I've heard this before, but can't find evidence of it. Does the caste system not live on to this day? I thought caste is a protected class in terms of legally discrimination, and not a thing that's been banned.
Any present-day Indians able to clarify? My dad left India when he was three, so my knowledge is not current :-)
That being said, there is no enforcement of the "no-caste" policy so in many smaller towns/villages the caste system is still widely practiced and lower caste folks discriminated/beaten/killed/etc.
Not sure it was any worse than what I’ve seen in the UK though
That said, there are a lot of ways to guess at caste if one is so inclined[1], and some people choose to use these guesses to discriminate. That's why it's a protected class --- it's not permissable to discriminate based on caste. There's also affirmative action for historically repressed castes, with all that comes with affitrmative action, for better or worse.
[1] caste related surnames and diet are the most easily understood by an outsider like me, but I think there may be caste related firstnames and other cultural indicators that I'm not aware of.
Part III Section 15 of the Indian Constitution:
15. Prohibition of discrimination on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth.—
https://cdnbbsr.s3waas.gov.in/s380537a945c7aaa788ccfcdf1b99b...
The closest thing we had was that tennis player who broke rackets.
I should drop names, as they are still running around, but I would rather talk about the best of them. Nice V.P of engineering at E. He had an office so I was a bit more polite. Turns out he was more nice than brilliant, and he was really brilliant so things went very well.
I would guess that adherence to the system is a maturity
Does that help? It's not exactly the same obviously, and I don't mean to imply that, caste system has (or retains) much stronger cultural roots.
I do think the idea, Indophile though I am, that India was itching to get away from it, as though it was entirely imposed upon it, is a bit rich. As I understand, it was somewhat formalised by Britishers, for censa and whatever else, but the foundations are ancient.