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Comment by AlecSchueler | Hacker News Reader

We do have something similar though.

I once went to get a sandwich with an Indian colleague. The sandwich server was from the same region as my friend and they began speaking together.

After we left my friend was quite upset. The sandwich server had apparently been very rude to him and looked down on him because of their caste differences.

My first thought was How can the Subway server feel superior to someone earning incredibly well at a startup?

But I caught myself, realiding that I had myself put them in hierarchical categories based on their income.

When taken in consideration with the difficulties that people from lower income families have in getting themselves out of poverty, I don't think we're so far from categorising people's worth by their birth situation.

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The difference is a poor person in the west can become a rich person (and vice versa). But that is not the case with caste - caste is assigned at birth. You can't change it even though some people pretend that it can be.

The amusing thing is, even in India, it starts mattering less once you become rich. For example, you would typically find it is the middle class or below who are more attached to the idea of marriages between similar groups.

And yet currently in India there are active movements that are trying to get “lower caste” tag just to get the benefits of reservation even though they are comfortably well off.

So don’t try to potray things as black and white and reduce a particular religion to one concept and unidimensional like other Abrahamic faiths. Which btw are pretty much black and white and have more stringent concept of what’s human and what’s not (for instance branding women witches and burning them alive).

I am from the so-called upper caste myself. I know how the upper castes keep whining about reservations for the lower castes that is available to them now - but they had absolutely no issues with getting defacto "reservations" for 1000s of years. And can you please stop blaming other belief systems for faults in your religion and culture?

I don't see how this really interacts with the parent comment. In practicality caste has been an immutable construct, and is currently the basis of much discrimination. I don't think anyone is saying that the single defining feature of India is caste. But it is an oddity to see people defend a concept that the vast majority of the world would define as unjust.

Caste oppression is actually seeing a revival in India

I understand that, though social mobility is far from a given and the cards are stacked against the people beginning in low income backgrounds.

But the point is that the Subway worker and the data engineer are actually equal in their humanity. The one shouldn't have to rely on social mobility for me to see them as equal to the other.

No one is saying it is easy for a poor person to become wealthy.. But it is possible. Not so with caste or race. A black person or a lower caste person who is treated unfairly can do nothing to prevent that prejudice or bigotry against them

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