is not wrong but please be civil.

hating on Hindus? I'm not sure what's hateful here for describing actual events. The ones receiving the caste oppression are also Hindus. Dalits are not Hindus you mean?

Hmm yes, really sad situation here, I hope people change

The parent comment died while I typed my response, so I'm just throwing it here to elaborate on your comment:

I'm not Indian, but I read a lot about this when the Cisco stuff came out. The gist that I picked up from interviews with Indians dealing with this was that there is A LOT of cultural background that you'd be very unlikely to know if you hadn't grown up in a certain caste.

A (likely shitty) analogy: You can learn about WWII all you want, but unless you were deployed it would be hard to fake that you were at a specific battle or did a specific training. There's probably minute details that were not written down, but people who were there would casually know. There may be habits or turns of phrase that would have been picked up. Maybe a certain landmark or destroyed thing that had a funny nickname. Maybe it's knowing a certain soldier or commander by a nickname that hasn't made it into the history books. "Oh you trained at X? Man I loved tuna Tuesdays even though noone would touch the stuff. Do you remember when private Y did..."

Through casual conversation, it's very difficult to keep the ruse up. Now if the interlocutor is actively trying to root you out its basically impossible. In the interviews I was listening to, the best case scenario was that the higher caste member came away not knowing what caste your from, but definitely knew you were not a Brahmin... Because if you were, you'd casually bring up X, Y, and Z and use these phrases and these gestures and and and...

Shiboleths

It's spelled "shibboleth". You could have googled it.

It's called "glass keyboards suck". You could have kept your mouth shut about inconsequential things.

:-)

Reminds me of how in Inglorious Basterds they gave themselves away by how they gestured the number three with their fingers vs how Germans did it.

That’s exactly what I was thinking of, too!

The claims made in this post are in dire need of citations, and don't strike me as believable. And just FWIW, most first-generation Indians in America couldn't give two shits about the caste system.

Highly agree on your second point, many first generation born south Asians I work for or work with that grew up within the suburbs couldn’t care less caste and simply don’t relate or identify with their parent’s generation and caste affiliation, they just want to be seen as American and are treated as such.

Only older heads who immigrated here are the lions share of individuals perpetuating this caste based discrimination. Please state your sources if you disagree with my assessment of first generation born Americans of South Asian descent working in big tech and Silicon Valley.

In my admittedly limited experience, people born to Indian parents in the US don't care about caste unless they are Brahmin, in which case, they'll be taught their caste rituals. Indians recently arrived from India care a lot more because reservation (think affirmative action by caste) and Hindu nationalism have become a big deal in Indian politics.

Only Brahmins are authorized to carry out certain religious activities in Hinduism. So if a Hindu wants to conduct those activities at their house in the US, they ought to fetch a Brahmin. That could be the reason why some Brahmins still stick to their identity.

Hindu nationalism has the most support from Upper castes. The majority of Hindus in the west anyway support RSS and in the west they become champions of minority rights and anti-discrimination. A majority of Indians who come to the west are also mostly Upper castes because unlike the gulf which give the job to all strata of people, only high profile people are given visas which happen to be high castes because generationally they hold the majority of the country wealth. So how is your statement many Indians who come to the US care about caste due to reservation even make sense?

> So how is your statement many Indians who come to the US care about caste due to reservation even make sense?

Your comment supports my observations. The newly-arrived Indians really don't like reservation and therefore care about caste. Second generation non-Brahmins in the US don't care about caste because it doesn't affect them.

You mean second generation.

No, I mean first generation born on American soil as American citizens which is distinct from first wave of immigrants from a specific country of origin. Their children are first generation born American, second generation in America.

COunterpoint: TFA. Indians at Google definitely gave at least one shit about caste, probably more.

Well, we are in the comments for an article which exactly disproves your point. You say Indians don't care about caste but I want to see some intercaste Indian couples and Indians without caste surnames among your "first-generation" Indian Americans.

Plenty of those, and inter-racial Indian marriages among friends who happen to be upper-caste exist. You're either not a first-generation Indian (seems likely) or you're seeing the story you believe in. And FWIW, even my dad's expat friend circle from IITB has people from all different caste backgrounds as extremely close friends, though you might cynically argue that IIT is an even higher caste.

> Dalits get killed for just riding a horse, walking through upper caste residential streets and many normal things. In this scale a Brahmin name would be deadly

India is a big country. Where in India is this a common practice?

This will happen in any part of the country Dalits exist. So all of it. The oppression will be localized to that region. Like in southern states there is no ritual where a from rides a horse. So this won't happen there. But in a lot villages in Tamil Nadu Dalits are not allowed to wear footwear while crossing an upper caste St. They have to carry it on their heads. Please Google for these if they are mind boggling

It’s pretty easy to find out. There are identifiers from the name to the dialect one speaks, what you eat etc

> what you eat etc

This may sound uneducated, but do Indians in the US only eat Indian food? How would someone know if you rotate through different cuisines every day?

Apparently (from a cursory Google search) it seems that members of some castes (the higher ones, apparently? maybe just the highest?) are typically vegetarian.

'Vegetarian' diet in according to Indian system the regular vegetarian diet+ dairy. They drink milk and may consume other dairy products like curd and ghee. Some Brahmins do not eat garlic and onion.

Not necessarily. The so called warrior (and "upper") caste members have been eating meat for centuries. Brahmins (the priests) are supposed to be vegetarian. They are also supposed follow few other rules. These "sacrifices" allow them in forming better connection with gods.

If you see Indians in KFC asking for vegetarian choices, you can guess that they are upper caste. Alternatively, if you see Indians speak of animal rights, while wearing leather bags/ belts or shoes you could also guess from that.

Can you go into more detail about the food thing? How would I as a non-Indian identify someone's caste from their food preference?

Almost all upper castes are vegetarians. Brahmins definitely will be vegetarians. There will be exceptions for first generation immigrant kids I suppose.

That's not an easy thing to do as you will be easily identified. However, there is a market for getting identified as "lower caste/tribe" as it bags you affirmative action benefits.

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