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My Caste

cs.toronto.edu

554 pointsbsnnkv395 comments

The caste system in India is layered like onions. The author says he was born as OBC (Other Backward Classes), but that's not the lowest in the overall scheme. SC (Scheduled Castes) are considered lower in the hierarchy. ST (Scheduled Tribes) are considered even lower (there are variations across states and regions, so please take this with a pinch of salt). While the atrocities and punishments by "upper" caste people on "lower" caste people continue, even OBCs oppress SCs and STs quite badly, sometimes along with other "upper" caste people and sometimes by themselves. [1] It's a sad fact that the oppressed themselves don't understand it well enough to avoid oppressing others. If they could get together and lift each other up, things could be very different (or at least not as bad as they have been and are).

[1]: Searching for news on atrocities and punishments on "dalits" would yield many results from as recent as a few days to long ago in the past.

> While the atrocities and punishments by "upper" caste people on "lower" caste people continue, even OBCs oppress SCs and STs quite badly [...].

This is the step 1. in ensuring any oppressive system continues to be supported by a majority / critical mass of people, who are themselves subject to oppression: make sure there's someone even lower than you, on whom you can unleash your frustration.

The issue is OBC (Other Backwards Castes) was invented as a populist measure in 1992.

After Independence, Affirmative Action/Reservation was created so Dalits and Nomadic Tribes who were traditionally outcastes in South Asian society could be integrated into society.

Yet, in the 1980s-90s, Agrarian and Feudal Caste politicians like Mulayam Singh Yadav (Yadav), Lalu Prasad Yadav (Yadav), Chaudhary Charan Singh (Jatt), Bal Thackarey (Maratha), YRS Reddy (Reddy), etc began pushing to expand Affirmative Action to include those castes that are traditionally Feudal Lords/Zamindars and oppressed Dalits and Nomads.

When this expansion began in 1992, every single non-Dalit caste saw that if they could lobby hard enough, they could also be give guarunteed Affirmative Action for college admissions, government jobs, welfare, etc.

This is why even some Brahmin majority castes like Paharis were given Affimative Action by being treated as an OBC or Scheduled Tribe.

So it’s like playing a fake victim card?

And yet 1 out of 180 CS professors are OBCs despite the population being over 40%.

It’s probably closer to the welfare queen trope. Yeah, there are a few people who cheat the system, like any other system in the world.

Thaw existence of cheaters does not negate the very real problems and challenges faced by the actual “victims”.

There was functionally no public education system available to most Indians until a decent bit after Independence, and even now most rural communities have atrocious schooling standards with chronically absentee teachers.

India has been an extremely poor country for a long time. It’s not a situation like the US where there were plenty of opportunities available and some segment of society is gated out of them. Almost all Indians save for a narrow clade of people who worked directly under the imperial administration of the British Empire had access to anything, and even those were the cream of the crop from the pre-British days who could translate their prior privileges to getting ahead of their peers in the rat race.

It’s basically tautological to say OBCs are underrepresented in the upper echelons of society. That’s literally how the category is defined. The system was set up from colonialism on down to leave very few positions with contemporary standards of dignity for “natives” to occupy.

Not exactly.

There is a very real economic divide between rural India and urban India.

Even if you were from a feudal landlord family, 30 years ago you might have not even had running water or electricity. But at least you had a solid house, instead of living in a mud hut (if you were lucky) like most Dalits and Nomads in rural India back then.

If someone from an elite rural family came to the city, their privilige automatically becomes moot because in a purely capitalist society Money begets Privilige.

In the 1990s-to-present, there was a massive migration from rural India to cities, and a number of formerly priviliged Men (it's men who become migrant workers) were at the bottom rung of the urban social ladder. And they were/are PISSED. So in retaliation, they began organizing their own Castes to fight for political power and quotas.

Also, in India, Affirmative Action is a Quota System, unlike the US where Quotas are unconstitutional. This means you are playing a Zero Sum game where one family's Affirmative Action might doom your family to poverty.

This makes the situation highly volatile.

Identical phenomenon exists in US where groups with well above average incomes are considered officially "disadvantaged groups" for purposes of eg SBA loans.

I’m willing to believe it, but you’re making a claim which should be trivial to back up with sources, so please do (or I’ll have to assume you can’t)

The most obvious one is that Asian American are considered “disadvantaged” group for getting SBA loans which makes zero sense (highest earning group in US). They also qualify for minority-owned business status that opens up gov contracting opportunities.

Bal Thackeray is no way a Maratha, although he fought for Marathi and Hindu identity. Just shows how complex things are. Also the PM is OBC for what I know off.

Bal Thackery's family are Chandraseniya Kayastha Prabhu. Isn't that Maratha caste as well?

Absolutely not. That is closer to Brahmin caste than 96k Maratha or Kunbi Maratha that I know off.

OBC is indeed a completely made up category and has no relation to any kind of historic "atrocities".

OBCs are > 50% of India's population my some measure which tells you they are extremely powerful in an democracy. They engage in this race to bottom where they want more legal discrimination that favors them at the expense of another.

One can easily see that the most powerful politicians everywhere in India are mostly OBC. India's current PM is an OBC, so is the CMs of some of the richest states like Maharahstra, Tamilnadu or the most populous states like Uttar Pradesh. Making a claim that this group is somehow "oppressed" is like claiming Teachers Unions or NRA being politically oppressed. It is other way around.

Lyndon B. Johnson:

"If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."

Reminds me of ragging in Indian colleges. There is no particular generation thinks that they should put a full stop to this. Their insane justification is “we bore it, now it’s our turn to do it”. Society is just f*^ed up.

Same with caste system.

"When education is not liberating, the dream of the oppressed is to become the oppressor."

To make it further complex, the OBCs are further categorized into A,B,C,D.. groups. You need to add this info in multiple government forms right from childhood before writing any exam to what category and sub category you belong.

And to make it even more complex I’m classified as Upper caste in the state I was born, OBC in 2 other neighboring states. Many from the caste I was born in migrate to other states so they can get reservations (affirmative action) benefits for their kids.

To make it even further further complex, there is a sub caste with in the caste I was born in that are treated as SCs because of political reasons (may be?), so many cross marriage on purpose, again to get benefits for their kids.

This is one of the main reason that is holding back India as a country. No one I know in my generation (born in 90s) practice or discriminate anyone, but the government regularly does and reminds you of it

> the oppressed themselves don't understand it well enough to avoid oppressing others

I can’t comment too much because i’ve had a copy sitting unread in my pile of books to read for over 6 months now, but if anyone is interested, I think this is the exact topic of Paulo Freire’s ‘ Pedagogy of the Oppressed’ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedagogy_of_the_Oppressed

Isn’t Narendra Modi, the Indian prime minister from an OBC? I don’t think he makes a secret of it

Why is this relevant other than as an attempt to misdirect blame from the "caste system" to "the writer of the article"?

I read the article as a critique of India's caste system evidenced by the lack of representation for a class that represents almost half the population. What does the actions of individuals in this group(that makes up half the population of India) have to do with that point?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37333418

Just as India is large and complex, so is everyone's experience. 59.5% of IIT seats are reserved for backward castes - that is HUGE in a nation full of students competing for the 40% seats available for the general category. The entrance exam score gap between reserved and general is massive (numbers are public) and it shows in their relative academic performance. One could make an argument that the Indian Government should step in earlier (early - middle school up to high school) by funding better education to reduce the academic gap between students from backward castes and the rest. The author here if anything points to the effect of poverty/poor education in one's early years as opposed to there being a systematic campaign to exclude backward castes in academia esp in the west where hardly anybody understands the caste system. I can't speak much to academia in India though.

No one wants to talk about the giant elephant in the room: reservation system vs. competence. Go to any govt office: the chief of some division is incompetent, some low-level clerk does the heavy lifting. Of course, this low-level clerk happens to be from non-reserved category, as both recruitment and promotions in the government are driven by reservations.

Why people (both reserved and non-reserved) send their kids to private schools, techno-schools, residential-schools, IIT-schools even in small towns, small villages these days? The whole education system from primary to all the way to universities is failing: incompetent teachers abound. There was a time Indian politicians used to send their kids to colleges in Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Culcutta. Now, these politicians send their kids abroad right after 12th grade, as they are not impacted. The malaise in the Indian education system is so deep: getting a job in the govt is a way to 'correct historical wrongs'; if so, why these teachers (beneficiaries of this correction) don't send their kids to these govt schools? Ask, why these people look for the best doctors for their care?

Maybe, it is time to destroy IITs as well by forcing the reservation system on the faculty recruitment (equality of outcomes). That way, we can achieve the common denominator from primary to IITs. People with means (importantly politicians and intellectuals who defend reservations) can send their kids abroad for undergrad B.A/B.S, whereas 99% people are stuck with systematic malaise in the whole education system.

I agree with you. Thank you for raising the topic.

IITs? I have been hearing talks of forcing it on ISRO and private companies.

Hopefully that won't happen.

I know people don't like fact-checkers. But here is the latest recruitment advertisement[1] from ISRO. See for example page 2, job code BE005

[1] https://www.isro.gov.in/media_isro/pdf/recruitmentNotice/202...

> Go to any govt office: the chief of some division is incompetent, some low-level clerk does the heavy lifting.

For the majority of the time since 1947, it was the non-reserved "competent" class of people who were in charge of government institutions. Even today, I can easily walk into a government office and find some "competent" class officer whose only interest is in milking as much money as he can out of the citizenry. So what gives?

Corruption is NOT confined to one class, one caste, one set (random vs. non-random), one alumni association, one group (competent vs. incompetent). This issue is orthogonal to competence: one can be corrupt irrespective of competence.

People recruited in state services (just like UPSC) are promoted to IAS/IPS. When these promoted IAS/IPS officers want postings as district magistrates (collectors) or superintendents of police for districts, the chief secretary or the DGP want bribes; otherwise, they are posted in loop-line (like special project director for land acquisition or railways SP). Add this to sycophancy in India: this sycophancy is there since Islam Rule, then continued into British Raj, now post-Independence India. Every subordinate officer, while treating his/her subordinates as trash, salutes his/her superior. Sycophancy and corruption are deeply related, and collusion between bureaucracy and politicians adds flavor to this mix.

My point is why the enormous amount of energy directed at reservations when there are mountains of evidence that corruption is several orders of magnitude more destructive? It's an elephant vs an ant in the room thing. You ignore the elephant and think the ant is causing systemic malaise. Why is that?

Is it because Hindu dharma dictates that certain classes are meant to do certain jobs? Like a person availing reservation is born stupid - because of bad karma from a past life - and so can never learn how to do administrative work competently?

Both incompetence and corruption need to be fixed. Incompetence from the rationality perspective [1], corruption from the systems perspective. Just because some book says "people from X varna should do certain job", who is enforcing it? Now you can say that Brahmins haven't taught Vedas to non-brahmins. Come on, who wants to recite Vedas today? History showed us that many Sudra kings ruled; what does it show? That one's favorite text is not binding; or, no one is enforcing what the text says; or, human actions are not instantiations of beliefs, which are textual; etc.

[1] https://www.newindianexpress.com/opinions/2015/sep/11/Indian...

> Just because some book says "people from X varna should do certain job", who is enforcing it?

Hindu dharma is not driven by any particular book, but is simply the dominant sociopolitical system in the Indian sub-continent. A political system with a tiny elite controlling the rest is inherently unstable (think monarchies or communism) whereas a political system which distributes its elites tends to be stable. That is what the caste system is. Each jati had its own ruling body and social structure. And then there were broader rules which governed how jatis interact, which is where the varnas come in.

Now how do you maintain this political system if people are free to leave a jati or intermarry with another jati willy-nilly? You can't. That is why caste endogamy is so strictly enforced (and often violently) in the sub-continent. And the endogamy dates back to like from 2000 years ago. This socio-political system is so fundamental a building block of the sub-contient that even Muslims and Christians follow it unlike in other parts of the world.

The other problem to solve in this jati system is that how do you keep some jati doing the dirty or undesirable jobs? This is where the concept of karma comes in. Some people can get away with murder because that's just how the universe works. They will get their just desserts in the next life.

Given all that, people who grow up in such a culture carry some biases pretty strongly. Like if a guy gets into medical college due to reservation, but earns the degree like everyone else in his class - by you know completing all the course requirements - he is still not qualified to treat people. The bad karma sticks around. That is how the enforcement works. The cultural beliefs do it.

No one has described the so-called sociopolitical system and its dynamic (how it reproduces). What we have speculative accounts, ad hoc in nature. Let's look at endogamy.

"A caste is an endogamous group, or collection of endogamous groups, bearing a common name, membership of which is hereditary, arising from birth alone; imposing on its members certain restrictions in the matter of social intercourse; either (i) following a common traditional occupation, or (ii) claiming a common origin, or (iii) both following such occupation and claiming such origin; and generally regarded as forming a single homogenous community" (p.5 of Blunt's The caste system of Northern India)

"The endogamy of a subcaste is not as rigid as that of a caste. A marriage between (say) a Brahman bridegroom and a Rajput bride is unthinkable, but intermarriages have occurred between subcastes of the same caste with no worse consequences than a purificatory sacrifice; and if circumstances make it desirable, such as lack of women, subcaste endogamy is abandoned. Even in the Brahman caste this has occurred. Subcaste endogamy is muta- ble; sometimes a subcaste which is endogamous in one place is not so in another. A trifling quarrel will drive two groups that formerly intermarried to endogamy: the removal of the cause of offense removes the restriction. But the most potent of all objections is the fact that endogamous subcastes are not regarded by their own members or by the rest of Hindu society as castes. To call such groups castes is to treat them as being what no Hindu would admit them to be. An investigator is not at liberty to manipulate his material so as to make it fit his theories." ( ibid, 6-7)

From a field study from Karnataka: "[O]ut of the 600 Panchayat members, majority of them did not endorse strict endogamy, commensality, untouchability. Nonetheless these respondents, did express their willingness to continue their jati tradition. This makes sense only when they think that these are not constituent properties of the jati traditions. Otherwise how can they disagree with the so called constituent properties of the jati and yet are willing to continue with their affiliation to their jati. This either indicates that none of the so-called characteristic features of the caste system are valid for these jatis or that the jati structure can include or exclude anything and still survive.

Those who consider the jatis as the referential points of the term caste, hold endogamy to be the most fundamental to the caste difference. However the Swamis of some of these jatis advocate for inter jati marriages for various reasons, like for survival of the jati against shortage of brides, or to unite different jatis belonging to the same cluster like Lingayat, Brahmana.. Though they have their own preferences of jatis to be accepted for inter marriage, this at least indicates that endogamy is not a constituent property of the jati units The Havyak Brahmins preferred inter-jati marriage as a means of saving their jati from the crisis of brides. In the case of Lingayat swamis, inter-jati marriage is viewed as a way to unite the Lingayats."

The real biggest problem is: what is a caste? For instance, in the states of Andhra Pradesh/Telangana, after the internet revolution, I have seen people talking about "reddy society". When I asked these society members, what makes some Subba Reddy from a village A, Kurnool District, another Ram Reddy from a village B, Nalgonda District, as belong to the reddy-caste? Their simple answer: because we are all reddy-s, we have that 'reddy' tag in our names. This is a circular explanation. If one goes back 40 years ago, we heard different kinds of reddy-s: pakanati, pedakanti, neravadi, panta, etc. People from each of these (pakanati, pedakanti, ...) didn't marry from other groups. Is there a super-caste called 'reddy', whose sub-castes are pakanati, pedakanti, neravadi, panta, etc? Or pakanati, pedakanti, neravadi, panta, etc are different castes? No answer.

In fact, the name 'pakanati' is related to a geographical area called 'paaka-naadu'. Even some other 'sub'-castes (not reddy-s) have paaka-naadu in their group. The whole debate is mired in this. British tried to classify and gave up on this project.

Let me cite another way of describing this:

'While emphasizing that I do not attack and much less defend the caste system in what follows, let us look at the existing descriptions and their consequences.

(a) Caste is an antiquated social system that arose in the dim past of India. If this is true, it has survived many challenges – the onslaught of Buddhism and the Bhakti movements, the Islamic and British colonization, Indian independence, world capitalism – and might even survive ‘globalization’. It follows, then, that the caste system is a very stable social organization.

(b) There exists no centralized authority to enforce the caste system across the length and breadth of India. In that case, it is an autonomous and decentralized organization.

(c) All kinds of social and political regulations, whether by the British or by the Indians, have not been able to eradicate this system. If true, it means that the caste system is a self-reproducing social structure.

(d) Caste system exists among the Hindus, the Sikhs, the Jains, the Christians, the Muslims… It has also existed under different environments. This means that this system adapts itself to the environments it finds itself in.

(e) Because new castes have come and gone over the centuries, this system must also be dynamic.

(f) Since caste system is present in different political organizations and survives under different political regimes, it is also neutral with respect to political ideologies.

Even though more can be said, this is enough for us. A simple redescription of what we think we know about the caste system tells us that it is an autonomous, decentralized, stable, adaptive, dynamic, self-reproducing social organization. It is also neutral with respect to political, religious and economic doctrines and environments. If indeed such a system ever existed, would it also not have been the most ideal form of social organization one could ever think of? How can we try to understand this odd state of affairs? The question of the immorality of the caste system became immensely important after the British came to India. Consequently, there are two interesting possibilities to choose from: one, Indians did not criticize the caste system (before the British came to India) because Indians are immoral; two, the Europeans ‘discovered’ something that simply does not exist in India, viz. the social organization that the caste system is supposed to be.

The reason why I have spent time on this issue is to signal in the direction of a problem, which has very far-reaching consequences. If what Europe knows about India resembles what it claims to know about the caste system, what exactly does Europe know about India or her culture? Not very much, I am afraid.'[1]

[1] https://www.outlookindia.com/website/story/what-can-india-of...

Up until a decade or two ago, rhetoric was an extremely effective tool when it came to denying the origins of caste. But with genetic evidence piling up, such positions are simply untenable[1]. As to why certain social institutions endure for so long, it's for the same reason why monarchies had endured even longer than caste endogamy has.

https://www.brownpundits.com/2018/06/07/genetical-observatio...

Endogamy fails when the ratio of males to females in a group is not 1:1, a simple mathematical fact. Many castes have disappeared, many emerged. Genetical evidence just show that people prefer to marry within that particular sub-caste, but it is not a constituent property of caste--let alone a system of castes. If we apply this logic (endogamy meausurement), castes existed in other continents, countries far away from India. In that case, we see a phenomenon not unique to India.

BTW, I am not denying that practices exist, practices are continued, even modified. Nor am I denying that jaatis-exist. I am not even denying that there are fights between different jaatis at different places. There is a difference between phenomena and explanations(descriptions). Over the time, theory-laden descriptions of phenomena start replacing the very phenomena. That facts are theory-laden or that facts are facts of a theory--is not some rhetoric.

Once caste-system (sociopolitical system, as you put), a theoretical entity, is postulated to explain various phenomena, now all these phenomena are re-described using this language. When I deny these re-descriptions, you seem to think that I am denying phenomena (for example, people prefer intra-jaati marriages), as you call this denial of re-descriptions as rhetoric.

Practices exist, jaatis exist, various phenomena exist, does the caste-system exist?

Consider reading [1] (also linked in OP) for a detailed article about a very talented lower caste person who gets hired at IIT Kanpur, only to be met with overt caste-based discrimination and harassment. You'd find it hard to claim caste-based discrimination doesn't exist after reading it. On a perhaps unrelated note, the author is Manindra Agarwal, who you may know as the A in the AKS primality test.

[1]: https://kafila.online/2019/04/10/the-saderla-story-courage-i...

Yep. Indian and Indian Diaspora academia can be toxic. I remember hearing stories about a professor at a T10 CS Program who'd only give RAShips to people from the exact same subcaste community as him. There are plenty of issues with overt and covert toxicity among the South Asian community.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37333418

Also consider reading that caste violence is also directed at upper castes from lower castes. It is not a one sided thing. Left-leaning ruling party politicians in a state have shamefully called for a brahmin (upper caste) genocide.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste-related_violence_in_Indi...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Brahminism

https://www.deccanherald.com/india/dmk-spokesperson-supports...

I hope this comes across as me being merely ignorant of the situation on the ground in India but I do have a question.

I've seen caste based discrimination here in America first hand. It's gross and I have absolutely no patience with those participating in it.

If I were to go to India with this attitude, would I be met with compatriots that also have zero interest in putting up with it? Is there a reason that such a backwards obviously oppressive system persists to this day in 2023? Why don't people just change their names to the caste they want to be

Apologies, I'm a privileged American that can't begin to imagine putting up with even a moment of it personally. I know it's not so simple but it's a simple way to ask.

That's a good question. But as this is a way of maintaining social privilege and the people in power are the privileged ones, I imagine there is little effort in actually changing the system. They will say it's terrible etc, but no real actions will be taken. Can someone from India confirm/refute my hypothesis?

Two points - legally, caste based discrimination is illegal. From a cultural aspect - cultural changes are much slower in non-western countries. For example, compare how quickly the culture around marijuana & same sex marriage changed in US, and the laws kept up. But similar change probably takes 10x longer in "older" cultures. As an analogy, the left wing party of India which is supposed to be liberal, opposed legalizing same-sex marriage[1]. This attitude extends to all issues of reform in the entire political class.

[1] https://www.opindia.com/2021/09/377-decriminalisation-congre...

> Why don't people just change their names to the caste they want to be

For an over-simplified explanation, substitute caste with race/nationality and rephrase the question in a setting you might be more familiar with. For example "if people face racism/discrimination due to their nationality, why don't they just do X", where X is to obfuscate their race/nationality. It might work sometime, it might not work most of the times and the real answer is complicated and depends on the details. If you consider everyone in India to be culturally homogeneous, then it's just a matter of saying someone isn't caste X but Y. But if you consider every caste/subcaste to be distinct culturally and linguistically (almost like they are their own countries), it's not trivial to replace surname X with Y as other factors give you away.

> Is there a reason that such a backwards obviously oppressive system persists to this day in 2023?

Similar mental analogy helps understand a tad bit better - why do oppressive practices like racism/discrimination based on nationality exist today? At that, exist in some of the more developed countries. FYI - caste based discrimination is illegal in India, kinda similar to how racism is illegal but that alone isn't sufficient to remove it from the culture.

Well India is place where people compete to be identified as backward caste so they can get reservations/quota in colleges/jobs etc.

This article is written precisely for Western audience who wouldn't know these OBC are among extremely powerful part of political establishment. Reading this article one can imagine these people must be suffering unimaginable atrocities. One who lives in India knows in fact OBCs are largest group inflicting atrocities on actual lower castes which SCs/STs.

Its a problem not easy to solve. Governments all over India have strict laws against Dalit atrocities. But political considerations and uneven enforcement does not help people that are supposed to benefit from these laws.

Another big factor is India being poor country there are not enough material resources as West so lower castes can be given ample support to progress without taking away significant resources from others. This situation just causes more resentment across board.

Casteism is racism. Meaning your question about changing names isn't as weird as you might think. Consider all the groups that got reclassified as white as time went on in the US, like eastern europeans. It's a made up bullshit system based in nonsense hallucinated by humans and is therefore as malleable as race is. Though screw reshaping it. Let's destroy it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37333418

"Why don't people just change their names to the caste they want to be"

most people don't see themselves as lower caste, they have extreme pride in their caste and ancestry, people aren't ashamed of that

ground reality is different from stuff you see online

Name is not the only thing that gives away one's caste/religion. For example, my ear being pierced gives away that I am a Hindu. The specific dialect I speak gives away where I belong from, which statistically brings me to 2-3 castes. The food I eat(e.g. I eat chicken but not pork) or the festivals I celebrate will give away the rest.

Even though RTI queries to major IITs reveal that almost all faculty comes from un-reserved category, one needs more evidence (than this RTI data) to show that caste discrimination occurred. If there is an opening for two faculty positions in the IITM CS department esp in machine learning and AI, if 20 people are applied, two are selected, and two happened to be from un-reserved category. Does it prove caste-discrimination? Well, look at the profiles of twenty candidates and see their research record and also academic pedigree, see whether one can pick up two candidates from reserved category (that is, SC, ST and OBC). If one can show that, yes, indeed caste-discrimination is occurred: both candidates A (reserved category) and B (un-reserved category) are excellent both academically and research-wise, only B is chosen, yes, one can say that the committee should have picked A.

Btw, I am not a product of IITs or any elite institution in the West/East. So, I am of opinion that best candidates should be picked up irrespective of one's caste. Sometimes, what is 'best' can be under dispute: for instance, a UCLA Ph.D with many publications in STOC/FOCS is picked up over a CMU Ph.D with many publications in tier-2 conferences. Again, what is tier-1, what is tier-2, etc are driven by the CS community, not by the so-called upper-castes from India. Same goes for pedigree: why Ph.D students from top-tier CS departments have better shot at getting faculty jobs than those from tier-2 institutions? Why CS people from American universities have better shot than those who got Ph.D from IIT Ropar/Tirupati? Again, it is community-driven, not by upper castes.

It may not prove caste discrimination during the hiring process (I’m not sure that’s even claimed by the author).

It does however strongly suggest and maybe even prove the existence of caste discrimination at a societal level.

Why are the “best candidates” so disproportionately upper castes? That’s not a trick question. We know that the upper castes have suppressed lower castes. You may want to argue it doesn’t exist today, but the data very clearly show even if that’s true, the historical impact of that discrimination on the lives of people living today is high.

Even if the delta was the result of a lack of candidates from disadvantaged castes, to me that suggests that the discrimination already happened earlier, weeding out the disadvantaged castes before they could even become qualified candidates.

Equality of Opportunity vs. Equality of Outcome is a common dispute in these discussions. It also depends on the context: Equality of Opportunity at the n th step totally depends on Equality of Outcome at the n-1 th step. Who is responsible for every step in this process? Whoever responsible for this, it should not cause undue burden for other people, as it is not a zero-sum game.

What if differences in outcome are due to genetics? Do we then genetically engineer each group (this tech will soon be widespread) until all group outcomes are equalized?

Serious question btw, I have heard someone applauding this (and seeing it as likely to occur as an emergent phenomenon due to free market competition).

(As a humorous side-note: I heard someone say in an interview, "I hope that differences in intelligence are genetic, because then it means we can do something about it with technology. If not, we'd be doomed! When has a social policy ever produced the desired outcome?")

I mean the vast majority of studies indicate environmental factors like access to healthy food, a strong family, educational opportunities, and the literal environment are what drives difference in outcomes, not "genetic inferiority".

Maybe someone from a lower (poorer) caste was raised on a diet of food grown in polluted/ tainted fields, grew up with poor air quality, and their water comes through lead pipes or other means that permanently hinder their potential.

You're arguing pure eugenics and apparently find it funny.

I'm not arguing for or against anything. I asked "what if X" and you responded "not X, also you're a bad person."

My argument was not "we should strive for equality of outcome, even if it means eugenics!" but rather to point out that it is an absurd goal.

As for my amusement, it was at this person (I can't remember the name) expressing a hope that outcomes are due to genetics, because he saw this as the optimal situation (due to the inevitable progress of technology), rather than hopeless as most people do.

Also just to be perfectly clear, I am not rejecting the role of environment. I am just also not rejecting the role of genetics. If genetics really didn't matter, differences in outcome between me and a banana would be purely environmental.

> to me that suggests that the discrimination already happened earlier

Indian educational institutes both private and public have around 50% affirmative action to backward classes. Similarly all the educational levels below that can have around 10%-30% affirmative action based on caste.

It's always interesting when folks tell me that some form of discrimination based on categorical prejudice isn't that bad, or that they haven't seen it themselves.

Personally I think the amount of discrimination should be zero, and that any level of categorical discrimination any person experiences is unacceptable. And that's not even getting into the systemic effects from past discrimination on family wealth.

> Personally I think the amount of discrimination should be zero

> any level of categorical discrimination any person experiences is unacceptable.

These two statements contradict.

So my wife is from a shipyard town in Russia which refitted that air carrier ship for Indian navy. So at times they had a lot of Indian citizens in town.

I remember some of her acquaintances, working at child care, discovered that some of Indian kids shun other ones based on Caste, and promptly made them all do kids' dances holding hands with each other.

Just curious; why were there children at all? Surely they weren’t on the carrier?

Accepting a huge warship, learning to use and service it is a multi-year affair involving a lot of people, who in turn have families. So they had to acclimatize to the near polar circle White sea experience.

I know him personally. His family is pretty affluent, his uncle is/was a MLA from the state of Rajasthan. So by no mean he is just another guy. This guy is so privileged that something happened to his exam admit card then he went to Collector's office and yelled at him (on his own account). Any Indian here would know, what it entails/means. I wonder if got in IIT Bombay on the OBC quota. Is he salty because he did not get faculty position at IIT Bombay. I heard he is/was coming to UT Austin.

Look at the following numbers, and you will realize how discriminated Mr Meel is.

Category : Cutoff Score required for IIT (out of 100)

Common Rank List :90.7788642 (Brahmins, upper castes which Ycombinator hates)

Gen-EWS:75.6229025

OBC-NCL:73.6114227 : Mr Kuldeep Meel (The caste he suggests is discriminated)

SC:51.9776027 : You'll see multiple comments here saying how badly they get treated by the system

ST:37.2348772 --same---

PwD:0.0013527 -- same----

Dang, can you please not delete it. It's a fact, may be unpleasant for few.

Reading the attachments, the data seems to be recent (except for IIT bombay?) and includes assistant, associate, and tenured professors. Surprising that almost 175 of the 180 faculty members are from the "forward castes" (~30% of population) vs 5 (1 obc, 4 sc, scheduled caste) from the remaining 70%. Could also be due to academia skewing older? (i.e reflecting past biases)

I was born in India and moved to the United States when I was very young. One of the other Indian-American kids asked me what my caste is after hearing my unfamiliar last name. At the time, I hadn't even heard of caste, and didn't realized what kind of parenting environment creates a 7 year old (who doesn't even live in India or speak the language) to question the caste of another Indian in the first place.

After school, when I asked my mother about my caste, she refused to tell me anything about it. "We left that silly system behind in India, and we're not bringing it here."

For what it's worth, I think your mother's attitude is shared by the vast majority of Indian-Americans, and even first-generation Indian immigrants like me.

In India, there are egregious things reminding you about it, i.e. literally every government form ever -- but in the US it's reasonably easy to ignore and forget about completely unless you go out initiating conversations about it, or are unlucky enough to run into someone like your friend.

I have had a ton of both Indian-American and Indian immigrant friends in the US, and have had zero conversations with any of them that involved discussing caste.

As an American Indian I found the whole asking of race in government forms to be a bit crazy.

I usually end up putting “N/A” or equivalent.

If it's a drop-down, then I refuse to self-identify.

If it's a blank to fill in, then I write "Irish/Scottish".

It's never a blank.

As far as I know, the race question on government forms is for census reasons.

But this thread raises an interesting point.. asking about race or about caste on government forms could be potentially creating extra divisiveness, by making people identify themselves one way or the other and making them conscious of their differences.

It's on government forms?

That's how it goes. It was thus -and probably still is?- in Europe. It's thus in the U.S. It's thus everywhere that governments care about the racial/ethnic/religious make-up of their populations. For me there's always a fear of another Holocaust like that of the Tutsis in Rwanda or the Jews in Europe.

Yes, similar to how US colleges ask for race on applications. India's government programs have the equivalent of affirmative action everywhere; so all forms where affirmative action could be implemented ask about it.

As a white guy: I met one guy who was brahmin and was bragging about it and trying to explain to me that the caste system is good.

This has been my experience as well- 99% of Indians outside India don’t know and don’t care. If anyone has any doubts the system is still very much alive in India, just visit the ghats of Varanasi where even in death (i.e. cremation) the castes are kept separate.

I am late to the party but people here need to understand this whole issue from a factual data-based viewpoint rather than from biased anecdotal articles.

For Western audiences the article they should read is Social Realities of Indian Americans: Results From the 2020 Indian American Attitudes Survey by Carnegie Endowment - https://carnegieendowment.org/2021/06/09/social-realities-of...

The above is the third in a 3-part series on Indian-Americans. Links to the other two are in the article and are worth reading.

This whole (non-)issue in the US is entirely due to the shenanigans of "Equality Labs" of dubious origins/connections/research (the data is from a survey they did on Reddit!). See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37333207

factual data is an interesting term, I think this whole discussion is about how factual data at present fail to consider lack of opportunities some people faced historically. We must understand differences between Reporting and Journalism.

>I think this whole discussion is about how factual data at present fail to consider lack of opportunities some people faced historically.

No; see my other comment here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37333669

Westerners have no clue when it comes to the huge diversity existing in India on Social/Religious/Linguistic/Economic/Caste/Nutrition etc. parameters and how each is being "gamed" by vested interests both in India and abroad to suit their agendas. Hence "Equal Opportunities" does not guarantee "Equal Outcomes". The wikipedia page "Reservations in India" linked to in my above comment gives the details and finer points which i highly recommend reading in entirety to understand the complexities involved.

I have been a reader of this website since 15 years.

I belong to one of the Poor states of India, one of the bimaru states.

We are not eligible for

Healthcare by government

But we pay 4/5th of our incomes as taxes.

My parents do not get any help, pension, from the government I have to use all my leftover income to pay for healthcare of my parents

My children will be having to work 3/4th harder than anyone else for the same colleges seat, and will pay at least 7 times more fee for the same college seat.

We never had any generational wealth, no farm lands.

The politician have been Gaslighting us since decades that somehow we are the culprits, just for been born.

The politicians have been ignoring, trolling, downplaying our concerns since decades in these 4 states.

The politicians only want 70% of our income as taxes and we have to watch our parents die because we don't have money.

We have to watch our children get injured on roads and use cheaper medicine because we don't have money leftover after paying taxes.

Do not let anyone Gaslight, do not let anyone convince that you are the culprits just for being born.

Just because something exists on the internet doesn't mean it's correct.

Do not believe anything written on the internet unless it is vetted by all sided

From the last 4 decades, 10% of the population has been deprived of 50% of the government jobs.

Not all of That 10% doesn't may not have generational wealth.

Do not let anyone convince you that that person is oppressed.

Ask about the generational wealth, ask about the real estate owned by the family.

A person who pays 7times fee for the same college will not own a house as compared to a person who pays 0 few for the same college.

Do not let anyone convince you whose parents are government job holders that he/she is oppressed.

The only oppressed people in India are those who pay their taxes and get nothing on return, have to watch their mothers die, have to watch their children heartbroken for scoring extremely good marks and still be denied admission.

My sister who is pursuing PhD is from OBC. She is doing from one of the best colleges on earth. Really proud of her!

Congrats to her!

I worked in 3 different companies (Hyderabad, Bangalore) in South India and did not see any evidence of caste discrimination. Or even people talking about discrimination in office.

While I did see discrimination in college, which was in a rural town in South India.

Pizza delivery is also casteless!

You wouldn’t necessarily unless you were looking for it

> I worked in 3 different companies (Hyderabad, Bangalore) in South India and did not see any evidence of caste discrimination

Are you of a member of a discriminated-against caste? If not, it may simply be it wasn't visible to you.

It doesn’t work like that. This isn’t like racism where differences are immediately superficially apparent. You need to have conversations bordering on light interrogations to determine who is what.

That is in contrast to the article, which says:

> Typically, one's surname (last name) is a giveaway and most Indians can reasonably identify someone's caste based on the last name

That only applies to Northern part of the country. In south each state has it's own language and there is no way an outside state person can know your caste without asking

Even in the north, someone from Himachal Pradesh is not going to be able to identify someone’s caste in Bihar or West Bengal

Thank you. I didn't know that :)

Just because people from outside the caste system cannot spot it, and it is much jarder to spot than say discrmination against people of color or women, doesn't mean caste based discrimination isn't every single bit as racist as all other forms of racism.

I guess that depends on your definition of racism. Can people from the UK be racist to the Polish? If yes, fine. But technically it’s different from racism and more nationally based bigotry.

The was a race in Europe that faut a genocidal war against East Europeans, based on perceived race.

Playing semantics during discussions on discrmination always has some undertones of trying to justify said discrimination, because of course it is something different...

Semantics may not be the most helpful during a discussion of this but neither is application of modes/solutions learnt from other forms of bigotry. The best way to kill the caste system is to forget about it which is in the process of happening. It’s not further entrenching yourself in that identity that may be necessary in more superficial forms of bigotry.

Does your proposed solution also include forgetting the benefits members of higher castes have historically received?

Because that sounds a lot like telling someone to pull themselves up from their bootstraps after stealing their boots.

There’s already a 30-50% quota in most public institutions that is very successful at giving lower castes an advantage. No bootstraps required.

Will those affirmative actions extend how long the caste system stays around? Probably but they’re meant to be in place for a couple of generations (40-80 years) which should be an acceptable amount of time to level the field.

It is form of discrimination. But it’s not racism.

Just like sexism is not racism.

Race is an ambiguous delineation of a tribe someone might belong to.

Sex, age, etc are more defined delineations.

Who is to say the 1.3B population of Indians does not have multiple races? They might all be the same tribe in the eyes of a person with ancestors from Europe, born and raised in the US. But for someone in India, they very well could view the other 1.29B Indians as being in tribes as different as “white” and “black” tribes in the US.

Note that racism is not skin color-ism, since a very light skinned descendent of a darker skinner person is also, commonly, referred to as being “black”, especially if they have obvious physical traits that display they have “black” ancestors.

Race in the US (and other parts of the developed world) is about the socioeconomic tribe that the one belongs to, or that one’s network (including ancestors) belong to. That seems very similar to castes in India.

Race in the US is not a “socioeconomic tribe”. You said it yourself, it’s based on physical features. That’s not what a caste is.

Indian populations also have similar differences in physical traits that they use to discriminate, but they also correlate with socioeconomic status. Including lighter and darker skin.

See the other comment. I agree with him.

I worked at one, and it was pretty blatant.

Which City ?

Isabelle Wilkerson’s book, Caste, really opened my eyes on this subject. Highly recommend for Americans looking to learn about our own caste system.

I would like to point out that author is a liar and dishonest. He claims he is "OBC" which is not really a caste but rather a legal classification for affirmative action.

Author's name is Meel, which indicates he is actually from the upper caste named Jats who historically have been landlords, kings and such. No one considered Jats as OBC until very recently in 2016 where this dominant caste members caused massive riots and street violence to demand such legal classification so they could benefit from affirmative action in government jobs.

This is literally like the thieves from San Fransisco calling themselves victims of capitalism after robbing local Macy's.

Caste classification is a big sh*t show. For example, Rajput is supposedly an upper caste, but by just changing it to "Rajput Bhamta" and bribing some officials one can get classified as "Vimukta Jati" in Maharashtra (which has tons of benefits at). I wouldn't be surprised if such lapses in the regulations have been abused in the past.

Correct. In fact a lot of castes got SC/ST status because these names had some spelling mistakes when the clerks wrote it down.

For example when a clerk read out to another the list of STs, there was one name called "Bhil Meena", the clerk who as writing it down heard it as "Bhil, Meena" as a result Meena which is actually a pretty powerful caste is ST even today where as Bhil Meena is still fighting for that status.

I have never heard or felt anyone talk about caste in my 25 years in US. I work with both academia as well as industry.

They may not have talked about it to you, but that doesn't mean they didn't talk about it at all.

Exactly how made-up issues are created. Vocal minority fallacy

In the US, caste is mostly a made up issue. Most 95% Indian Americans are upper caste or rich land owning OBCs (like the professor who wrote this blog). Who exactly are they discriminating against then?

Lot of grifters like Equality Labs have made this issue in US bigger than it seems. Most Indian American kids probably don't even know their own caste.

Agree with you.

I see OBC mentioned here many times but never defined in comments:

The Other Backward Class (O.B.C.) is a collective term used by the Government of India to classify castes which are educationally or socially backward. It is one of several official classifications of the population of India, along with General castes, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (SCs and STs).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Other_Backward_Class

The caste system in India is the paradigmatic ethnographic instance of social classification based on castes. It has its origins in ancient India, and was transformed by various ruling elites in medieval, early-modern, and modern India, especially the Mughal Empire and the British Raj.

Key terms:

  * Varna, meaning type, order, colour, or class are a framework for grouping people into classes, first used in Vedic Indian society. . . .
  * Jati, meaning birth, is mentioned less often and clearly distinguished from varna. There are four varnas but thousands of jatis. . . .
  * . . . [C]aste is derived from the Portuguese word casta, meaning "race, lineage, breed" and, originally, "'pure or unmixed (stock or breed)". . . .

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste_system_in_India

I work with some Indian colleagues, and when I heard something about the caste system, I decided to look up some of my colleagues' names. I found that most of them come from higher-ranked castes, while a few are from lower-ranked ones. However, I can confidently say that all of them excel in their jobs.

I hope that both the Indian people and the government can take more steps to promote equality. The current situation is unfair to those from lower-ranked castes and a huge waste of human potential.

>I hope that both the Indian people and the government can take more steps to promote equality. The current situation is unfair to those from lower-ranked castes and a huge waste of human potential.

It is exactly such simplistic viewpoints that allow various vested interests/grifters/charlatans to exploit/game the "Caste" issue in the US (and other Western countries). There has been more done to redress social inequalities (including caste-based) after India's independence than Westerners are aware of (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reservation_in_India). In urban India it is not much of an issue since only the almighty "Money" counts and nothing else.

You might also find the link to a study done by Carnegie Endowment on Indian-Americans here useful - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37333418

What’s the hypothesized reason why American universities are evidently discriminating against OBC persons? To my knowledge most Americans know little to nothing about caste, few of us can reliably tell caste from name, and even if we could we wouldn’t care.

The subtext is that other people of Indian descent are doing the discrimination. So far as I know, nobody asserts that non-Indians are aware of caste, or could possibly identify caste from names.

there is absolutely no evidence universities are discriminating against OBCs and the guy who wrote this post does not present any.

Helpful context would be that some groups in India can parlay their political power and social prestige into oppression certificates ("OBC") that lets them into top universities with scores much lower than everybody else. Which... fine... whatever -- politics is politics. But it is funny, delusional even, to see the author act as if these certificates should have any currency in the west.

Would it be possible for the government to 'phase out' last names and instead rely on other forms of identification? Instead of putting in your name in an application form, you just list an id number and your address. Then when you show up, you only mention your first and middle name.

I just posted this on a probably-dead thread about caste discrimination, but the short of it is the folks who wish to discriminate by caste have a variety of ways to determine what your caste is. From the Vice article below:

Indians will not ask outright what caste you are, as it’s seen as overly discriminatory, but they use more subtle methods to identify your place in the caste structure.

“Sometimes they ask, ‘Are you vegetarian?’ If you say yes, they ask are you vegetarian by birth or by choice, before getting into which village you come from, because sometimes the village gives up your caste,” Sam said.

Another method described to VICE News is the pat on the back to see if the person is wearing a Juneau, a sacred white thread typically worn by the upper castes in India.

Higher-caste Indians will also search social media accounts to ascertain a job candidate’s religious views or diet.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/3azjp5/silicon-valley-has-a-...

What could vegetarian by birth possibly mean

I guess born in a vegetarian family, educated as a vegetarian.

Can a born vegetarian be identified by measuring, I don't know, the diameter of nostrils or distance between nose tip and chin? And if so, do born vegans differ from those measurwmemts? And do they get bonus points?

Sarcasm aside, this whole caste system is easily a contentender for the worst form discrimination and, yes, racism is existence today.

Most Brahmins (a caste) are vegetarian.

> Indians will not ask outright what caste you are.

My team lead asked me in a Teams call, lol. At that point, he doesn't even know what I look like (because of covid, and we don't do video calls).

(I am not OBC though)

> Higher-caste Indians will also search social media accounts to ascertain a job candidate’s religious views or diet.

I don't believe this at all. Feels like overexaggerating.

> (I am not OBC though)

Life imitates art.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taSH_nZkRdw

> I don't believe this at all. Feels like overexaggerating.

Never underestimate how petty people can be. We've seen plenty of times in the past decade where people doing hiring will examine social media of candidates (on the extreme end even demand handing over of your phone phone during an interview). So it's hardly a stretch to think people with such views could overlap with people who harbor caste prejudice.

This is absolutely a thing and I have witnessed it. And I'm not even Indian.

Yeah it is probably bullshit.

What happens if you are from a lower caste but wear the white thread to misdirect? Or you lie about being / not being vegetarian by choice / at birth?

If someone really wanted to find out, they would be able to.

You could misdirect someone just passively asking, however as soon as the questions got more pointed, you'd have a hard time keeping up the charade.

Something as simple as the clothes you wear or the food you ate or the mannerisms you had could "give you up".

What happens if you lie on your resume? what if you practice speaking with a more prestigious accent than you grew up with? What if you carefully study your friends who went to private schools and summered in the Hamptons to learn how to imitate their ineffable shibboleth mannerisms?

The answer is yes, you can do these things, and it will confer exactly the benefits you imagine. And the consequences for getting "caught" aren't usually serious, either. But sometimes they are.

> What if you practice speaking with a more prestigious accent than you grew up with? What if you carefully study your friends who went to private schools and summered in the Hamptons to learn how to imitate their ineffable shibboleth mannerisms?

> The answer is yes, you can do these things

I mean, I personally can't. (From a UK perspective.) First I would need access to these people and spend a lot of time with them. That could be difficult in itself if they are discriminatory. Then I would need another separate social group to practice my new personality with. Plus I'm just not a good actor. So it's not surprising that people's movement in social class is pretty limited. This isn't even getting into how people of your previous class will treat you if they think you've deserted them.

> What happens if you lie on your resume?

Lying about credentials or experience is a bit different from wearing a piece of clothing you arguably find pretty or obviously inconsequential things like saying you eat meat or not

That's a bit oranges and apples though. If I lie on my resume I can be lawfully fired. If I try to pass myself as upper class nobody can do anything.

I had a friend in college who was an OBC. But he pretended to be General caste. By the end of final year, most people knew about it, but no one confronted him.

Are you indian / have you actually observed this? I'm Indian-American and in my experience this has been entirely non-existent so this article kinda baffles me. I've been asked whether I'm vegetarian before, but always in the context of grabbing food (respecting dietary preferences), and certainly haven't noticed any discrimination after saying that I'm not. I worked in SF for a year and currently in Seattle. Have several Indian friends/colleagues aswell and not once have I ever heard caste brought up

I was born in the US, and my parents immigrated from India. I encountered this once at a tech company in Seattle. My team's previous manager left the org, so we were assigned a new one. On our very first 1:1 meeting, he wasn't interested in discussing projects, but he kept asking all of these bizarre personal questions. At first, I didn't understand, but it became clear later on.

I'm really sorry that you experienced this. If you're still in Seattle and it ever happens again, know that caste discrimination is now formally banned as of March of this year. Please spread the word that claims can be filed with the city's Office for Civil Rights.[1]

1. https://www.seattle.gov/civilrights/civil-rights-enforcement...

This sounds like someone who has no idea about India.

Being vegetarian tells you nothing about somoene's caste at all, either by choice or birth. You might make a wild guess but it has very less chance of being correct. Vegetarianism permeates throughout society in both upper and lower classes.

Asking someone's village name to know anything is laughable. There are about a million villages in India, and most villages have mixed caste populations, so this is just so laughably absurd. Even if you meet someone in a local city, you will not get to know their caste by their village name, let alone meeting someone in a big Indian city or the US. Asking someone's village gives you same amount of information as doing Math.random(1e6).

> see if the person is wearing a Juneau

This is something that has almost stopped and at this point almost nobody wears it since it involves a lot of extra effort. It would be very very long ago when the % of peopling wearing it was high enough.

> Higher-caste Indians will also search social media accounts to ascertain a job candidate’s religious views or diet.

This again sounds like a handway statement that is somehow intended to show how one can easily find someone else's caste.

I'd imagine you can get some amount of information from a first name as well.

No just religion.

Usually not - maybe if the name is super traditional, however first names are pretty much equal across castes.

Why would you imagine that?

There's definitely some correlation between name and socioeconomic status in a lot of cultures. I'm surprised to hear that's not so in India.

It definitely is. Brahmin names might be more Sanskritic, for example.

First names are defined more by fashion than anything else.

Perhaps, but definitely people from different communities and castes are influenced by different fashion trends.

In practice, there is near zero correlation between first names and caste.

I would guess there are a ton of ways to tell what caste someone is. Where they are from, accent, one article I remember reading mentioned a person was Buddhist not Hindu and keeping that secret to avoid caste discrimination https://www.wired.com/story/trapped-in-silicon-valleys-hidde...

Indian government offers different benefits to different castes. For example say you murder someone. The victim's caste will play a big role in how you are treated. If you kill a person belonging to so called "lower caste", your punishment would higher and bar for evidence much lower.

If you belong to certain castes then you get government jobs and promotions on priority bases. Upto 50% of jobs are reserved based on caste. Around 70% of admissions in colleges are done by looking at your caste.

GOVERNMENT insists on knowing your caste.

I came across a decent journalism by "The Swaddle" recently, they discuss how upper caste social capital translates to merit in multiple arenas of life in India. They looked into IITs and made the following piece. https://theswaddle.com/the-deserving-and-the-damned/

This also sheds some light into state of startups and people behind it, as more than 60% Indian unicorns has at-least one of their founder from an IIT. https://restofworld.org/2023/iit-graduates-dominate-tech/

Thanks for the links, they seem pretty decent. However the phrase Correlation does not imply Causation needs to be kept in mind when reading these types of articles.

You might find the links in my comment here also useful - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37333418

I recently read a scholarly treatment on the subject of sati and whether it was really as widespread and pernicious as the colonising Empire claimed that it was. The verdict was: no, absolutely not.

Now I have to wonder about the caste system: this only came to the attention of outsiders and Westerners while the Empire was systematically destroying India, in terms of economy, morale, and unity.

What would have happened if the colonisers had not invaded, left India intact, and the inhabitants left to their own self-determination? Would caste discrimination be noticed here in North America? Would the Indian government, untainted by Western influences, be trying vainly to stamp it out and overcompensate with affirmative action and quotas? It really makes you wonder.

How do foreigners / non-Hindus fit into the caste system?

Are there caste equivalent attitudes towards Arabs, Euros, East Asians and so on? Or from a different angle, Muslims, Christians, irreligious, etc.

Or does the framework not apply to those outside of the Hindu community?

It mostly doesn’t. Historically there have been lots of mass conversions to other religions the first one being Buddhism in 600BC. Buddhism came about primarily as a response to Hindu orthodoxy and the caste system.

Muslims so, despite being not covered by India's caste system, are heavily discriminated against so. A situation not helped by decades of war with neighboring Pakistan.

>Buddhism came about primarily as a response to Hindu orthodoxy and the caste system.

AFAIK, it did not. It came about from the Buddha's teachings, which were not about caste, but about suffering and its cessation via attaining nirvana (but I am not an expert on Buddhism; we only learned some about it in school).

My guess is that, instead, later, many people may have converted to it, maybe some due to orthodoxy.

I am talking about olden times. In recent times, neo-Buddhists definitely may have converted due to the caste system. I have read something about that earlier. See Dr. Ambedkar.

I can go into great detail on the back and forth between Hinduism and Buddhism, mostly surviving as dueling literature for centuries. I would prefer you just look it up though.

I would prefer you to understand that, in the absence of any objective measure, my sources are as good as yours, or, equivalently, yours are as bad as mine. But, based on what you wrote above, I doubt you can (understand).

Your above point itself proves what I said: "dueling literature"! Heh.

What does "doesn't" mean? Would I, random Dutch person of christianity or no religion as you will, be treated equal to the highest of castes or to an average one for example?

You’re a foreigner/outsider. You’re not part of the caste system. Brahmins are technically not even permitted to leave India. But if you’re white you would probably be treated very well, just wouldn’t be considered a part of society.

That’s a severe bit of historical revisionism from Europeans who tried to analogize it to the Protestant reformation. If anything Buddhists were probably more concertedly discriminatory towards lower castes and Hindu Brahmins were more likely to be socially reformist.

Groups like the Veerashaivas were concertedly anti-caste discrimination but the Buddhists were decidedly not. They’d be more like a Kshatriya revolt against Brahmins but that’s just upper-caste infighting, not anti-caste. Similarly with Muslim and Christian converts, the first ones were predominantly, if not almost entirely, Brahmin.

You’re right that it was more of a kshatriya revolt against the Brahmins but the Buddhists welcomed all castes, even the shudras. They did discriminate against anyone that wasn’t a part of the caste hierarchy- dalits.

> Buddhism came about primarily as a response to Hindu orthodoxy and the caste system.

This is a modern myth, that has been proven to be grossly untrue, time and again.

Buddhism was a mostly upper caste phenomenon.

Caste exists in christian and muslims demoninations in India too, just google muslim caste system (ashrafs at the top). it exists in pakistan and most of south asia. nothing really to do with hindus as per say.

I've heard people mention this, but as someone born in Karachi who moved to US as a toddler, I can confidently say I've only ever seen Muslim caste systems mentioned on places like Reddit and HN discussions about caste. It's never come up in visits to Pakistan or when hanging out with Pakistani friends in CA, TX, NJ, NY, or WA.

That's not to say this interfaith caste constructs don't exist, but I've never heard an in-person mention of them in all my life. I'm genuinely curious how widespread they actually are. Were they something that had more weight back in the 16th century, maybe? Conversely, I have heard Indian friends discuss caste discrimination in places like Microsoft.

This is ground reality in India today.

https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/reaching-out-to-pasma...

https://frontline.thehindu.com/books/caste-amp-muslims/artic...

https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/a-picture-of-islam-th...

Despite its name, the newspaper I have linked to has long been a left and liberal leaning one and is a bullwark against the current right-wing government and temperament spreading through the country.

Is this something more prevalent in India than Pakistan? It makes sense that there'd be more cultural crossovers in India given the demographics.

You wouldn’t have seen it because that kind of behavior in Pakistan is reserved for Ahmedis.

This is where the secondary meaning of caste plays a role, which would be just your last name. A caste is your lineage.

In Indian history, certain groups/clans/families were associated with certain jobs. How close those jobs were to the throne or to the Mandir determined your 'rank'.

Fun fact, this is why the last name Singh exists, as a rejection of that system.

Think of caste system as a set of prejudices about a certain group and it is easy to see how one gets treated. The answer is complex and simple at the same time.

The question you need to ask yourself is "Does this person come from a background that makes sense to my own principles?"

So the answer to the question depends both on the person asking the question and he subject of that question.

Note: You also need to differentiate between "external" world and "private affairs". Most castes in India dont give much shit about caste when it comes to doing business, hiring, casual friendship, offering/accepting services etc. but care about it deeply when it comes to sharing food/getting married/dating/renting private spaces etc.

They were all called Mlecchas - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mleccha

It should be obvious that the above is merely a historical note nowadays and is no longer valid.

How feasible is to change one's last name. Or are there other characteristics others can detect like accents, facial features, etc?

The Prime Minister of India is an OBC and he got there through lifelong membership in the RSS a supposedly brahminical org. His competence as a politician and leader is unquestioned.

The President of India is a Tribal, which can roughly equate to the status of indigenous people the world over. Her speeches are legendary, especially the one where she presented the inequities of the Indian judicial system to the judges of the supreme court.

Meanwhile the darling of the left world over is the heir apparent of the opposition party, Rahul Gandhi, who is half brahmin-half Italian Catholic, but has no chance at the premiership.

What does one make of this?

> What does one make of this?

From what you have written, honestly, your political biases.

Facts are often problematic when they don't comport with your reality.

Care to rebut the facts instead of resorting to ad hominem attacks?

As a fellow OBC, I am not sure I like the idea of reclaiming caste.

The author wrote his post from an inspiring standpoint, so my comment does not come from a place of criticism. His achievement is worth celebrating on its own grounds.

____

It's been 6 years for me in the US, and no one has asked me my caste. Even in India, the only time someone could have inferred my caste, was when someone indirectly asked my university JEE (SAT) scores in my first few weeks of freshman year. My scores were as high as 'general' (upper class) candidates, so they'd quickly assess me as 'one who deserves his spot here'. Still, I was pretty transparent about my caste status. Afterall, I was one of the lucky few who'd never been discriminated on caste. Hell, I didn't know I belonged to the umbrella term 'OBC' until I started filling out application forms for universities.

Their inquiry, it was less so malice, and more so a sense of unfairness about a system that was supposed to be strictly meritocratic. But a few weeks side-by-side in a dorm made everyone intimately aware of the poverty of the lowest class. Soon, no one would dare think that the barely-English-conversant SC/ST, who came from a town without running water, was on the same level playing field as them. There were admittedly a few grifters and abusers of this system. All castes were equally bewildered by that group.

The Indian-American diaspora in the US remains untarnished by caste (Can't comment on Canada). I make this as both of statement of faith, anecdotal personal experience and a statically aligned truth seeker. OBC is an artificially created term from less than 100 years ago. The communities have nothing in common, except a tag of underdevelopment forced onto us.

The vast vast majority of Indians in the US are upper caste and the vast majority of tall NBA players had access to protein growing up. SC/ST communities and many poor OBC communities are backwards because their problems begin at nutrition, K-12 schooling and cultural emphasis on lower-income professions. By the time you make it to freshman year of college, you have mostly risen past the burden of your caste. This also means, that trying to increase visibility of the community at the highest levels, does diddly-squat for those grappling with crippling poverty and the worst of caste discrimination.

Leaving outrage-driving topics like IQ, discrimination and generational trauma aside for a minute, vast statistical gaps within communities can still manifest due to emergent properties of systems converging to their nearest stable state.

Caste discrimination is terrible in lower-class India. People actively try to move beyond Caste in middle class India. Caste is unheard of in upper class India. And the upper-most caste of operates at the family level, deeming everyone from their own caste and otherwise to be similarly 'pedestrian'. American immigration policy ensures that only middle and upper class Indian can move to the US. This means that every Indian who arrives in the US, is preconditioned to want to move past caste.

This is one of the few good replies here, thanks for writing it out.

Actually a pretty sane and reasonable comment. Why is this not upvoted enough ?

You might find the Carnegie Endowment article on Indian-Americans in my comment here useful - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37333418

A lot of countries still have caste discrimination problems, not just India. Even in racially homogenous places like Japan, people still figure out how to discriminate each other (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burakumin).

How do hookup/dating/wedding apps work in India? What sort of granularity about caste is disclosed? What is expected? What precision of caste classification can be inferred from name/occupation/hobbies/location/appearance?

Has someone built a NN classifier for caste? Could such a thing be built?

Someone could claim to build something like that, but it's going to be designed with the biases of the creator.

What is your goal of building something like this?

The popular site matrimony.com has sub-sites for each caste. See the listing at: https://www.communitymatrimony.com/homepages/community/morel.... Many of these are based on caste.

This kind of data is good to have. The post is admirably restrained for such a sensitive topic. But I would urge the original poster to reconsider the wording they used in the RTI query for the IITs. The query says "category of reservation", which is different from caste. People of all castes are allowed to apply in the "general category", while the other categories are "reserved" for their respective castes. The data would be much more reliable if the query said "caste declared by the applicant", and not the category they chose to apply in.

EDIT: s/cast/caste/

This caste problems continue in the US, instead of leaving behind such ridiculous biases it becomes a part of an US company…

https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/googles-caste-bias-pr...

Since this is about Google, where I worked:

> The Google spokesperson said that caste discrimination has “no place in our workplace and it’s prohibited in our policies.”

I can testify that Ads was very heavily Indian, much more than the general employee percentages would predict. I don't know if it still is. Sridhar Ramaswamy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sridhar_Ramaswamy) probably had something to do with that. From informal observation, IIT was a very common alma mater for them.

Yet, within the SmartASS team in Ads, a huge percentage of the engineers were Canadian. I worked in the office right next door to them for a while.

What does this tell you? People tend to refer their friends and give good recommendations to people they know. A Canadian is more likely to know other Canadians. So is that "discrimination?"

I wonder how that sits with the diversity and inclusion directives that are everywhere now. Maybe they turn a blind eye when it suits them, or use other teams to offset the difference.

idk, but there's always a question of how big a unit you look at when computing ethnic percentages. Does a group of 10 have to have 5 women, 3 POC's, and one LGBT? Or can you measure DEI only for very large groups, like the whole company?

Probably for the government, it's the entire company, or maybe each large strata of it.

For a team of 10 I absolutely agree that you're probably not going to get that fine-grained, and you'll probably look at larger groups of 100 or more.

But it still can be useful to spot-check smaller teams. If that team of 10 is, say, 100% male, or 100% Chinese, maybe that's something that deserves a second look. Not with guns-blazing, "you all are obviously sexist/racist", but... a second look, nonetheless.

What if it was 100% women, or 100% Black?

What if they were 100% Gelgameks? It's a nonsense question because at any large tech co, there aren't any engineering teams that are 100% women or Black. I don't believe that's a reflection the skills of race or gender lacking, just that there aren't any tech co execs that would feel comfortable with that due to their own bias and overall corporate culture..

> What if they were 100% Gelgameks?

that's the nonsense question. This isn't 100%, but there were Google managers who prided themselves on having very disproportionately large numbers of black or female employees. SRE groups, especially.

In addition, there are plenty of teams that are almost all Chinese. Or Indian. Or, of course, white male.

From what I've seen from the outside, it looks like US companies focus on what they view as "non-core" departments to reach their overall diversity goals. So, for example, in a software company, the coders might largely be of one or two ethnicities, and then the company's diversity goals are met by hiring diverse candidates in, say, HR, legal, payroll, etc.

It's at least a lack of diversity processes, metrics, and benchmarks, which leads to discriminatory outcomes. Or in other words, someone should've said, "hey, this team is X% Indian, maybe branch out a little". It's the exact same dynamic that leads to heavily white/male teams, "hey I made all my friends at institutions that didn't at all strive for diversity... and that's where I hire from... hmm."

How is your argument relevant when there were 20 complaints from actual Googlers about caste discrimination? Unless you are actually Indian and aware of the castes you wouldn't have any idea whether caste discrimination was happening to your colleagues.

Did I say there was?

> So is that "discrimination?"

Yes, absolutely. It may be passive and unconscious, but it's still discrimination. I bet a lot of more-than-qualified candidates -- many likely even more qualified than the people who ended up getting hired -- were rejected.

Unless you're going to assert that Indian people are uniquely the most qualified and best at building advertising systems (which I hope we can agree would be an absurd assertion to make), it's a near certainty that better candidates were passed over.

And looking at it from the potential candidate perspective, I personally wouldn't want to work on a team that is heavily over-represented by any one race (even my own), and I wouldn't be surprised if that "scared away" some great candidates (of other races) for positions as well. This is no different than the archetypal example of a woman engineer being uncomfortable joining a team full of men.

> People tend to refer their friends and give good recommendations to people they know.

I've come to believe that referrals are great when you're a tiny startup trying to find people whose work you can trust (since dead weight can be fatal to a new company), but become less and less useful -- and sometimes even counterproductive -- as a company grows in size.

At any rate, at any non-tiny company, any referral should be put through the same interview process as the other candidates, and should be judged based on the interview, not on the referrer's opinion. The referrer should not even be a part of the interview process, anyway. Not just when it comes to their referral, but (if possible), they shouldn't be a part of the other candidates' interview panels either, as they may be (at best) unconsciously biased against the others.

> A Canadian is more likely to know other Canadians.

Canadians aren't a racial group (and a Canadian may be white, black, native, Asian, Indian, whatever), so I don't think this particular example has anything to do with the rest of what you're talking about. If that team mostly or exclusively comprised white Canadians (or Canadians of any other single race), then yeah, maybe there's an issue there. And regardless, a team comprised of the same $X -- where $X is pretty much anything -- should be a red flag. To me, that's a sign that the team may be cliquish and discriminate (even unconsciously) against anyone who might join the team but be an "outsider" from the perspective of $X.

> Canadians aren't a racial group (and a Canadian may be white, black, native, Asian, Indian, whatever), so I don't think this particular example has anything to do with the rest of what you're talking about.

They're not, but it has absolutely everything to do with it. As you agreed (I think): People tend to refer their friends. Canadians often went to the same schools (Waterloo, McGill, UBC) and if you asked one about another one, quite possibly they'd know someone who knew him or her.

If I ended up on a team that was mostly canadian I would assume that the team was originally built in an office in canada.

AFAIK it was not.

It is discrimination depending on why they were recommended. That's the hard part of stopping discrimination, it's never found until it's obvious

> depending on why they were recommended

so if the "why" is "I worked with this person" that's bad? Or not?

> Caste problems continue in the US

The thread is filled with white progressives who know nothing about caste. There are what 2 cases of caste discrimination in US companies. In one of the cases (the famous Cisco) case was proven there was no discrimination.

The professor who wrote this blog is literally a Jatt. A land owning caste & one of the most powerful castes in India. Any Indian reading this blog will know this is BS. I would understand if the author was at least Dalit or ST.

It sounds like you know something about this topic, but the way you've been posting about it is too inflammatory and flamebaity. Putting other people down for being ignorant isn't helpful; neither is calling names.

If you know more than others, that's great, but then the thing to do is to share some of what you know so the rest of us can learn.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

Cisco has also had problems with caste discrimination in the recent past.

I interned there one summer about 10 yrs ago and i already noticed back then that some departments were composed either entirely of indians or chinese employees.

The Cisco case was dismissed as false recently. The person was found not guilty of any caste based discrimination. Caste issue in America is mostly made up. Indians who have money to go from India to US don't care about castes in the first place

Cisco did not have any problems, it was Equality Labs which brainwashed an employee to file a lawsuite against his manager (who happened to be Christian). Not only the lawsuite has been dropped the last time I checked the victim (the manager accused of discrimination) is countersueing.

Equality Labs is behind these sort of plans and propaganda.

Since I worked at Google I can clarify.

There are far too many caste grifters in USA pushing an "agenda". Equality Labs for example is an Islamic Organization with a Christian Thenmouzi as its face who talks about "caste" but in reality is she is born to very rich doctor parents in central California. Most of these claims and propaganda is not just bogus but outright harmful for the very people they pretend to fight for.

How is it Islamic?

Equality Labs was initially setup by a Bangladeshi Muslim to fight "Islamophobia" and to target Hindus in general. Thenmozi joined it much later and became "co-founder". They shared stage with known wanted Khalistani terrorists and such.

The "Islamists" tag made it harder for this organization to get any traction with politicians and corporate world. Everyone would look at them suspiciously so they quietly dropped all the muslim names from their site and removed most references to Islamophobia.

This video provides some evidence - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-1G__iOqmQ

i can only speak from my experiences, but this topic is not completely represented in the writing.

first and foremost, discrimination in India still exists in some form to this day. however, it is not dominated or restricted by which family tree you are born into. as more people have (socio-economic and otherwise) mobility than ever, living in another region can sometimes feel like being an alien in your own country. despite that, i am proud of how far we've come along and (mostly) kept it together.

i am not sure if we have a golden standard about correcting historical mistakes as a society. but what we are doing about this in practice does not seem like much either.

among almost every aspirant starting their careers, you will hear about "reservation". while corporations elsewhere might have it as ensuring participation of all genders in their executive boards, it goes much deeper in India.

what i disagree with it is the "equal opportunity" bit. instead of focusing on increasing accessibility to a better life for all, politically it has been weaponized to rather gatekeep who gets a better shot at what is there. although very different circumstances, it rings home to how it has been with the recent representation movement (hoping it does not step on too many nerves).

after many generations under this approach, there is now a new reason for resentment between different parts of society.

Have you considered expanding this research to other fields or perhaps collaborating with sociologists to further study this systemic issue?

I find it odd that op thinks that his caste is discriminated against and also want to perpetuate this system by asking people from this group to reach out to him for help. This would just lead to replacing one group by another assuming this forms a positive feedback loop. So unknowingly op is as much a part of castist group as others. quite strange what do you guys think?

Who cares? Why don't you ask how many professors in the Ivy League grew up in Appalachia?

Lots of people are interested in such questions.

Logic would dictate that OBCs would be a superset of SCs. And in his RTI requests you indeed see several SC professors in these departments. So why did he exclude SCs? I guess it doesn't make for as big a click-baity headline then?

I work on a regular basis with the author, and we have discussed caste before. I guess the most I can add to the story is that he is very supportive of all those who have not been given the chance, for whatever reason, to excel. For example he is a staunch supporter of women's rights (just check out his track record of both hiring and retaining female talent as PhD/PostDoc), and speaks up regularly for those who are oppressed.

I like that he used Freedom of Information regulation to get information on discrimination. This reminds me of an old friend who did the same here in Germany, about West vs East-Germany born heads of universities. The ratio is way-way worse than you might imagine. It's not the same level of oppression as in India, but those who think this issue is far from Europe need not look further than the heart of the EU itself.

I am willing to bet the author can walk into any IIT as a professor.

I’m the descendant of Indian immigrants, but is someone who grew up in North America, speaks English as my first language, and is very westernized—I wouldn’t even consider myself Indian to any respect, except for my heritage.

I’ve never experienced caste discrimination (through I think I come from a high caste). But, I recognize that my experience is likely different, and probably slanted by my caste status in comparison to recent Indian immigrants.

I was wondering if any other Indian diaspora or Indian immigrants to North America could chime in with what they’ve experienced: have you faced any caste discrimination?

I'd reply to you but my caste only talks to DisplayPort, USB-C, or higher. HDMI cable, pfft...

It's a joke, people, based on our friend's username.

You might find the link to a study done by Carnegie Endowment on Indian-Americans here useful - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37333418

Any guesses why author begins by using the word caste, then uses the word category for a major part, and finally ends with the word caste?

self inflicted wound that became a blog post. Stop playing Victim card.

Modi PM of India is an OBC, so is the CM of UP.

Ajay Bisht/Yogi Adityanath is Thakur/Pahari Rajput

yeah, I felt the same

I had a student in my class who wrote about being from a "low caste" background. So when a friend hosted a woman from India on her podcast who said there was so caste discrimination in India I spoke up about this. The podcast guest said that the fact that anyone in the west mentioned caste discrimination, even within western tech companies, was an act of racism against Indian culture and reflected colonial judgements. My friend, who is very, very woke, agreed. I was so annoyed. Thank you for bringing this up. Such discrimination has no place!

That person should be banned from ever invoking "intersectionality" again. They've failed one of its most basic tests.

ha this matches my observation

I think at this point we could just double down and say “I’m fighting colonialism, on the side of the colonizers”

Just throw the meme back, and still stamp out caste discrimination

“hey some cultural genocide is worth it” first, the reaction would be funny af, especially if all the “OBC’s” get the joke

I would've been in the same camp of denying it and treating it as just a thing westerners exaggerate and to an extent that is the case. But at the same time caste discrimination is still very much a thing.

The way I've seen people in the west envision it is that everyone is keenly aware of their caste, where they are in society and what they're "allowed" to do. But it isn't that blatant to me, so I felt impressions of caste discrimination were overblown. I was raised to be caste-blind (literally wasn't taught the differences to be able to even subconsciously be biased) so I projected that upon everyone.

However as I've interacted with other Indians, I have noticed that our conversations tend to be very different. I don't really care about where they're from, barely care about their name beyond how to refer to them etc, mostly interested in what they do professionally and what they're interested in while their questions tend to focus on where I'm from and what my family history is.

My understanding is that my caste is fairly mundane so I haven't really noticed any discrimination towards myself, but I think I've atleast noticed that many people have a lot of interest in identifying the caste at least, which can obviously lead to discrimination pretty easily.

To be woke is to be against colorblind treatment and to be for discrimination

Really? How so?

I think originally woke was shorthand for anti-racist (I don’t mind being corrected on this since I am not American). Unfortunately the term did not reach the UK in good enough time to be properly encoded in our Oxford English Dictionary and as a result the usage has gone rampant become diffuse! The meaning now seems to be converging on "I don’t agree with .".

Generally western laws would view caste-based discrimination as illegal and wrong. So, it would correct for an individual to express the same opinion in the West, even if that opinion disturbs the ideas and beliefs of a subset of the population attached to someone else’s culture.

You're right on target there. The term is basically meaningless now, after the reactionary right in the US started using "woke" as a scare word for "anything anyone vaguely liberal does that we can pretend is an extremist conspiracy", after attempts to use "cultural Marxism" fell flat.

That's silly. Obviously all cultures have their own issues, and I'd say it's actually rather patronizing to pretend that non-Western cultures don't have their own dynamics of bias and discrimination.

Having said that, as a cultural Westerner, I'd be very loathe to speak much on the topic of the Indian caste system, as while it's clearly a real thing, and I believe those Indians in America who say it is, I'm certain I lack enough context and background to talk about it without it ending up being an exercise in projecting my own culture's dynamics onto theirs. It's the kind of conversation I think I probably need to do far more listening that talking in.

> > I had a student in my class who wrote about being from a "low caste" background.

> as a cultural Westerner, I'd be very loathe to speak much on the topic of the Indian caste system, as [...] I'm certain I lack enough context and background to talk about it without it ending up being an exercise in projecting my own culture's dynamics onto theirs. It's the kind of conversation I think I probably need to do far more listening that talking in.

Depending on the length and depth of that student's essay, the person you're responding to may have done enough listening to at least raise the topic and hear an honest opinion rather than being shut down as colonialist prejudist for merely asking the question

At least, that's how it's written. Maybe they said a lot more, it's not like I was there, but I'm just going by the version that we can read here

Phew, what a post.

I am at University of Toronto right now. I have only been here for some months but I have seen enough things to get a sense of the "politics" of the place. Also, I've been in many of the world's top universities (Caltech, Cornell, KAUST, Oxford, Stanford, UNAM, and some others with less pompous names); either studying, visiting, working, w/e. I've been doing this for close to 20 years now. I know a lot about what academia is and how it works behind the scenes.

With that said ... University of Toronto is, by far, the most amicable, egalitarian and open academic environment I've ever had the chance to be in. I have several Indian friends I've made during my stay, and not a single time has the issue of caste come up to relevance. Caste doesn't have anything to do, at all, with how this particular University chooses their faculty members.

I know OP is not directly (or is he?) accusing UofT of taking part on this, but someone reading this could easily get that impression since 1) he's using his academic page to publish this "opinion" and 2) he states:

>I had begun to mention references to my caste in Facebook/Twitter threads in the past two years. I was, however, not ready to publicly declare it until <I received tenure (in bold letters)> as it seemed too risky.

So, to all other readers, I can assure you that caste had absolutely nothing to do with OPs election/non-election as a faculty member and I really wanted to set the record straight on what actually is a really nice place that treats all of its members with dignity and respect.

> I have several Indian friends I've made during my stay here, and not a single time has the issue of caste has come up to be discussed.

I'm guessing it's not discussed at great length and not discussed with non-Indian people at all unless you brimg it up.

If you're trying to hint at some "it happens all the time, it's just hidden from public view", it doesn't.

Non-Indians literally don't care, and very (very) few Indians actually do (at least in Canada).

> If you're trying to hint at some "it happens all the time, it's just hidden from public view", it doesn't.

> Non-Indians literally don't care

These are contradicting statements. We know non-Indians don't care ... because most of us don't even know about it, at least in any capacity to have a strong opinion. Maybe non-Indians "literally" not caring is why "it's just hidden from public view"

By "don't care", I didn't mean "they know but don't care"; I meant "non-Indians are completely oblivious of this".

You cannot accuse of someone behaving in a discriminatory way if those very concepts of discrimination don't even exist in their mind. Come on.

You are entirely missing my point. What I'm saying is the concept of caste discrimination doesn't exist in the minds of the vast majority of Westerners. Which would enable the exact scenario you pose:

> If you're trying to hint at some "it happens all the time, it's just hidden from public view", it doesn't.

How would anyone outside the caste system be aware of it occurring? And why would people benefiting from their caste talk about it?

If you live in Canada, you most likely have known some Indians and the caste system. It’s just we don’t care? It’s not a taboo topic of discussion either.

Obviously a much different topic if the caste system prevails itself within Indian communities itself. Unfortunately I can’t comment much on it, but I’ve heard that’s not extremely uncommon among recent immigrants.

No, I just don't think your statement supports your argument, because its a topic that might not be discussed in front of you.

I think the article is implying that the discrimination is by other Indians, non Indians don't care, thats assumed.

The regional differences (Gujaratis vs Punjabis vs Telegus) are more pronounced than any caste based differences that I have come across.

As a non-Indian in Canada, I think it's pretty hard not to notice when one department is full of people named Jain, just like the department head. While I wouldn't expect to notice in less obvious cases, I care, and it sure seems like that department head cares.

The issue is not with the non-Indians, at least not directly. And with the Indians, it's that a few do, have moved to positions of responsibility, and can influence opinion enough to make life difficult (at least that is my external view).

Google and Cisco's issues last year [1] [2] made a lot of folks aware that something was inside a lot of big tech because of all the H1B's, foreign hiring, outsourcing, ect... The behavior was being brought over from India and then existing in the corporate ladder. (avoiding the word "hide")

It's also subtle. It's not, "you're dalit, act like a dalit." It's leaving you out of meetings, getting assignments that don't matter, not listening when you talk. It's a bit like a dance. They don't sneer at you, they don't act openly racist, they just don't dance with you. "why are you touching me?"

[1] https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/googles-caste-bias-pr...

[2] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/big-techs-big-pro...

Curious what issues you are referring to with those 2 companies (be specific please)? I'm not sure if you know but the Cisco case was thrown out recently because there was zero evidence, in fact the alleged perpetrator of the discrimination had hired another Dalit (so called "lower" caste) into the same position. I'm not making this up, it's all public information.

As for Google, all I see is that they (rightfully) withdrew an invitation to a speaker who has made a bunch of troubling bigoted statements bashing Hindus as a whole. Again all this is public information you can look it up.

Can you please cite just one genuinely valid case of caste discrimination in the USA that has stood up to even cursory scrutiny?

Based on your comment of "Indian friends" never bringing it up, do you know what caste they were born into? I mean maybe they never bring it up because it wasn't a problem for their station by birth?

You didn't get the point of my comment.

"Caste" is meaningless here.

Edit: @cududa's comment was something like "care to share what caste you were born into?" to which I replied what you see here and then he altered his comment substantially. Sneaky.

Sorry, I reread the comment and realized the author wasn't from India, so I updated my comment. Should have deleted the original and posted a new comment

The updated post makes sense - you say caste has nothing to do with anything but you may not be in a position to judge.

Especially if all your Indian friends are of the same caste, even if that’s accidentally so.

Pardon for reaching for personal traits, but it seems relevant in this case. You have a name of Hispanic origin. That gives me the impression that you are not the target audience of this article, or someone that would be likely to notice these very subtle biases that exist in a different culture.

Can you think of any very subtle racism/bias that exists in your culture, which foreigners may not be able to pick up on without extreme command of the culture + language? I sure can.

Not saying anything about UoT one way or another, just to take what people say seriously unless you have reason to doubt them. This isn't outrage on behalf of someone else, this is someone living the experience and telling their story.

>Pardon for reaching for personal traits, but it seems relevant in this case. You have a name of Hispanic origin.

Don't worry about that, I do well wherever I go.

That aside, I never wrote anything to discredit OPs personal story.

I just don't want readers to get the wrong impression from UofT.

I am faculty at University of Toronto. As part of the process of considering someone for tenure here, the university solicits six appraisals from relevant experts at other institutions. The candidate will not know who the referees are. Generally, the appraisals are positive; a negative appraisal may severely affect someone's tenure case.

I don't see the concern in this post as one of widespread caste discrimination at University of Toronto, but more that he's worried that a single prejudiced person might upset this, either an external referee, or someone internal involved in the decision-making process. In fact, that is exactly what he says.

https://www.aapm.utoronto.ca/academic-administrative-procedu...

Everyone carries some cultural/personal baggage, if that affects the outcome of some otherwise fair procedure it's a sad story but it's not the procedure's fault.

>the university solicits six appraisals from relevant experts at other institutions

If you think this could be improved, well, show us how.

It seems like you may be reading some things into my comment that I didn't write? I made no claims about the procedure being fair or unfair—I'm just describing what it is.

>Everyone carries some cultural/personal baggage, if that affects the outcome of some otherwise fair procedure it's a sad story but it's not the procedure's fault.

This is a neutral statement, though.

> So, to readers here, I can assure you that caste had absolutely nothing to do with OPs election/non-election as a faculty member

That's a strong claim to make for someone who was not at all involved in the process.

Quite a shallow argument.

For starters, the guy did get his tenure, which implies that caste did not have a negative impact in the decision.

You're right, yours is a very shallow argument.

Unless you can reveal anything about the inner workings of the tenure board, you are taking your impression of a broad organisation and applying it to a specific department, a management structure and a board for which you are ignorant.

Please don't make sweeping generalisations and minimise the position of the author unless you have actual knowledge that might let you walk in his shoes.

If we are being pedantic, the burden of proof does not lie on me.

I didn't publish AND promote a blog post where I feared not getting my current job because of some social dynamic that happens to exist 12,500km from where I am right now.

You should ask OP to provide evidence of caste discrimination in Canada, at this particular University.

You:

> I can assure you that caste had absolutely nothing to do with OPs election/non-election

Also you:

> the burden of proof does not lie on me

You made very strong claims in your opening post. Asking you to provide some proof to support those claims is perfectly valid.

Read.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden_of_proof_(law)

>In a legal dispute, one party has the burden of proof to show that they are correct, while the other party has no such burden and is presumed to be correct.

>(emphasis) while the other party has no such burden and is presumed to be correct

>The burden of proof is usually on the person who brings a claim in a dispute.

In case it's not clear, I'm not OP, I did not write TFA.

But you are also making your own claim, by asserting with absolute confidence that caste-based discrimination doesn't exist. If you were just questioning the reasoning of the author, then sure, the burden of proof would be with them.

Also, this is not a courtroom.

>(emphasis) while the other party has no such burden and is presumed to be correct

Posting this sentence for the third time. I am on the "presumably correct" side.

>Also, this is not a courtroom.

Why is that important?

You completely missed my point. You aren't "the other party" once you start making claims of your own.

"I can assure you that caste had absolutely nothing to do with OPs election..."

If your argument was just "there's not enough evidence to conclude that..." then I would agree with you.

> Why is that important?

Because you're trying to apply a convention from the context of legal disputes to something that isn't a legal dispute. Do you also ask HN commenters to go through a discovery process?

There's a lot to say but it can be summarized as: you cannot appeal to, and simultaneously ignore, the burden of proof.

Following your really weird strawman, if we are not in a courtroom, why is it important? X2

Make up your mind, man.

I have followed this topic for some time out of curiosity. Every time I read an article I am left with the following impression: in America, caste issues are not explicitly mentioned to non-Indians, no matter how close their co-workers or friends are.

Depends on the region too. Part of my family is from a landowning/feudal caste (Chaudhary/Jatt and Pahari) that is traditionally Upper Caste but successfully lobbied to become counted as OBC/Lower Caste in order to avail affirmative action benefits.

The Jatts side got reservation thanks to Congress [0] and the Pahari side got reservation thanks to the BJP [1]

Edit: Lmfao this professor (Kuldeep Meel) is Jatt from Hisar/Jhunjunu side. Jatt is not lower caste. Ask my extremely casteist Jatt grandfather who uses Dalit caste names like Chamar, Gujjar, Kanjar, or Balmik as slurs. We became OBC because we burned shit down. The people who actually deserve some form of Affirmative Action didn't get any.

[0] - https://indianexpress.com/article/political-pulse/haryana-kh...

[1] - https://theprint.in/opinion/security-code/reservations-for-k...

It's happened almost everywhere in India.

The only states I know that have been immune to this shit are Kerala and Himachal Pradesh because the leadership in both states forced land reform very early in their existence, which meant all rural people were essentially equal economically.

If he is so well off, I wonder if he would have even qualified for OBC considering the creamy layer income limits. I wonder if he got a fake income certificate to get himself below the limits to avail OBC reservations.

The same thing is happening with my caste Maratha in MH. Although in their defense they are a very large group.

Honestly I think this is majorly overblown. Having lived in both India and the US and being in my late 30s, I’ve never seen caste come up in any conversation even once. That’s tens of thousands of Indian people at the very least. Feels like this person is hyper aware of his caste and seems to take steps bordering on paranoia.

There we have it. It's a non issue so let's move on folks.

Works on my computer!

The unfortunate side effect of being subjected to this sort of insanity from a young age. That conditioning is very hard to shake off.

Just because you haven't seen it doesn't mean it doesn't happen...

Just curious, what caste were you born into?

The author says that:

1. OBCs are estimated to comprise 40-45% of India's population

and

2. Exactly one out of 180 CS faculty members across five IITs belongs to OBC category

Those two facts alone make it sound like a pretty big deal to me, even if it hasn't been a part of your experience in India. Or do you think he is wrong about those numbers?

Historically and culturally the higher castes are more educationally oriented so it wouldn’t be surprising. The caste system is rapidly breaking down but only for about the last generation. I presume it’s going to take time for representation within college professors being one of the most erudite fields. On the other hand, there is tremendous representation within the government, judges, police, teachers, civil servants, engineers etc. Modi the PM is an OBC, the president is also OBC. A very large number of politicians are from lower castes.

The numbers could be right, but you couldn’t exactly argue discrimination tbh.

27% seats are reserved for OBC students in IITs

There is a similar quota for people in OBC categories in govt jobs (which IIT professors are). Maybe there are plenty of OBC professors, but not in CS? Or that they don’t openly identify as OBC? Or maybe, people just don’t qualify/apply to the position?

Lol and why don’t they qualify?

Because of centuries of discrimination that has kept them poorer and less educated.

You might be able to argue that there is no discrimination today and that the hiring process itself is not discriminatory, but the outcomes are entirely the result of discrimination in society.

This discussion made me curious, how is the cause of their poverty and lack of opportunity relevant? There are hundreds of millions of underprivileged people in India, why should those from a lower caste be given precedence over others, even if there is a history of oppression behind their poverty?

But that is exactly what exists. You could be born in a “lower caste” but a wealthy family, you’d have a preferential treatment over someone who is poor but is born in a “higher caste”.

So there's basically three views on social welfare. The far right doesn't want it to exist at all, or if it must exist it should be funneled towards the already powerful, because nobody deserves it. The left says that we need to distribute social welfare in order to equalize society, because everyone deserves a good life. The liberals, in between the two, view welfare as a means to make up for societal failures or outright wrongs. It's not about the fact that these people are needy, it's about the fact that they're needy and it's our fault.

Race/caste/etc based welfare distribution comes from that last model.

You’re presuming Anglo political dynamics and cleavages onto a completely foreign culture here. The Indian right wing I wouldn’t characterize as “anti-welfare” at all.

> Because of centuries of discrimination that has kept them poorer and less educated

No one is denying this. But there has been a reservation of seats for SC and ST categories for about 80 years and for OBC category for 40+ years in education. The reservation in govt job openings exists since the 80s. How can you reasonably argue that the outcomes are entirely the result of discrimination in society?

Caste is absolutely a huge problem in India as these numbers show. It’s a different question whether it’s a problem in Western companies, especially outside India, and I’m not sure about the data for that.

That being said, even this statistic shows that we should be wary of mapping our understanding of other kinds of discrimination onto caste without being very careful.

In an idealized version of the caste system (which you will see some bigots use to defend it but in the real world the idealized version is nowhere to be seen), it’s literally impossible for those lower caste numbers to be anything other than 0%, because in the idealized version your caste is defined by your profession, so being a professor means you’re not any of those castes.

I think the case is highlighted pretty well, clearly the representation is less because of continued/historical lack of access.

Seems to be something that should addressed asap because this is clearly holding the Indian economy and social progress back, efficient use of labor and capital is key, seems to me this is an obvious hindrance.

The bit about names is interesting, seems like something that has a hold on society and people go out of their way to conform to it. Like it is subliminal, not externally evident like race so it should be theoretically an easier problem to solve, I wonder if education and economic progress can resolve this, ironic as it is.

Can you think of a ethno-religious group, one that has been persecuted for centuries, that is over represented in US academia, media and finance?

Is it a big deal that this is the case and does it imply a grand conspiracy? Or are there other explanations?

When you’re getting f’d over, it never “comes up in conversation.”

There are two sides to the story. Yes caste does come up in India in daily life, the more rural you go, the more important it becomes. That being said, there is also an element of obsession with caste in people who are well removed from the discrimination because they’re doing well socio economically. Sometimes people feel discriminated against because generally that’s what you’re told you should expect, but sometimes you over compensate for your insecurities and people just don’t like you for who you are. I’ve had plenty of people from OBC come up to me in the US and ask my caste, and when I don’t engage, they feel almost insulted. Context: I’m not OBC but I’m not up there in the caste ladder either. And I’ve basically completely blocked the whole caste system from my brain.

I wasn't even aware of my caste (ST) until I joined intermediate(equivalent to 11-12 grade). I feel like I'm lucky that I didn't face any sort of caste discrimination. I guess it depends on which part of India you live in.

> An uninitiated might be forgiven for not realizing that caste-based discrimination is rampant in India

Don’t mind all the people from India, outside of India, that will swear up and down that such thing doesn’t exist

I feel like there is a group of people taking advantage of western sensitivities against “being insensitive”, and reappropriating it when convenient to deflect

I’m glad Seattle passed a law against caste discrimination, just this year, since there are so many people from India in the tech industry there it was eventually able to be noticed, but that ends right at Seattle’s city limits and more awareness and uniform regulation is needed

We get a skewed perspective of India’s identity politics because of a lack of representation from different groups in India

This whole idea is completely wrong, in my opinion. You first need to demonstrate why your sampling model/methodology (collection of top50 NA CS departments) will lead to an error-free way to establish a discrimination type mechanism of selection. There is a near absence of people of South east asian origin in the NFL, but I don't think the NFL is doing so on discriminatory grounds. The end result is under-representation, but the underlying mechanism is not one of malicious discrimination by the talent scouts.

The point is, lets discuss evidence of discrimination rather than a weird "this can only be possible with discrimination" argument.

So you're saying the Indian caste system is well partitioned with respect to capability for tenure-producing work across a wide range of disciplines taught in IIT schools?

I'm pointing out elementary flaws in the methodology. As such the article wasn't convincing for me, and this is my feedback.

Elephants do not exist, so there could not possibly be one in this room. Instead, let's self-soothe with talk of flaws in common elephant-detection methodologies, because that will reassure us that the room is elephant-free. Nevermind the pervasive smell of elephant shit.

I don't feel bad in point out flawed arguments or articles. Its up to the author to take the feedback for what it is, or discard it.

Maybe, it is time to think what discriminations are, what caste-discriminations are: https://www.hipkapi.com/2011/03/24/normative-assumptions-dis...

> I was invited by some Sadhus from Swami Narayan Temple (BAPS) to visit the temple and have a discussion with them. Because they practice very strict Brahmacharya (eight types of avoiding women, each correlated to an organ: it is called Ashtanga Brahmacharya), the Sadhus said that women could not be present during our discussions, while they were welcome to visit the temple.

> A few years later, one of my teachers from Belgium visited another wing of the Swami Narayan people and found that ‘women were discriminated against’ because they were allowed only to come some distance from the temple when the Sadhus were present.

> The question here is: why did these people (my students and my teacher) experience ‘discrimination’, where I saw none and also knew that none was intended?

Dropped the article right there. Having a genuine religious belief doesn't automatically excuse discrimination, and I have zero interest in reading more from someone who thinks that it does.

Discriminating in private life and affairs is not just a basic human right but also necessary for the wellbeing of people.

Imagine you are not allowed to pick gender on Tinder. Would that be a good example ?

These are nor discriminations, these are perfectly valid life choices that make our society diverse. The problem is when your boss refuses you promotion or when government decides to have a higher tax rate for you because of your identity.

The article boils down to "discrimination is bad, treating people differently by sex or caste is okay, therefore I don't want to call it discrimination, regardless of whether it is or not".

Any charge of discrimination requires one of making normative moral assumptions: everyone ought to be equal, everyone ought be to be same, etc. Without such moral assumptions, it becomes a mere choice.

Complete bs.

>Caste-based surnames are extremely uncommon in South India (20% of India's population), and it's not even a recent thing.

No, caste-based surnames are uncommon among some upper caste communities. A significant chunk (Gowdas, Reddys, Nairs etc.) have surnames strongly linked to castes. And what you might refer to being a "recent thing" is having a western style surname at all.

>FWIW, as someone who has spent considerable time in Indian academia, this article reeks of BS. No one cares about your caste in Indian academia. The languages you speak, the part of India you come from, etc., cause a bigger divide than caste.

I've also spent time in Indian academia (and left it, for unrelated reasons) and can say that caste matters a lot, in a very insidious way. Respectfully, if you can't tell that Bulsara is a Gujarati surname (which means it could be a Hindu, Parsi or a Muslim surname, so may not even be linked to a caste as is the case with Freddie Mercury), then you may not know enough to comment on caste.

>How exactly did the author find their castes?

Perhaps try reading the article? He has even linked the RTI responses if you doubt him so much.

Did you read the RTI response? There’s no reservation for upper castes, yet the vast majority of faculty in all of the RTI response are upper caste

> I can assure you that the vast majority of upper-caste people here don't use a caste-based surname anymore.

Oh, I don't need assuring for this, this was the point I was making! Basically, some south Indian upper castes use their father's first name as their surname. And this in itself is a strong signifier that the person is from the upper caste!

And yes, some surnames like Bulsara are linked to a place, some are neutral like Kumar, or some are rare enough to not signify caste unless you really know. So what? Even now, a large chunk of the Indian population uses caste-linked surnames, and it is one way they get discriminated. This is the point he makes when he says "Typically, one's surname (last name) is a giveaway".

> RTI responses will only tell you the number of candidates who were hired through caste-based reservation.

No, the RTI responses that he has linked is for the "breakdown of faculty members in the respective category of reservation..." (see the linked pdf for IITD, for example), not if they were hired through caste-based reservation. The category of reservation being information that every Indian citizen is asked to provide in government forms.

This will be my last comment in this chain since this is going nowhere. Patronymics and matronymics are used by some south Indians, who are at the most 20% of the population. The simple point made in the OP is essentially that caste-based surnames are typical in India, and which you have not refuted.

No, you don't have to fill your caste but you are typically expected to tick one of the SC/ST/OBC/General boxes (these being the categories of reservation), and then provide a proof if required. The sentence you quote refers to this, and not on how they were hired, which is what you are saying. RTI queries can absolutely answer things of this kind, please just read the question the OP asks in the linked pdfs.

You might be right (I have no idea), but saying that it is only true 80%+ of the time doesn't make the word "typically" become a "hilariously wrong" claim.

> looking at IITM's CS faculty listing [2], I see at least 20+ faculty without caste-based surnames. How exactly did the author find their castes?

If I count correctly, there are 47 faculty members there. So that leaves potentially 20+ faculty members with caste based surnames. How many can you identify? Are any of them lower castes?

If caste isn't an issue, why is the only response "well, of course you can't tell caste, so there can't be discrimination", not "actually, they are plenty of lower caste people in faculty positions, and they're totally open about it, because it's not a big deal?"

I mean, thanks. This is poster child for the fact that not only is caste discrimination real, but it is full of entrenched people engaging in denial and propaganda to the level of Confederate "black people benefit from being slaves". Like, if anyone needed evidence to support OPs claim, your post is it.

> I was, however, not ready to publicly declare it until I received tenure as it seemed too risky

Risk of what ? Seems a bit exaggerating.

> There are at most five tenure-track faculty who belong to OBC category among all the faculty members in North America's "top" 50 CS departments

> What evidence do I have to support my claim?

And then continues to show castes of faculty at IIT.

Am I missing something here ?

>Risk of what ? Seems a bit exaggerating.

There is a whole paragraph answering this question:

``` An uninitiated might be forgiven for not realizing that caste-based discrimination is rampant in India (yes, even among faculty members at IITs), and perhaps worse among Non-Resident Indians (NRIs). Therefore, there was always fear of what would a potential letter writer or someone on tenure evaluation committee think of me if they knew I belonged to OBC. It was the same fear that stopped me from mentioning anything about my caste in any of DEI statements that I prepared for the job search or tenure: I had to pretend not to know what it feels to be under-represented. ```

>> There are at most five tenure-track faculty who belong to OBC category among all the faculty members in North America's "top" 50 CS departments

The full quote is:

>I think I can summarize the lack of representation with the help of a claim that I believe is true: There are at most five tenure-track faculty who belong to OBC category among all the faculty members in North America's "top" 50 CS departments. Any reasonable process to pick 50 CS departments should suffice. I will, of course, be overjoyed to be corrected.

So, this is a claim they believe is true and would be happy to be corrected. Please go ahead and correct them if you disagree.

>And then continues to show castes of faculty at IIT.

This is literally preceded by

>You might ask: What evidence do I have to support my claim?

So, to lay it out for you:

1) Hypothesis: There is discrimination against OBC in academia

2) Evidence: The near absence of OBC professors in IITs

3) Prediction: This probably affects OBCs outside India as well

I am Indian, from an IIT, and I have seen this kind of knee-jerk dismissal from higher-caste Indians against any claims of discrimination more times than I can count. I do not believe you are making a good-faith argument here.

> So, this is a claim they believe is true and would be happy to be corrected

You don't claim something on based on beliefs. He already has evidence on IIT. Why talk about North America if he doesn't have data to back up it up ?

>You don't claim something on based on beliefs.

What's your evidence for this claim?

Are the Indians in NA somehow fundamentally different? It isn't like we've left the rest of our social/cultural practices and ills behind upon moving to the West. Thus it makes sense that if there's evidence of caste based discrimination at the highest levels of education in India, there is likely such discrimination in Indian communities in the West too.

One important difference is that Indo-Canadians make up about 5% of the Canadian population. It would be surprising if the higher caste subset of that 5% was capable of suppressing access to tenure-track positions across the board. Moreso if it's extended to NA, as the number is ~1.5% in the US. Less if I'm supposed to assume that people from India prefer to work for other Indians, or if Indians are overrepresented in CS academia positions.

I also tend to imagine that those in academia are considerably more likely than the general population to reject racism.

Knowing how those in positions of power can gate keep, yes, those higher caste Indians could easily block tenure. Especially since non-Indians propably cannot really spot the caste based component of those actions.

> Are the Indians in NA somehow fundamentally different?

I am not denying the presence of discrimination in North America. I believe it exists.

I'd like real numbers, but I've come across, a disproportionate number of people in interreligious, inter-ethnicity marriages, and presumably inter-caste marriages, except that I can't really tell one's caste unless they have a caste based lastname, and I know that name is associated with a caste.

I've heard of numerous cases where Indian-Americans didn't know their caste until they were asked about it by people not of Indian origin, who seemed to have the 4 caste + outcastes model in their heads, which barely maps to how caste is understood in modern India.

(Parents came here from India in the 1970's).

This may also differ by generation.

Yes. They are fundamentally different because they are a super minority and hence any kind of discrimination is unlikely to have any measurable impact.

For example imagine people who have tattoo on right hand discriminating against people who have tattoo on their left hand or people who are members of Libertarian party discriminating against members of green party.

If you're from IIT, you must be aware there is clear difference in the performance of those who come on quota(like oBC, SC, ST etc) and those without quota. If you extrapolate the same academic performance throughout the students career, and assuming for the incoming class of 1000 have to select 10 professor on the academic performance, who it's gonna be? The dude who came on quota or the dudes who were off the chart in the tests? Do you suggest we should also appoint professors and give grants based on the caste?

--- So, to lay it out for you:

1) Hypothesis: There is discrimination against OBC in academia

2) Evidence: The near absence of OBC professors in IITs

3) Prediction: This probably affects OBCs outside India as well

---

I hope the author is not a STEM prof, because with that poor grasp of scientific method and statistics he wont be able to do justice to any subject that involves science. But of course I recognize that this is paraphrasing of the author and not author's precise argument.

When you take tiny slices of society where the people need to be in top 0.05% of their field, chances are there wont be uniform distribution of other social aspects in it such as race, caste, language, gender etc. I am not a statistician but this phenomenon is called non-ergodicity. I like to call it `Jew` effect.

> According to a May 1945 roster, Jews made up about two-thirds of the leadership in the Manhattan Project’s Theoretical Division (T-Division) — the group tasked with calculating critical mass and modeling implosions — which is still operating today as the only division with an uninterrupted history since Project Y.

Does this imply that the government was somehow discriminatory because there were not enough black people on the project leadership ? Perhaps project Manhattan needed a DEI department too ?

> 3) Prediction: This probably affects OBCs outside India as well

This is even more nonsensical. Outside India is mostly white and probably cant even spell Caste properly is obsessed with author's dubious OBC identity ? How ? In my experience white people see all of us as brown people. They do no discriminate in their discrimination if at all they do it.

It is even easier to bust this sort of propaganda by finding counter examples. Look at areas where discrimination might cause major harm to the one discriminating.

Good example is politics:

Kamala Harris - who has some Indian blood is actually coming from "high caste" Tamil Brahmin. Vivek Ramaswamy - again belongs to high caste Tamil Brahmin Rep. Ro Khanna - Khatri caste (typically high caste) Rep. Pramila Jaypal (maiden name Menon) belongs to higher caste Nair from Kerala. Rep. Raja Krishnamooorthi - Tamil Brahmin. Nikki Haley (real name Namrata Randhawa) - Jat (Royal/Warrior caste).

Let us look at Trump's appointments of federal judge appointments:

- Amul Thapar - Higher caste/Royal caste. - Jagan Ranjan - Maithili Brahmin - high caste - Raag Singhal - Warrior caste higher caste. - Diane Gujrati - Trader caste - Medium caste (not OBC)

Lets look at other prominent judges in USA

- Moxilla Upadhyay the judge who warned trump - Higher caste Brahmin. - Arun Subramanian - high caste. - Sri Srinivasan - appointed by Obama. is an high caste Iyenger.

Unless both Trump and Obama administrations and their advisors such as Cato, Heritage, Soros etc. are all casteist engaging in a conspiracy to keep OBCs out of courts, it might be the case that Brahmins and Kshatriyas often tend to dominate the top academic fields.

PS Note: I have closely looked at IIT Bombay faculty recruitment for CSE department. The process is extremely rigorous and has far too many people involved. The person need to have impeccable academic record to begin with. We are pretty much talking about people who have consistently been top 0.05% of every damn exam in their life.

> Am I missing something here ?

Yes, I think so. The evidence he's showing demonstrates the claim he made (within a reasonable level of accuracy given the data). The point is that the number of OBC professors is much smaller than you'd expect, ceteris paribus, and one likely explanation is caste discrimination in top-rated North American CS departments.

India will not get anywhere meaningful as long as this institutionalized discrimination persists. "backward", really ? are we in the 21st century ?

Indian English is not the same as American English. As I understand it, "backwards" means "disadvantaged" in this context. Perhaps you should prepone learning about English dialects.

sorry, not American here. "backwards" means the same thing in any other type of English. I will "prepone" it... lol

What exactly is your point then? It's just another word for "disadvantaged", "underprivileged" or "oppressed".

And it just happens to have a more commonly known negative meaning? They could have picked disadvantaged or oppressed, instead, for that acronym. I had little-to-no idea about this system until today and I'm not even a native english speaker, but all the same it seems curious to me that this word choice is just a coincidence...

Who could have picked those terms? OBC is a term of art used in Indian politics [1]. The author didn't exactly choose that term.

And OBC is Indian English, which is one of the most common varieties of English spoken worldwide. I think it's really weird when people say "carpetbagger" in American politics, definitely more weird than OBC. And don't get me started on the racist origins of "grandfathered in" or "eenie meenie miney moe".

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Other_Backward_Class

not really, you're stretching it

In Indian English it's another word for disadvantaged.

Indian English has, by number of speakers, more of a claim to be standard English than British English.

I know this is India, but caste discrimination isn't limited to only there.

Cisco has an ongoing case against California over caste discrimination. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/calif-scraps-cast...

Weirdly enough, the EEOC doesn't forbid that type of discrimination, but the courts might include that.

UToronto alum myself.

>as recognized by the constitution of India

So you have a racist constitution. That's too bad. I hope Indians are striving to fix that.

If you move the the US or Canada, please don't bring your racism with you - we already have enough of our own.

I haven't read the constitution of India, but perhaps the reason it's codified there is for affirmative action?

so you have to classify one as "backward" in order to help the person ? what kind if democracy is that ?

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