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Comment by 1sembiyan | Hacker News Reader

To the Brahmin, wearing the thread comes with religious obligations. Committing oneself to those religious obligations needn’t have anything to do other castes.

> Are you saying that you'd stop being a Hindu if you give up your Brahmin identity?

Surely there are many kinds of Hindus? To each community what’s important is different? And an answer to this question also depends on how the individual makes sense of his religion?

While jati as a feature of the Indian landscape has persisted for a few thousand years, I believe jati and religion/theology are orthogonal. You can belong to caste x and any religion y in the sub-continent. But as it happens, when one talks about being anti-caste today many times it is to call out and disparage one’s Hindu identity. This makes any conversion about caste extremely muddled, with folks arguing past each other.

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> I believe jati and religion/theology are orthogonal. You can belong to caste x and any religion y in the sub-continent.

My comment was in response to the parent who brought in the word religion into the discussion, as some means of justification of inheriting the religion of their parent is the same as inheriting the caste. ...and now here you claim that they are orthogonal. How very convenient.

This is exactly the kind of deflection used to 'muddle' the conversation, as you put it.

If they are orthogonal, why does caste still even persist ? Why is the notion of caste still held on to ? If one can follow the hindu religion without identifying with caste why do Indian Hindus still hold on to their caste identity ?

It is easy to say the conversations get 'muddled' without bothering to learn why the thing under discussion even exists !!

None of this is new. Dr. B.R. Ambedkar wrote about this decades ago and yet, here we are, with google claiming the same thing you are -- that talking about caste somehow ends up being Hinduphobic.

> and now here you claim that they are orthogonal. How very convenient.

By that I meant for some group and people jati intersects with particular theologies and for others it doesn’t. What does that say about jati and theology?

> If they are orthogonal, why does caste still even persist ? Why is the notion of caste still held on to ?

Million dollar question. Why do some identities persist and others don’t? For jati, endogamy plays a significant role and it will disappear with the current out marriage rate in a century (that’s of course being optimistic). Making it about Hinduism or Brahmins will not get rid of jati. TN has the lowest ICM in the country despite a 100 years of non-Brahmin movement.

> It is easy to say the conversations get 'muddled' without bothering to learn why the thing under discussion even exists !!

Lol, let’s just say we read different things about the subject or even read the same things and come to different conclusions.

> that talking about caste somehow ends up being Hinduphobic.

If it ends up disparaging people with Hindu religious identity, one could argue its Hinduphobic (which happens sometimes with these conversations).

> If they are orthogonal, why does caste still even persist ? Why is the notion of caste still held on to ? If one can follow the hindu religion without identifying with caste why do Indian Hindus still hold on to their caste identity ?

Social status for some and Reservation benefits for others.

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