How India’s caste system manifests in Seattle-area workplaces and beyond

I am Indian and I absolutely detest the caste system we have back home. I grew up with people from multiple castes and backgrounds and witnessed the kind of discrimination faced by seemingly lower caste people. Unfortunately, some educated yet stubborn brutes from India that end up immigrating to other countries try to spread this disease and separatism among others as well. They are the worst kind of scum India has ever produced.

It is also unfortunate and silly that a lot of those entitled upper-caste people have a false sense of supremacy because of no reason other than belonging to a specific caste, even if it gave them no practical advantage. As someone who witnessed multiple events of discrimination and meaningless hatred, I was able to spread this awareness to my friends and within my social circle in hopes that they can try to help someone somewhere and help more people get that awareness.

Another potentially upsetting fact is that a shocking majority of politicians who don't do any real things for the society retort to caste-based unification to gain support and votes from people belonging to certain castes. It's ridiculous that this one blinding blanket called "caste" also helps reap a lot of votes and popularity for them.

There is some good news here as well - cities and new generations of youth seem to be developing maturity and also at the same time holding little to no regard for caste system anymore. I urge you all Indians to do the same and kill the fucking bitch of that caste system once and for all. Feel free to encourage more inter-cast, inter-religion marriages, and shut down people who initiate those caste-supremacy talks at any point, regardless of who they are. Good changes in society always start with not being afraid.

For what it's worth, caste has fortunately ceased to have meaning in a tiny number of social and geographic circles.

But upper castes are in denial about how caste plays out in the rest of India.

They will claim it was something in the past. Wrong. Upper castes still often whisper about so and so being a *** (impolite way of referring to someone of a lower caste), or about such and such work (e.g. cleaning dishes) being the work of a *** and not a Brahmin like themselves.

Some now claim that caste was created by the British.

Wrong. Al Biruni (traveler from Persia) in 1020 wrote in Tarikh Al-Hind (History of India) about how when there was a communal meal in the village, a barrier needed to be put up between people of lower castes and people of upper castes.

My own personal experiences with caste (as someone exposed to it very late in life) were described here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31035615

I'm a bit surprised by some points in the article.

>“why would I even report to HR when they probably don’t even know where India is on a map?” (Much less, understand the complexity of caste.)

Who are these HR people who don't try their best to get to know employees, and to make them feel comfortable on the workplace ?

I thought most HR departments would include sociology graduates, or at least sensible people, who have the curiosity to understand networks of power inside the company. How do you manage a company when you can't understand the actual hierarchy and influences among workers ?

Also, the case of the manager is highly inappropriate as well. He should just be fired.

Lastly

> “People would only want to live with roommates from their own caste,” she said.

Good riddance to bad rubbish! Who would want to share a flat with morons, anyway ? You can just find actual friends at uni to share a flat.

And with their mindset, I doubt they can actually settle down. I heard that my company had issues with some Indian workers who moved in, when they expected HR to find them a flat, fix their oven, arrange taxis, or run their errands,... because they were 'elite' as well.

I'm in France. They have 'equality' in their motto, and are proud of an history of being at the literal cutting edge of mechanical engineering to chop all heads in a republican way : equally (but especially them of the elites). So as far as I heard, it upset some locals who were suddenly considered Untermenschen by an 'elite' guy who just moved in.

But it's just an history of the past. So I'm not sure some of these guy made a long time around here.

I was commenting to my wife on the topic of teams/orgs prominently one race who generally don't promote or support "outsiders" to their predominant race well.

For example: _AI teams primarily Chinese, where everyone speaks Chinese at team lunches and in team meetings and where non Chinese are very, very much the minority _Predominantly Israeli orgs and teams where most managers are also Israeli or of similar ethnic background, where it seems the promotion bar is lower for people of the same ethnic background as in the rest of the company. _Indian managers who are much harder on Indian employees than on non Indian employees. I've had to report an Indian manager to HR for bullying her Indian engineers before...

I work in a FAANG and I see the pattern in many orgs.

Not only caste, the hatred for minority (in India) has also made it’s way to the West. Some of them just can’t digest meeting the minorities as equals in the West. I remember reading jokes about Sikhs being taxi drivers on Twitter. Casual racism is just thrown around in conversations.

Read something like this would happening in right-leaning book “snakes of Ganga”. Still is first few chapter.

Eventually the idea of CRT(critical race theory) is to align the “racism” in west is because of casteism in India.

Over the years I have had many Indian colleagues, however this topic has always been mute, perhaps even tabu. Ie.: the question “have you felt discriminated” results in a quick change of topic.

But by the way, how do the “upper castes” see westerners?

Many people in this thread are suggesting that this evil will not be gotten rid of anytime soon.

But I can tell you that casteism in India, and the degree of it, is not uniformly distributed throughout India.

There are some states and regions where marrying outside your caste is signing your own death warrant, and people from so-called upper castes don't even share tables with lower caste people.

But there are some areas where casteism is non-existent, and inter-caste marriage is rampant, and a small fraction of inter-caste relations are even arranged marriages.

Northern states are the hotbed of castiesm where it is overt and violent and there are honor killings. In South, it is covert, and appears in form of virtues signalling, power sharing, not intermarrying, etc.

The western regions have some lower form of casteism. And in the eastern regions, it is quite non-existent.

I live in the state of West Bengal, and I have never seen overt casteism. Inter-caste relations and marriages are rampant.

What led to this change?

Buddhism had a very strong foothold here historically.

Then ~500 years ago Bhakti movement that does not recognizes caste but only one's devotion was very popular.

Then Calcutta and Bengal was the seat of British rule for decades.

Then three decades of Communist rule up to 2010 destroyed the state's economics, but communality and casteism is low.

And there are places in India, where castiesm is lower. Like Kerala.

There was very popular anti-caste movement in Tamil Nadu: look up Periyar.

So, casteism isn’t uniformly present in the same degree in India, and it can be gotten rid of, through effort.

Some news of castiesm:

Denial of entry to temple:

https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/other-states/clash-ov...

Honor killing for marrying:

https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/other-states/clash-ov...

https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/other-states/clash-ov...

Dalit killed for KEEPING A MOUSTACHE:

https://article-14.com/post/killed-for-sporting-a-moustache-...

Dalit killed for sitting in a chair in a wedding:

https://article-14.com/post/killed-for-sporting-a-moustache-...

Dalit killed for riding a horse:

https://indianexpress.com/article/india/for-riding-horse-upp...

The article says there are five main castes with thousands of sub-castes. To be precise the Dalits are not considered a caste. They are outside of the Caste system and lower than the lowest of the low, the Sudras. In practice however today's Indian has seven Caste, at least normalized in Western countries such as Europe and the US. In this revised Caste system, the Whites are at the top, higher than the Brahmins and Blacks are at the bottom, lower than the Dalits. I have witnessed firsthand how a Black colleague of mine was treated by his Indian counterparts in the IT industry. It is pretty disgusting to say the least.

After India got it's independence, many great people tried to abolish the caste system of India. One prominent name was Dr. B.R. Ambedkar. When he tried to uproot it through the use of law, he was faced with opposition from Hindus themselves. This system was kept in place so that a section of people can be exploited forever.

I have seen places where caste doesn't matter at all in India but unfortunately this system is prevalent in the very fabric of Indian society. Even at the places where it doesn't matter you'll still hear about it even if it is just a curious query from somebody.