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Comment by wtmt | Hacker News Reader

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.

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> 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.

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

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

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

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

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