I don't doubt this sort of discrimination happens, but is there some sort of data to suggest this is more than isolated? I'm not Indian but rather Bangladeshi (the low-caste Indians who converted to Islam to get out of the caste system, lol). And I've met the occasional proud Brahmin, but in decades of living here I've never heard of caste discrimination being some sort of systemic thing. And yet I've seen like dozens of articles on this all of the sudden.
I'm not endorsing the idea of "isolated incidents" in general! But you can look at data to show that disparities in how certain groups are treated--e.g. employers being less willing to call back candidates with "Black" names on their resume. But extrapolating from the Cisco lawsuit to a narrative about a larger problem in Silicon Valley can have ugly consequences. It can be flipped around to broadly paint Indians who are in leadership positions in Silicon Valley in a bad light.
>In 2016, Equality Labs conducted the first survey on caste discrimination in the United States, helmed by Dr. Maari Zwick Maitreyi and myself. Surveying more than 1,500 respondents, we uncovered a problem that was much larger than we expected: One in four Dalits surveyed reported facing physical and verbal assault, one in three faced educational discrimination, and two in three workplace discrimination.
I worry a bit about this kind of surveys. By this standard, I've faced sexual assault because a drunken guy started petting me once (I'm a straight guy). By any reasonable standard it was a funny incident, but in a strict interpretation of a "have you ever" survey, I'd be a sexual assault survivor.
Could be the same here. Say that in 1/100 of interactions between a upper and lower caste there is some form of discrimination, regardless the intensity. I'm too tired to do the math, but it seems reasonable that would lead to a high percentage of people ending up answering yes to a "have you ever been discriminated" question.
That's not a rebuttal, that's collection of all loony conspiracy theories pinning the blame on British for "inventing" the caste system. Disingenuous stuff, that should not be peddled on here.
It’s not ‘loony’! I got chills looking at the image of the English man measuring the nose with calipers. I didn’t know such images were in circulation never mind on Getty images.
That’s the kind of pictures I have in the books I mentioned in the earlier comment. The British census takers would go village to village..they were obsessed with the angle of the nose and how flat it was up the face. To them these aboriginal features and skin colour were the basis of caste division.
And this wasn’t at all true. The Vedas divided people on the basis of their nature and their dharma or work or duty to society was based on their temperament. A weak vegetarian Brahmin who was keen to learn numbers and had the aptitude for math isn’t going to be riding horses and wield weapons to fight and die for the country. That was the job of the Kshatriyas. The divisions were there so there is a corps of people who did the best acc to their abilities. Was it perfect? No. Did they inter marry and also strive to live the best life exploiting the resources they had as well as their positions. Yes. But like a goat on a leash..they had a radius of free movement but were tethered by social restriction. A Vaishya could never be a king and a shudra could never become a priest. But neither could the king live without the Indian equivalent of democeles sword over his head nor could the Brahmin enjoy creature comforts. The system had nothing to do with the British understanding of caste which was racial.
Then they super imposed their understanding of race over the caste system. And this was patently ridiculous. The world’s understanding of caste system as promulgated by the British doesn’t resemble what is in the texts or what was in practice before they came along. Guess what happened to the all the ‘lower classes’? They converted to Christianity because the missionaries were always standing..waiting in the wings.
This is not to say that there weren’t terrible things that happened in India. We don’t crucify all black people because of a few criminals. We don’t crucify all whites people for the racism of a few. Not all homeless people are drug addicts. We don’t call all men rapists because of Harvey Weinstein. All Germans are not Nazis. Caste discrimination is not a Hindu blot. In all of the above cases, it was ‘humans behaving badly’.
I am blown away every time by how the uneducated untraveled masses are willing to believe second hand accounts of a colonizing power that reluctantly left a country that single handedly overfilled the coffers and granaries of The Empire.
Why is the victim being shamed and the rapist account being taken as gospel? Because the sick fucks went around villages and measured peoples noses like they are cattle and published their understanding of what it means to them first before Indians could master English ..you know in the past 70 years after freedom...to protest all the lies?
I'm an upper caste male from India (now in Silicon Valley), so I suppose by the standards of discrimination discourse, I shouldn't be talking about this, but I will anyway.
The evidence for this happening is poor. I have dozens of Indian friends who have been in the US for three decades, and they've never heard of it either. It could still be happening, of course, but the case for it would be more real if there was one actual case of a company or government censuring someone for it.
> it would be more real if there was one actual case of a company or government censuring someone for it.
To be clear, this story got legs specifically because California is bringing a case against Cisco for caste-related discrimination. So the government is certainly trying to censure someone for it.
Sure, but as far as I know, that is the only case of its kind in the country, and before we raise the alarm about widespread caste discrimination, shouldn't we have at least one case decided?
I'm also an upper caste male in Silicon Valley. While I largely agree with you in that most people state-side haven't heard of it happening here, that doesn't mean it doesn't subconsciously exist.
The main thing I think the article got wrong is this:
> they're often clever attempts to find out something very specific
I don't think they are "clever" attempts. People aren't that clever, in general. It's very possible that people are just used to asking these very normal questions out of habit (e.g. "are you vegetarian" is a perfectly normal question to ask before going to lunch with someone, to factor that in your suggestions of places to eat). It's just that they may be subconsciously deriving further biases based on the answers instead of taking the answers at face value. If, for example, someone not being vegetarian was originally just a benign question to go out to lunch together, but later subconsciously causes the manager to not give them that promotion, that would be discrimination, and I can't say for sure that that doesn't happen.
Someone from lower caste might be more qualified to speak to personal experiences of discrimination, but everyone can synthesize the anecdotes and data for themselves.
No it means he/she self aware of the privileges he/she has enjoyed. You don't get to identify as a particular caste, your name gives it away even before anyone has seen you.
This comment sounds exactly like the comments that are sometimes made when discussing sexism in tech by men. "Does sexism even exist in tech? I've never seen anyone be sexist in front of me."
It doesn't prove anything one way or the other, but it is the exact same rhetorical strategy.
This also isn’t necessarily rhetorical. The reason you won’t see it is because people pick up on just enough social cues that if you are likely to react badly to it, they probably won’t do it in front of you.
I recently listened to an interview with Isabel Wilkerson, author of Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents which is about America, but she spent years doing research including visiting other countries.
She tells an anecdote about visiting a conference in India on caste and even though the reason everyone was there was to discuss ways to undo the effects of the caste system, she was able to see effects of the system right there in the conference by how various participants interacted with each other. It was so ingrained to the participants that they didn’t realize they were doing it. It was small things like how one person would yield to another during conversation.
> the low-caste Indians who converted to Islam to get out of the caste system
Sadly Muslims were not much better in this regard and created their own caste system of sorts, with descendants of foreign invaders given more status than descendants of local converts (Afghan good, Middle Eastern better), who were assumed to be low-caste fleeing oppression for that specific reason. I've heard the same from a Christian Indian from Mangalore. Perhaps that's why Dr. Ambedkar opted for Buddhism rather than Islam or Christianity as his recommended path forward for the Dalits (former untouchables).
> the low-caste Indians who converted to Islam to get out of the caste system, lol
I know you're saying this in a bit of an off the cuff manner, but there is a lot more to the history of Bangladesh than you were letting on, and even in a joking manner it kinda contributes to this idea that Islam was this great emancipatory force in Bangladesh, which is...a bit reductionist. The idea that Bengal is historically a nation of low-caste Indians is 100% not the case. Bengal's distinct identity goes back to the Vedic period of 1500BC - 500BC.
Its historic wealth predates Mughal era Bengal when Islam was introduced, and relates back to its historically rich breadbasket/river delta land and strategic placement as a thalossocracy very well placed along the maritime section of the Silk Road. Secondly, caste has always been somewhat complicated, and has a long history of systematically resistance in the Dharmic tradition in Bengal. That pertains to the historical development of Buddhism in the Maurya and Pala empires. To say it was "low-caste Indians" who converted to Islam to get out of the caste system that created the identity of "Bangladeshi" rather than competing ideological traditions (pro-Brahminical Old Vedic religion vs anti-Brahminical Buddhism) is really white-washing things. Islam's interaction with greater South Asian religion and philosophy was a lot more syncretic than that. By the time it had gotten there, there were already existing religios traditions that had begun to explore an idea of a religion without caste against religion through caste.
No reasonable person thinks that every powerful man was impugned by #MeToo, and no reasonable person would think that all powerful Indians are impugned by some kind of caste scandal.
I have been in the US since 2012, never even once in all these years, I experienced or know some one who experienced this.I don’t think well-educated, middle class Indians who represent Indians in Silicon Valley will exhibit this behavior. Like the parent comment, not saying that this didn’t happen to people but it is definitely not a systematic thing.
It is extremely isolated even in India itself. I have interviewed with about a hundred people so far. No one asked me my caste, and I never asked anyone theirs. Some north Indian names give away the caste from the last name. That's less likely to happen in southern India, where most of us don't even have a family name.
For the millions in villages, yes. It is not common in cities. Are you Indian? How often do people ask you for your caste? And please don't tell me my own lived experience is "blatantly untrue".
It is still very common in the cities. A survey from 2018 points to how prevalent it is in the urban regions - including in Delhi - even untouchability is practised in the cities.
Without linking to the actual questions and the data, this is yellow journalism. In one paragraph, it is “self or family member”, but in the next paragraph, it becomes "50 per cent of respondents in urban Rajasthan admitted to practising untouchability". This is the same kind of yellow journalism that in the US lead to prominent figures touting "one in five women on college campuses is raped". There is no epidemic of rape in US college campuses either.
I asked you how often you get asked for your caste, which you did not answer. I have a few very visibly brahmin colleagues. When we work together, they don't discriminate against any of my colleagues or me. When we go for team outings, they don't go to restaurant kitchens and ask the cooks and waiters for their caste, and more often than not, the restaurant serves meat.
You are looking for anecdotal data when I am presenting you with actual survey data. You want to extrapolate from your own situation (as well as mine) to decide what the situation is nation-wide. That is not how things work.
In your particular situation - which may not be representative of the situation of others, you may not be a racist/casteist in your thinking, but you certainly can't extrapolate from that for what the situation is like across the board.
> Please scroll to page 8. The data shows about 27% of Indian households
Good, so these figures are not even close to the 50% figure for urban Rajasthan. Why do you think the figures differ so drastically? Also, clever of the "researchers" to inflate figures using "households". Absolutely zero among my hundreds of colleagues have demonstrated casteist attitudes, so let's ask about their grandparents. That's how you get "households".
> You are looking for anecdotal data when I am presenting you with actual survey data.
Correct. Because sociological "studies" are rife with methodological failures. They drive an agenda worse than any autorickshaw driver drives his auto. This is the field that gave us "one in five women on college campuses are raped" and "India is the least safe country in the world for women". All obvious bullshit, but here we are.
> from your own situation (as well as mine)
This is the interesting part. We don't know each other. You could have told me anything at all about how you have been discriminated against by the "upper caste". Yet you didn't. It goes to show how believable you, yourself, would consider such stories would be.
There is an interesting parallel between believing BS of the holy men in the past (the priests, the prophets) and believing the BS of today's holy men (the academics). Some fields are taking active steps to addressing the replication crisis. Sociology is not one of them.
Hi, yes I am an Indian and its astounding to me that you as an Indian whose life, education, wealth, quality of life, access to healthcare, choice of life partner, friends, status in society, place of residence is all determined by your caste being completely oblivious to it.
You have been so internalized into the caste system that you count only explicit and physically hurting ones as forms of discrimination. You are either incredibly privileged possibly a Brahmin or you're ignorant so much that you deny the suffering of more than a billion people as outright false!!
The total population of brahmins is less than 6% in India. People from other castes - especially the tribals and the dalits (more than 40%), experience caste oppression regularly.
Are you saying 6% of the Brahmins are oppressing 40% of the remaining population?
Source?
[..] India is home to over 200 million Dalits. According to Paul Diwakar, a Dalit activist from the National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights, "India has 600,000 villages and almost every village a small pocket on the outskirts is meant for Dalits."[..]
It is impossible to have a fact based discussion with you. Your arguments so riddled with logical fallacies that it would take me hours to tease everything out with definitions and explanations. I find myself facing a poverty of time currently and in the near future to be able to engage you further. Thanks for the discussion so far. Have a nice day.
Aristocracy is France was around 10%. There are plenty of upper caste Indians (around 18% to 30% total depending on how you count it) who benefit from this societal structure.
I’m not confused, thanks. I’m saying a small population can easily oppress a larger population, especially with consent and cooperation from other populations.
If you look at the last two pages of this classic paper (admittedly almost 20 years old now), you’ll see a list of some names they used in the field experiment.
Martin Luther King didn’t have statistics, studies to lean on, any spreadsheet either, and yet is universally hailed as addressing a variety of issues. Although he was heavily criticized at the time.
So we don’t really have a standard for perceiving an issue, only acknowledging an area ripe for abuse and aiming to mitigate it.
I think he did have data? There were literally laws that explicitly banned black people from using certain schools and facilities. So - there were a lot areas where he could say that black people are discriminated against with 100% certainty.
I don't know enough about the issue in the article to determine how widespread it is - but I don't think it is fair to compare them.
> "To separate [black children] from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely to ever be undone."
> The Court supported this conclusion with citations—in a footnote, not the main text of the opinion—to a number of psychological studies that purported to show that segregating black children made them feel inferior and interfered with their learning.
I think that in general if a bunch of people say they're experiencing a problem than that's enough evidence that there is really a problem. But the Civil Rights movement did have objective factual support from the beginning.
So is the caste system of India. It is in books, it is in public transportation, it is in job market, it is in kitchen, it is schools. To have formal statistics, you first need to acknowledge that the issue exists and then to investigate it. By the same token, the absence of the formal statistics does not disprove discrimination, quite the opposite, it proves that the systematic discrimination is not yet recognized as a problem. Which is systematic discrimination "by definition".
But we’re talking about California. For obvious reasons, I find it a bit problematic to accuse immigrants of bringing a negative cultural practice to the US with them without concrete data.
First of all caste is not invisible as you say. The discrimination starts from the names. Segregation based on caste is the way of life in India. I'm expecting may be its hard for a foreigner like you to notice but for the victims its very real and persistent everyday in their life!
Yes. Lots and lots. The easiest ones to identify is food preference. The upper castes ask you if you are a vegetarian. (Because they consider vegetarian = pure. Meat eaters are impure.)
Also caste determines my job, education, wealth, where I live, where I pray, who I marry and many more.
There are ways to find it from the ornaments and things, clothes you wear. It would be simply called 'tradition'. Caste segregation is the way of life here in India and there are so many different and easy ways to figure out another Indian's caste.
There is correlation between surnames (or the lack of one), language dialects, dietary habits and caste. But the signal here is very noisy and unreliable except for a few cases like having a well known surname.
To my knowledge there is no correlation to place of birth. While there may be statistical differences in the distribution of characteristics such as say skin colour among communities which I am unaware of, you will find a reasonable representation of all physiognomies? in each community.
Yes. Easier to ask them. Honestly, I think the only way to legitimize the delegitimization of the caste system is for everyone to declare their castes. No shadow games. It’s all out in the open.
Heck, when I moved to New Delhi, everyone thought I was Sikh because my last name is Singh, even though my last name is a common Hindu last name in general and not specific to Sikhs. So not even Indians are guaranteed to have the mapping of last name <-> demographic correct.
(Speaking of, do all Sikhs count as Kshatriyas? Even the farmers in Punjab and Haryana? So confusing...)
> Nobody seems to ask this question about the apparently rampant racism in the US
I can't tell if you're trolling or not, but in case you're not from the US and genuinely confused about this... there are mountains of data on systemic racism precisely because it's one of the biggest questions. Academic journals are full of answers, not to mention endless books.
Even isolated prejudices can lead to systematic issues, so even if it was, it would be a problem.
For example, if key individuals in certain positions hold the prejudices, it can have a systematic effect, since they have a lot of influence on the design of the systems in place and can easily create an unfair distribution of other people in charge/not in charge.
Its a shame that people insist on dragging their prejudices halfway across the world instead of leaving them behind - just human nature I guess. Im glad there's litigation happening now. Drag it to the surface and expose it so we can kill it. Prejudice is bad for society and bad for business. It is making decisions based on inaccurate assumptions, and its failing to value talent appropriately. It's sacrificing competitiveness by allowing for bad decision making. Its also morally wrong, but I think the competitiveness argument is gonna be the more convincing one. Let's leave caste in the last century where it belongs.
Speaking about dragging prejudices half way across the world, the British administration seem to be responsible in large part for this legacy. It's not just "an Indian thing".
Edit: before downvoting the comment I'm replying to - this is actually a pretty well known scholarly thing - not a fringe conspiracy theory. The British created a legal system that crystallized caste into law using their own interpretation of caste and class, and that system did not reflect whatever existed before. That's not to say they invented caste, but the modern form definitely was implemented by them.
It definitely is. They made it rigid (and potentially even made up parts of it - it's hard to tell exactly since the brits kept the records...) and enforced it in law as a part of their usual divide and conquer/put a a selected minority on top so they're loyal to you strategy (like [edit: Belgians] likely did in Rwanda). And now you've got a ton of Indians parroting stuff about caste that's not even obviously a an original pre-colonial part of Indian culture in any obvious way.
Even the section in the vedas about castes/varnas coming from different parts of the body doesn't have 100% scholarly consensus of being original[0]. It's a mess.
This is indeed a common point of view among some scholars. But scholarship on such things tends to be very politicised. If the essence of caste is about who you marry, then we now have excellent genetic evidence that it was a very big deal long before any Europeans showed up. It's simply not factual to claim that it arrived on a boat. (There are of course regional gradients and class gradients in English patterns of descent over the last millennium, but nothing like the archipelago of India.)
That I don't doubt. That's also not unique to India (just think about how many people only marry within their church). The discrimination comes in with the formation of the "untouchable" caste and determination of social opportunities based off of caste. This form of discrimination undoubtedly existed to some level in precolonial times there was a reason so many people converted to buddhism and islam. Then again - a lot of people converted back from buddhism too. And what we call "India" was a collection of dozens of kingdoms, each of which undoubtedly had different interpretations (and in the case of Muslim ruled kingdoms, that's a whole different story). It makes it really unclear what pre colonial "india" looked like in terms of caste.
Yes the history with buddhism's wax & waning is interesting, I'd like to know more. Especially since it seems both high-class and low-class people were involved. I have the impression many were disappointed in how much conversion to Islam helped their status; it's not about what you claim to believe (like the christian/muslim concept of religion), it seems like what matters is what everyone else knows.
There were indeed lots of kingdoms, a whole continent's worth, but for the most part I didn't think the political units much influenced the rules of these things, aside from sometimes incentivising conversion to islam. I don't think there was anything like the european squabbles over who gets to be pope, or whether your country's church follows him, because there's no idea of centralised doctrinal command like that.
The level of endogamy within Indian sub-populations goes far beyond that. It's been going on for thousands of years (so not the British's doing), and is higher than that of Ashkenazi Jews (source: Who We Are and How We Got Here, by David Reich).
This is blatantly untrue. The British only acknowledged the existing systems and codified it in parts of India. The brutal nature of the caste system has existed for millennia before this and is well documented. For instance, Buddha spoke against the caste system - that is around 500BC.
I have a book that the British wrote for their records...they went into villages and measured and photographed people for their own purposes. They classified people as inferior or higher class based on skin colour, facial features and ratio of limbs to body and stuff like that. I am a book collector and this isn’t something you can buy off Amazon. The British bear grave responsibility for the inequalities that is now perceived as the caste system by non Indians and the gaping divisions they created before they finally quit their 250 year old stay.
ETA: my book collection is in my indian library but I do have one here. It’s called ‘The Village Gods of South India’. By “The Right Reverend Henry Whitehead”, Bishop of Madras. Printed 1921. And I have no words to actually articulate to give a book review. Printed by YMCA, Calcutta. The secondary agenda of latter British Raj was to completely dismantle the Hindu society and introduce Christianity in a nation of millions. I paid stupid money to buy this copy..it was the last one I actually bought and that’s why I have it with me here. The money would have been better spent on porn..at least, it would have supported a good publication that was created for social benefit. this particular book is admirably restrained and relatively polite.. Altho still offensive and laughable at the same time.. but I am sure various versions of other British abominations are available online or on scribd for free. How the British saw India and how they portrayed it. And then it’s like lighting a match after pouring petrol over an entire nation.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-48619734 : even auntie beeb continues with the lies. The varna system is never mentioned in the vedas and Brahma is NOT from where the castes came and Manu did not write about it.
The four divisions of man came from a poem called Purusha Suktam that explains the beginning of the universe. Purusha ..the cosmic begin before any creation began sacrificed itself to create the universe, the four kinds of man, birds, animals, plants, mountains and even himself again.
Further..the same concept and imagery appears elsewhere in far away Persia in Zoroastrian texts about a similar cosmic being that became other life forms and the universe itself
[...] The Purusha Sukta is mirrored directly in the ancient Zoroastrian texts, found in the Avesta Yasna and the Pahlavi Denkard. There, it is said that the body of man is in the likeness of the four estates, with priesthood at the head, warriorship in the hands, husbandry in the belly, and artisanship at the foot. Nevertheless, it remains to be established that the Indian and Pahlavi texts reflect inherited common beliefs, rather than independent developments. Hence, making a later insertion unlikely.[..]
The Cow’s Lament can be read in the Avesta and Gathic texts. The Sacrifice is primary and this can be seen in other religious myth too. In Abraham being asked to sacrifice Isaac. That’s when the covenant of the Israelites to G_d is created and why they were ‘chosen’. The sacrifice required was of the idols and the gods..one was in the shape of the bull..of canan and Ur.. Even in Egyptian myth. It is central to ALL religious mythology. Syncretism.
[..] The primordial beast is killed in the creation myth, but from its marrow, organs and cithra[a] the world is repopulated with animal life. The soul of the primordial bovine – geush urvan – returned to the world as the soul of livestock. Although geush urvan is an aspect of the primordial bovine in Zoroastrian tradition, and may also be that in the Younger Avesta, the relationship between the two is unclear in the oldest texts.[..]
Yes it will. A big part of the argument for caste comes from some ridiculous traditionalist sentiment that it's a part of "Indian culture" (whatever that is). Changing the sentiment is hard, but pointing out that pre-colonial "Indian" culture didn't look like what you think it did is a compelling argument for traditionalists (especially people that are traditionalists as an anti-colonial thing).
Openly and honestly examining the history is valuable. Think of this as Chesterson's fence. If something dates back to antiquity, it's hard to say why it exists. This isn't simply that -- this cultural phenomenon was designed to weaken the people of India (leveraging some ancient patterns). If folks understand that, and recognize that their ancestors got played, then they'll (hopefully) have a stronger impetus to collaborate to remove that fence. Unfortunately, it seems to involve convincing the people at the top to relinquish their unearned privilege -- that rarely happens without bloodshed.
Are you saying there is no value in the people who hold these opinions learning why they have those opinions? Because that would be super weird: of course learning about the history of the modern caste system changes things in the present. And don't make the mistake of thinking that, just because dead British are to blame, that absolves everyone else from blame too:
Dead british are to blame for setting it in motion, and everyone who reinforces today is also to blame, for keeping it alive. There's plenty of blame to spread around for something as messed up as caste discrimination.
That's true to some degree - especially for something that happened centuries ago. But the british role in india is relevant today since india gained "independence" only a few decades ago and is still ostensibly a part of the "british empire".
But ultimately you are correct. India's problem isn't with dead british people, it's ultimately with their traitorous elites who sold out and rejoined the british empire rather than fostering a bit of nationalism and progress in their own country. How can any nation succeed when their elites would rather be subjects of another state than independent leaders of their own people. It's not just political leaders, it's their business/cultural/academic leaders as well. It's insane that india, a country with 1.4 billion people and a civilization stretching back millenia, is still part of the british empire. You think the chinese would let hong kong back into the british empire let alone join wholesale?
India should have done what south korea did after ww2. Completely separate from their former colonial masters and demand reparations and used that money to develop. But I guess it's kind of hard to demand reparations when you willingly rejoin your colonial master. They could have followed japan's example. They could have even followed china's example. Anything would have probably led to better outcomes.
Instead, they just wasted the past 75 years doing what? Playing "commonwealth" games? While hundreds of millions of indians have no electricity. No toilets.
By any logic, india should be a permanent member in the security council as india represents 20% of humanity. It should be a major economic power. It should be a major world player. Instead it's a lowly member of the british empire. You would think india of all nations should be working to dismantle it, not perpetuate it. How can india be part of the security council ( a leading nation ) when it is part of the "commonwealth"? Would anyone take france, russia or china ( other security council members ) seriously if they were part of the british empire?
Is there any nation that has failed to reach its potential more than india? And by doing so caused so much human misery just by the sheer size of its population? Not only was it shocking to learn that the "british empire" still exists, it was even more shocking to learn that india was still part of it. I just don't get it.
The more efficiently we allocate resources, the more we lift people out of poverty around the globe. Increasing marketplace efficiency is the headline story of the last 100 years of human history.
Billions of people are now living indoors with electricity, have running water, reliable food supply chains, and are killing each other less due to marketplace efficiency.
What if increasing marketplace efficiency is just a by product instead of cause of great change? I mean main objective of business is wealth maximisation of shareholders and management (in modern times). It has nothing to do with efficient allocation of resources. The country that alleviated most people from poverty is a communist country. Communism uplifted a poor nation Russia to become one of the Superpower in 20th century.
You may want to check where you got your history information from. You're correct, the country that alleviated the most from poverty is a communist country.
But it wasn't Russia. It was China. And China did it by privatizing and opening up its markets to capitalism (and by capturing the subsequent efficiency gains). Not by command-and-control allocation of resources by a central body.
China lifted roughly 850 million out of extreme poverty over the past 30 years according to the World Bank...more than the 6X the population of Russia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_China
Yes, the main objective of business is wealth maximization. But to create wealth (without stealing it), you must create value for other people. Theft is a zero sum game. Value creation is not. The search to create value by millions of different individual actors is how resources are so much more efficiently allocated in free market economies.
Russia has still reduced poverty by roughly 10-20% since the fall of the USSR via more open markets. The reason this number isn't even larger, is because of widespread theft (see the above paragraph) by a corrupt oligarch class. This is super common in any country with lots of oil and no democracy (ask Venezuela for more info).
I would contest the notion that this is simply marketplace efficiency.
We’ve burned through millions of years worth of stored solar energy in the last 100 years, and not yet paid the full price for that.
That’s essentially a massive injection of capital into our system. Of course that would raise the standard of living.
Does the market have any sense of what needs to be done to preserve our goals as a species. (What are those exactly, anyway?)
Attribution of moral goodness to something that has circumstantially caused some good but lacks any moral compass doesn’t seem to be a solid rock to found your religion on.
And there are certain things that we disallow (and in fact revile) that strictly speaking would be more efficient market wise. (Buying and selling people, child labor, stuff like that).
Although capitalism deserves its due (which is a fair bit), attributing all of recent human progress to it seems a bit much.
> "Attribution of moral goodness to something that has circumstantially caused some good but lacks any moral compass doesn’t seem to be a solid rock to found your religion on."
You could also say the same thing about humanity itself.
In any case, we're not talking about religion. We're simply talking about outcomes, and which are more favorable. In a majority of cases, the outcome of an efficient market is superior from a moral perspective than the outcome of individual humans running things.
As to the problem of fossil fuels, the market will inevitably solve for this too. If polluting the earth with fossil fuels ends up killing humanity--that wasn't a very efficient use of resources was it?
In cases like this where marketplace efficiency is aligned with moral good, I think we should embrace using it as a tool/weapon to accomplish the moral good. You've got to use the tools you got, and I don't see using capitalistic means to argue for ending discrimination as automatically meaning you personally value markets more than morals. Markets are a tool. When I use a power drill to drill a hole - it's not really about the drill - it's about wanting the hole. Same idea.
One of the thing that the Indian government can do to reduce this issue is to ban caste related surnames. Like you can literally tell the caste of a person from their surname. Its insane that no ruling part had the guts to ban that.
A large parts of population in South Indian states like Tamil Nadu and Kerala no longer have surnames that are tied to the caste. Mostly because of the people deciding to do that by themselves. But the issue is very very bad in Northern states which is where the majority of the population lives.
I’m against all forms of discrimination but it’s inhuman to force someone to change their name. That’s like saying certain unsavory last names need to be changed in the U.S. My last name is Cohen, some people in WWII-era Germany wanted to erase my name.
Indian anti-caste movements have a history of changing surnames to signify abandoning caste enjoying participation from both upper and lower castes. Those people and their children and grandchildren still exist today with their cultural and religious identity intact (and unfortunately even caste most of the time). A lot of people use their father's name as a surname too. It's not genocidal.
> it’s inhuman to force someone to change their name
I have very complicated feeling about black parents in the US giving their kids "black" names. On one hand, they're expressing themselves and honoring their culture. On the other, if society in 2040 looks anything like society in 2020, they're hurting their kid's future.
The parents are doing nothing but naming their child how they want to name them. Discriminatory people reacting badly to the name are the ones hurting the children, not the parents.
I assume your correspondent is referring to the studies in which the same resume, with different names, were sent out to help wanted ads and saw lower response rates for "black" names. Obviously the correct solution is that the people making those decisions shouldn't be, or should be otherwise relieved of their discriminatory behavior. But I think it's reasonable for someone to feel bad about society forcing parents into choosing between identity and financial well-being.
We don't necessarily have to change the name of existing people all at once. The rule can be applied to mostly new borns and figure out the rest from there.
That doesn’t make it any better. Your last name is a part of your identity and heritage. You are advocating for cultural genocide and trust me I know what comes after that.
Are we just talking about men? Most women are basically expected to change their last name upon marriage in many countries.
To me it's just a name. My wife kept her last name and and it seems the past generations simply can't accept that. My extended family still mails her letters using my last name.
That's a very privileged attitude. If your name alone forces your life to be that of a servant, no matter what you want, or do, or how smart you are, or how much potential you might have, maybe your family would not be that bothered giving up what is just some letters on an official document if it meant a way out from a life of systemic oppression.
Honestly India needs a fresh start at the moment. The baggage of caste system has deprived millions of people for centuries. Most people will prefer to live in a society where they are treated equal in favor of giving up their caste identity that have descriminted their community for centuries.
Actually it worked out pretty well for Kerala. It's #1 in India in terms of HDI and all most all human related metrics in India. The state with lowest income inequality. And nobody descriminates you on basis of caste in day to day life. Which I can't say is true for many northern states.
Yes. And Kerala was able to do that among all the castes. I am sure not being able to guess the caste of a person from their name should have defintely helped the cause. The fact that the students wont be descriminated by others students because of their surname. Not having to goto a hospital worrying about getting discriminated on basis of your name. All of these things add up and have a big impact in long term.
They had pretty serious land reform, too. Meaning that large estates were confiscated and given to the people working them. Doesn't always work out, but seems to have been an important part of what other success stories like Japan/Korea also did.
Kerala is a separate case study. Kerala had a feudal society and the Namboothri Brahmins and the warrior Nairs has a special arrangement. Nowhere else were the strict rules of society applied in India other than in Kerala. No where else was life fine and streamlined but also damn bloody unfair. But it functioned well as a monarchy. People were ok with it because with prosperity there was also security. This was necessary because it was the tip of the peninsula and there was also border security because the defense here was to protect the long coastline. Where they also enjoyed tremendous profitable trade.
The Namboothris distinguished themselves from other Brahmins by wearing the hair tuft on the front/side(Purvasikha) as opposed to the way Brahmins elsewhere wore their hair tufts which was at the back of their heads(aparasikhas).
This is why it makes no sense to make any generalities about Hindus or caste or even sub sects of Brahmins in India. They were all different with different habits and practices. Not to mention languages. There were thousands and thousands of small tight knit communities with the freedom to govern themselves socially as long as they adhered to the broader foundational principles. Note that by this time, Mughals and Islam and Buddhism and Jains and Christian missionaries were all gaining foothold. So it was not just a Hindu nation.
The British were fascinated and horrified and overwhelmed by the diversity of faiths and beliefs and cultural practices of this massive country which still operated as little kingdoms under larger kingdoms. No two Hindu groups are alike. Just like no two Brahmin communities are alike. The country had millions of people and get hundred people together in a room, they’d find something common only amongst themselves and form a separate community. And smaller communities were robust communities. It was great and working smoothly before the British came..from a colonist POV, homogenous country as a single profitable blob made more sense. Now instead of a multitude of string robust communities capable of working well by themselves, a very diverse population found themselves together and couldn’t work well as a group anymore. No one got along with each other. It was the diversity of individuals that weakened them. The diversity of different groups was their strength earlier.
(Visualize it like this. India was a basket of bundles of coloured matchsticks. Each bundle was the same colour but there were thousands and thousands of them. The basket was filled with bundles If multiple colours. And then the British came and removed the threads that kept each of the bundles together. As they came apart, all the individual match sticks got mixed and no one knew where to belong. So many different people got along only because they knew that they had the freedom to live and die on their own terms or rather the terms of their chosen group where everyone agreed to the rules. After the British came, no one agreed with anyone because suddenly it’s a blur of colour. What kept them together as neat little bundles was their sub religious beliefs and sub sub caste divisions and sub sub sub cultural beliefs etc. there were progressive Brahmins and orthodox Brahmins. It’s nuts to imagine that they all shared the same core belief system. Hinduism is not a monotheistic religion. The British knew Christianity but Christianity was designed as an evangelical faith and by definition cannot have drastic divisions and sub divisions and sub sub divisions even though they did have their denominations. We have thirty thousand gods vs one monotheistic god. Should have kicked out the British at first sight.)
Management, you see. Colonial MBA types with gunpowder found it easier to strip the country and ship off the resources back to an impoverished Britain. Not to mention the looting. But first, they had to play their hand with Divide and Rule strategy. To this end, shatter small kingdoms..off with the King’s head. And then destroy a rather woke and strangely also libertarian religious arrangement we called Hinduism.
The poor dears so far way from their dull and dreary little northern island. And unlike the Vikings, no one slaughtered them and rolled out the carpet instead. And 400 years to pay for that mistake and an eternity to fix it.
> Your last name is your identity and heritage. You are advocating for cultural genocide and trust me I know what comes after that.
It's okay if you want to speak for yourself, but if you want to apply such a statement globally then I think that's a little ethnocentric. The whole idea of last names and who has to take whose in marriage is steeped in a lot of history that plenty of folks had issue with even back then not to mention today.
Your identity and heritage is more than your name, and your identity is more than your heritage. By advocating for keeping last names for all societies, you may be unintentionally advocating for keeping an oppressive caste stratified authoritarian regime going which has been alive for over three thousand years which affects others even if it doesn't affect you personally. Is that really what you want to do? Why not accept that the cultural utilization of last names varies from society to society?
As a Jew I feel compelled to speak up as say that CyberRabbi does not speak for Jews, and that anti-caste is nothing like Holocaust or cultural genocide, and the insinuation of such is offensive to me.
I speak for myself, Elijah Cohen and I am a Jew whose grandparents survived the Holocaust. Is there a problem? Why are you bringing my religion into this?
Because apparently the use of the word ‘genocide’ cannot be appropriated by non Jewish people.
Bengal famine that was a man made famine by British wiped out 1/3 of the population of one state. That’s 10 million people. And there were many more. We were shipping cotton to England instead of growing grain for our people. Indians understand genocide.
[..] "I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion. The famine was their own fault for breeding like rabbits." -Winston Churchill[..]
I am a descendant of holocaust survivors so please read the following with that in mind:
The caste system is part of a culture. It is also (IMHO) thoroughly odious, and it should be eliminated, along with patriarchy, theocracy, and a whole host of other human cultural norms with long and (some would say) venerable histories. There is no moral equivalence between a constructive suggestion for how to eliminate the caste system -- notwithstanding that it is in fact an effort to erase part of a culture -- and actual genocide. So please don't bandy that word about lightly.
When the "culture" is exactly equal to "the cast system"? Then yes for all that is good in the world let's do some "cultural genocide"! Some cultur must die for humans to suffer less.
A large portion of the population in south indian states don't have surnames. I think I'm the first person in my family line in what must be centuries that has the same second name as my father (so what you would consider a "surname") because I was born in the US where there is a cultural expectation to have a "family name." So my grandfather's first name, which was my fathers second name, is now my "surname." Otherwise, my fathers first name would have been my "last name," as is the case with my cousins that were born in India.
I actually disagree, I have worked in almost all parts of India. South India has a very strong "Brahmin" influence to an extent that families disown children if they marry in other caste.
They also have a very strong language bias with strong racism against non Tamil speakers. (Although People from Kerala and Andra Pradesh are much better than Tamil Nadu)
I am not saying South India is free of caste system. I am just saying it's better to live in a society where one can't tell your caste from your name. Especially if you are from one of the marginalized castes.
> South India has a very strong "Brahmin" influence ..
Oh dear! That notorious Tambram superiority shit. I agree it is still largely at play. However, considering how it is played in the North of India, South is light years better.
One of the things about Tamil Nadu at least is that a lot of people don't have surnames in the traditional sense.
My "surname" is actually my dad's given name, and my dad's "surname" is his dad's given name. So it changes every generation, unlike most of the rest of the world, where a single surname lasts through generations.
The point about caste differentiability by surname is still valid, though in a different sense, because the given names also have caste bias.
IMO the easiest way to break this cycle would be a widespread campaign to de-stigmatize inter-marriage between castes; that would solve the problem of correlation between name and caste within a generation or two.
For anyone who is interested: this type of name is called a patronymic, and besides Tamil Nadu exists in at least Iceland and Russia.
In both of those countries, a particular grammatical ending is added to the name, whereas in Tamil culture the bare name is used.
In Russia, people also have family surnames, in addition to patronymics. For example: “Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev”, whose father was presumably named “Anatoliy [something] Medvedev”.
Or: “Katrín Jakobsdóttir”, whose father was presumably named “Jakob [something]”.
The option for immigrants to change their name at Ellis Island long ago existed in large part to combat bringing 'old world' prejudices into the then new USA, nothing has changed...
Nobody made a better life in America? I'm certainly aware of at least a handful of people who have gone from poverty to at least comfortable living after coming to America.
Almost all of the major surnames can be linked to the caste. Nowadays many people of all the castes have started using caste neutral surnames. Banning the use of any caste related surnames is too much I guess. But people should be allowed to use any surnames.
Somewhat tangential but in Korea people used to buy in to higher prestige surnames which has resulted in the great majority of people sharing a couple handful of surnames.
Non-Indian here, I've always wondered how does this work in practice? Is there some giant book with a surnames-to-caste look-up table that Indian children memorize so they can recall later when they hear someone's name? That seems to be a lot of to pack into each of 1 billion people's heads. How many distinct surname "keys" in this table are we talking about?
> The comment I replied to implies "why didn't the lower castes just always change their surnames"
Not implied. I was outright asking.
> I pointed out why.
By adding a non-existent condition that doesn't follow and using it as a reason.
That's unless you're saying that if the remaining lower-caste also used these neutral names, that would cause the upper-caste that had chosen to also adopt these neutral names to return to using the upper-caste names.
What's wrong with having these neutral names be used by many of the upper-caste (as they apparently are) and also all of the lower-caste? Am I not making sense? Because that's the scenario I was asking about.
I was thinking it was the parents that assigned the different surname when naming their newborns, not the children that threw the name away. The former sounds legally easier than the latter.
My question was, why assign a lower-caste name to one's child if they have the option not to? But I suppose even then not all people with these lower-caste names see their surname as bad or harmful to their children, if I understood you correctly.
No. Caste based reservation is not tied to your surname. Major chunk of population of Kerala and Tamil Nadu don't have a caste related surname. It doesn't make them ineligible for caste based reservation. Because the point of the reservation is to level up these communities from the descrimation they faced for hundreds of years. Just changing the caste name doesn't automatically level the playing field. It helps. But they need more support as well.
I could guarantee you, People with supposedly lower castes would be against this. It would be giving up benefits such as easier access to best education and jobs.
Caste based reservation is not tied to your surname. Major chunk of population of Kerala and Tamil Nadu don't have a caste related surname. It doesn't make them ineligible for caste based reservation. Because the point of the reservation is to level up these communities from the descrimation they faced for hundreds of years. Just changing the caste name doesn't automatically level the playing field. It helps. But they need more support as well.
So, that's creating new systemic biases. Here, you are talking about creating a fresh start. The only thing reservations do is actually create divide. During Independence, it was compulsory move where caste discrimination was serious. But today, due to industrialisation it holds no meaning. Now, there is only worker class and ruling class. New Generations(majority) are not taught about castes and discrimination around it, the only time they came in contact with such nonsense is during college entrances. I would also point the superior mentality taught in top colleges is also a reason. The way they are indoctrinated in these colleges creates a superior mentality in students and if your classmate scored less than you and got into college, you would also extend that superior mentality to him/her as well.
Sucess in today's society depends mostly on how well you are educated. And how well you are educated depends upon how you well educated your parents are, your accessibility to education and your financial status. And the marginalized communities are behind in these factors because of hundreds of years of descrimation. And it makes total sense to give them additional support. You should also keep in mind that marginalized communities make the major chunk of population. And I think the reservation % is also similar to their population %. Probably even lesser. I don't see the issue then? Students in general category get to compete with other students in general category who had a similar upbringing compared to marginalized communities( of course, there are a lot of exceptions). And students in marginalized communities compete with students with other marginalized students. And the top percentile students make it to college from each section. Sounds reasonable to me. I don't think anyone who are reasonable and knows history would have any issue with this system.
> The way they are indoctrinated in these colleges creates a superior mentality in students and if your classmate scored less than you and got into college, you would also extend that superior mentality to him/her as well.
That's just a sign of our poor education system. I don't think anyone who is well educated would have superior mentality over someone else. So we should work on improving our education system.
> Its insane that no ruling part had the guts to ban that.
This is not even remotely popular. That essentially guarantees that the party will not get voted to power again. People, regardless of their caste, always have the option to drop/change their surname.
> large parts of population in South Indian states like Tamil Nadu and Kerala no longer have surnames that are tied to the caste.
I agree with that general conclusion. I have roots in Kerala and my family purposefully didn't add the caste part in my name. My father has it but not anyone in my family in my generation. That being said, don't forget that the Tamil Brahmin(Tambram) superiority shit is still present at large everywhere.
In recent times, I've seen several news stories of widespread caste discrimination in Silicon Valley, but the standard of evidence by which this is claimed seems to be poor. It's basically asking people who claim they've been hurt or discriminated against. The only actual legal case in all these stories is the one against Cisco, and that's still in progress. Of course there will be casteists among the Indians in the Bay Area (India has enormous numbers of them). But it's not clear they have any ability to inflict discrimination on the lower castes.
If they do, I haven't seen evidence of it. Stories claim that lower-caste employees have had their Indian upper caste managers discriminate, hurt their careers and even sexually harrass them, but HR departments say they can't do anything because caste is not a protected category.
I work in Silicon Valley, and have a hard time with this picture of the culture and HR departments in the area.
Something I've also noticed in Western media is that when covering issues about other cultures (ie India, Middle East, etc), the bar for evidence is pitifully low, especially if the story matches existing confirmation bias.
For instance, when there was a major rape in India, the media was scrutinizing Indian attitudes towards sexual violence. As evidence of such attitudes, they mentioned a BJP politician who said that "rape is sometimes right, sometimes wrong"
In the actual video where he says it, (in Hindi), he says that the "rape allegations are sometimes correct, sometimes wrong". I don't agree with the assessment (I think all allegations should be taken seriously), but it COMPLETELY different fromwhat is reported by Reuters (and other news sources). There are many instances of this. This is why I typically don't trust Western media coverage of other countries. Best source would be a local English language newspaper.
John Oliver claims (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qVIXUhZ2AWs#t=12m10s 12m10s) that India has (at least some) public school textbooks that explain that Africans are god's burnt toast, and Caucasians are underdone, and Indians are the proper color. I found that suspicious. Have you heard about that? Is the translation accurate?
This sounds like perfect example. The story isn't 100% false but it probably needs some context.
I've actually heard the oven story before. Its an absurd (and very racist) aphorism, but I think calling it a "lesson" from a textbook would be a stretch. What likely happened was that the school selected anthologies that kids could read to develop their reading skills. It probably included that absurd story.
I think the American equivalent would be if a 2nd grade reading book included an old fairy tale with some outdated racist undertones (ie Zwarte Piet), and then the media ran with "American textbooks claim a black elf will kidnap children if they misbehave".
The books are written by Dinanath Batra, a well known history revisionist and Hindu supremacist. Let's not try to cover them up as "absurd aphorisms", these books are targeted at children and their intended purpose exactly is to show India and Indian civilization as a pinnacle during ancient times.
The context behind the specific passage referred to in the show (about the races baked in the oven) is that it is a conversational exchange (banter, if you will) between an Indian and a Briton. I believe the protagonist of that passage was "throwing shade" at the Briton after he makes a haughty statement.
This entire exchange sounds ridiculously stupid and implausible to us now. However, in the 1940s (I think thats when the protagonist of the passage is from), casual racism towards Indians made that a plausible situation. I think this aphorism dates back to the 1930s/40s as a standard reply to casual racism from Europeans. Its obviously outdated (and racist) in today's context. However to claim that this is a "lesson taught in Indian schools" is a mischaracterization.
The video doesn't show that part of the textbook. I found some pages from the series but they're pretty innocuous. [1]
But it's probably accurate. It's not a history textbook but a literature textbook for primary school students. It was probably meant to be used in Hindi classes. So this kind of bullshit would fly under the guise of "it's just a story". [2]
[1]: hxxps://www.exoticindiaart.com/book/details/lamps-of-inspiration-set-of-4-volumes-NZE671/ The "Look Inside the Book" section. The first few pages are just a preface talking about how the book has collected tales to bolster moral values and duties in the reader. Then there are a bunch of contents pages.
The third contents page does match the two short scenes from the video that show the titles of the stories - "8. Nirlobh adarsh jivan" and "17. Parishram ka koi vikalp nahin" (though the latter in the video is titled "Parishram ka vikalp...", no "koi").
So presumably this is the contents page for Prernadeep 3. I can't tell just from the contents page which story might be the one in question, though. The video says it's on page 22 but the contents page doesn't have page numbers. It might be #36 - "Bahin, ham bhaaratiya hain" "Sister, we are Indian" - or #53 perhaps - "Kya aapne ishvar ko dekha hai?" "Have you ever laid eyes on God" ?
The last page has one story and the start of another one (listed in the very first contents page, so preumably from Prernadeep 1 rather than 3), but they're pretty innocuous.
[2]: The larger context around that story is even more amusing, because it's being "told" by Dr Radhakrishnan (President in the 50s and well-known for liking teachers; his birthday is celebrated as "Teacher's Day") to a white person who claims to be very "close to God".
No you did not. Nowhere did I say that the books written by Dinanath Batra were pretty innocuous. If you had quoted me, it would've been quite obvious I didn't say what you claimed I did, because a proper quote would look like:
>>I found some pages from the series but they're pretty innocuous.
"some pages from the series". It doesn't get any clearer than that.
>Read the preface of the book, and the story number 52. How is that "pretty innocuous", and especally a book that is aimed at kids?
I already summarized what the preface says in my original comment. And #52 is not in the pages I linked to. The only ones are #55 and the first half of #56. #55 has a Mughal emperor praising a Hindu man for giving the emperor's daughter an Islamic education despite his religion, and #56 starts off with the son of a Naval officer in a war between England and France before it is cut off. I say again, that just these one-and-a-half stories that I have access to are pretty innocuous.
>No wonder caste discrimination has carried on for centuries in India with learned people like you able to charitably justify the oppression.
Incidentally, the rest of the comment that you're misquoting clarified pretty clearly that I'm against the story that the Aljazeera video talks about. But you do you; don't let facts and reading comprehension get in the way of your spiel and slander.
I have studied through the curriculum of one of largest board of public school education system in India (CBSE) and I can attest that I have never read such a thing in any of text books. That does not mean it does not exist, but its definitely not a prevalent notion.
> HR departments say they can't do anything because caste is not a protected category
The whole idea of "protected categories" just sounds wrong to me.
The current system makes it seem like it's always OK to discriminate, but only these reasons are not OK. It sets the default to "we're all considered unequal before the law except under these circumstances where we are considered to be equal".
That's working with a blacklist in world where the number of reasons for discrimination is infinite. It would make much more sense IMO to use a whitelist instead: you may only legally discriminate in these cases otherwise it's illegal = "we're all considered equal except in these cases where we have to be allowed to differentiate".
Issues like the current one would be prosecutable without adding another protected category.
I've (anecdotally, FAANG, SF) seen a few cases involving Indian interviewer/interviewee given special treatment/favouritism/easy interviews or a formality, stuff like "hey you are from same village" or similar.
That does sound more plausible. Hiring people you feel comfortable with happens everywhere, and in India that often means people who speak your language or are from your region.
> HR departments say they can't do anything because caste is not a protected category.
That is a cop-out. Most HR policies have a somewhat broad use case where if someone is creating a hostile work environment, that is not OK, whether the reason for it is protected or not. Maybe HR cannot fire them in some jurisdictions, but they absolutely can step in in other ways to fix the problem.
It's either a cop-out by HR departments, or a false claim that HR departments do this. Knowing the cultures in large Bay Area companies, it's hard to imagine someone going to HR to complain about discrimination or harrassment, and HR saying: "Go away, you are not in a protected class".
It’s different for women. We have already bonded over the debilitating condition of possessing XX genetically. Caste, creed, skin colour, class doesn’t matter after that point.
You are denying caste discrimination and then washing it off as "post truth" world. That's atrocious actually. Caste discrimination is not some kind of narrative building either, these are lived experiences spanning centuries.
"post-Truth", "virtue signalling", and "accept the narrative unquestioningly" are all (barely) coded flags to say "This thing doesn't exist/isn't true." Following those up with "I'm not saying it doesn't exist" is just a rhetorical feint to seem reasonable.
More charitably, you could read that as "doesn't widely exist", which would track with my experience working with dozens of Indian developers over the last couple decades.
I think OP was being curmudgeonly because they saw this as people trying to drag Indians into the existing culture war stuff as a pawn, after basically pretending they don't exist for decades while getting all sorts of mad on behalf of different minorities.
I think requesting the most charitable reading of something that starts from a decidedly uncharitable position is an unfair request. If cscurmudgeon wanted to have a real conversation about it, they could do their own research; this information is pretty easy to find. In this thread, there's a link to a survey of Dalits and Shudras in the US where they report experiencing widespread discrimination. Instead, they came in throwing rhetorical bombs. That's not the behavior of someone who wants to have a reasonable discussion, it's the behavior of someone who wants to derail the conversation using the language of the culture war they're claiming to oppose.
I find the underlying question of this issue fascinating and challenging. Where is the right place to draw the line between your state's civic values, and respect for traditions that are not strictly yours? Are you bound to honor cultural traditions that are outside your laws and norms for civic rights and presence?
On the one hand, the caste system is one of those things that many non-Indian people seem to be willing to come out and condemn. Frankly, it seems awful to me, and fundamentally at odds with a lot of human and civic rights norms in America.
At the same time, however, it's a tradition from a society that is very different from the one in which I was raised. I don't feel like I'm educated enough to judge it thoroughly. See also: France, and the ongoing Dialogue with Muslim communities regarding headscarves.
I was born in India, am of Indian Brahmin (i.e. the "top" caste) blood, and all I can say is this:
The caste system is a disgrace to India and I fully condemn it as an Indian. I hope this kind of shit can be abolished not only in Silicon Valley but in India as well.
Slavery was also a cultural say of life in America many places all over the world. There were probably secondary effects. But that doesn't matter because the practice is and always was, objectively evil.
How can you justify discrimination based on somebody's origin in any modern society? What kind of negative "secondary effects" that anti-discrimination would bring to a society? It's not like this is a small country or the first time we're talking about this issue.
The fundamental principle of Human Rights is that they are "Universal and Inalienable". They by definition apply equally to everyone, everywhere, at all times.
I'm all for respecting cultures and traditions, right until it gets in conflict with the above. We live in a global world and it is a good thing that some basic fundamental values should be expected from everyone.
I would cite Japan's "tradition" of cutting kids from one of their parents after a divorce, thus not respecting the UN's Child Rights Convention, as an sallient case in point that it's not OK to just let circumventions go on the basis of "it's their culture".
I don't think this is a fair comparison. Yes, we have socioeconomic classes in the US (as every country does, whether admitted or not).
It's extremely rare to find a Manhattan family where the child would be disowned and completely cut out of the family for marrying someone from the Ozarks. You can't say the same for a "pro-caste" Brahmin family in India.
You can't say that an obvious outlier ("You want to marry someone from Missouri?!? You're out of the will!") is the "same thing" as widespread pseudo-racist, quasi-religious nonsense like the Indian caste system.
I think this is largely true but not complete: the interaction between race and class in the US is complicated. Race is frequently used to divide people who on the face of it should be united by class issues.
There’s a famous LBJ quote about this:
“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.“
That’s reductive to the point of valuelessness. I get that reducing everything to “first principles” is the HN way, but sometimes the devil really is in the details.
> Where is the right place to draw the line between your state's civic values, and respect for traditions that are not strictly yours?
I advocate we draw the line where people are harmed. In other cases it may not be as clear, but in this one it is. There is no real question whether a caste system harms people, and as a concept it is not compatible with humanist values.
If you are living in the US the answer is simple: NO.
US and state law (for the most part) prohibits this type of discrimination. That reflects the view of most--but not all--Americans that such discrimination is not tolerable.
Caste is a thing plenty of Indians are willing to come out and condemn too. My line is pretty simple. Is it a tradition that involves harm being done to an individual without their consent? Then I'm not honoring it. Is it a tradition involving personal behavior and decisions or interactions between people with all parties consenting? Then it's none of my business. Discrimination falls very clearly on the first side of that line. Something like caste is "mild" enough that it's only really worth the energy to fight in the US when it crops up, but things that are more severe (like outright genocide) are things that I would argue we go beyond "not honoring" into the realm of "time to actively intervene." The Rohingya genocide is being committed by a society "very different from the one in which I was raised." I feel no desire to exercise tolerance towards the practitioners. I guess that makes me a bit more of a hawk than the average American right now.
The dialog in France is important one for a democracy to have, and deals with real questions.
I'm an upper caste male from India (now in Silicon Valley), and there is absolutely no redeeming quality to caste. It's abhorrent and barbarous. Thankfully, it's nowhere near as widespread as it used to be in India, and I can see it becoming a non-issue in the coming decades.
> Where is the right place to draw the line between your state's civic values, and respect for traditions that are not strictly yours? Are you bound to honor cultural traditions that are outside your laws and norms for civic rights and presence?
The line is drawn exactly where the law is. If a culture or tradition doesn't adhere to it, then it shouldn't be allowed. Either you live in a country and respect the law or you have to deal with the consequences - no exceptions. We should all be equal before the law and there shouldn't be any exceptions for voluntary actions of a group.
Culture and traditions do not supersede law. They are impediments to all kinds of progress, scientific, educational, social or otherwise, and that shouldn't be acceptable.
A system of oppression that benefits some at the cost of others isn’t tradition. If it somehow seems that the system is accepted by those oppressed it is simply because of not being able to make meaningful change for generations.
This is a no-brainer as cast discrimination is not allowed in India either.
There is also a rich double standard in the US. Crazy practices from non-white countries are tolerated by “woke” liberals.
Yet if you are from a white country you are expected to follow every American cultural norm and etiquette to the letter.
I see this in international cooperation. E.g work happening across many countries. Americans will often insist on making American sensibilities universal disregarding the that what may be regarded as rude in America is not necessarily rude or inappropriate elsewhere.
I see the same with American companies operating in my native Norway often insisting on practices that run counter to local culture and sensitivities. But somehow because we are white we are supposed to have the same values as Americans because Americans have racialized culture.
Obligatory warning, per Josh Barro, that Newsweek ceased publication in 2012. Some random company just acquired the name rights. The thing to do with "Newsweek" stories is, (1) put quotes around "Newsweek", and, (2), track down the byline on the story. The person who wrote this was an SEO content spinner until like last year.
Nice. My opinion as an immigrant is the opposite: I'm clinging to this rock like a tenacious fucking barnacle. And as far as I know, I probably have a better right to it than you. At least I earned it. You were just born into it. I made it here.
You can pretend like you gifted me this but in reality you didn't. I took it through my hard work. And you can try to stop me but I'll beat you, even though you have the advantage of having been born here. Because I'm better.
Man, surely there's some kind of middle path without all the forced adversarial stance, isn't there?
People "born into it" had a whole lot to say about policy, and provided you the opportunities to be here. You seized them. It should be a good deal for both sides, but to the extent that each tries to make it adversarial and zero-sum, the benefits of the deal evaporate for everyone.
Sure. I see it as Tit-for-Tat with default cooperate. We can both play for the win together and I'll start there. Or someone else can start a fight that I will finish.
People saying this BS have no idea of what it means to leave everything you know behind and how many home-cultures are simply better than the ones immigrants find themselves living in, but they had to leave because (put the name of some super power) decided that it was the right spot to start a war and destroy everything to seize control of some resource or out of spite to some competing super power
People think they are gifting you, because they don't realize how irrelevant they are and how little control have in their lives, let alone the lives of others.
P.s. if we wanna talk about integration, Americans, for example, should watch themselves abroad.
They are absolutely the less capable of understanding what "this is not the way we do things" means.
> P.s. if we wanna talk about integration, Americans, for example, should watch themselves abroad.
I think expats anywhere should integrate. That doesn't mean to give up everything from your home culture, but it doesn't mean to form a walled enclave with little cultural interaction, either.
Travelers/tourists/etc, is different. I don't expect any integration-- just a basic effort at courtesy.
I will talk about Americans simply because I know what they do when they live abroad in my country, for many reasons, one being they hang out in the same neighborhood I was born and raised.
Probably there are similar problems with people from my country somewhere, but let me tell you what I know first.
Here in Italy American tourists are less of a problem, they do silly things sometimes, but who doesn't in an mostly unknown country on the other side of the World?
As you said, the real problem come from expats, students for example, but also military personnel who usually form walled enclaves.
If you hang out in certain neighborhoods in Rome, it's very easy to spot the "Americans only" places. There are quite of few of them.
The reasoning is simple: they come here in Europe for the culture and the relaxed way of living (Barcelona is ranked very high among expats from US exactly for that reason) but they don't have the cultural tools to handle the lack of restrictions they have to face home.
Drinking at the age of 16 is quite normal in Europe, it is not in USA and more often than not Americans are the ones sh*tfaced outside bars and clubs or engaged in alcohol fueled scuffles.
One can argue that's what youngsters do, we are not used to that, but at young age (almost) everyone is forgivable.
Except when they kill police officers in the streets of course
But there's also another cultural issue with them: they are used to be a ruling country, they don't accept to be questioned or put in their place or be simply asked to act as a reasoning person.
Consider that for a US citizen until not long ago Canada, Mexico and many cruises were passport free (but not the contrary), consider the fact that in Europe there are many US military bases, consider that police officers in Europe are not heavily armed and you end up with situations like this one
When I was in LA my friends told me to avoid certain parts of the city because they were dangerous, "how much dangerous?" I asked, I come from Rome after all, I know how to handle myself, "you can get shot" they told me.
Turns out LA this year will top the 2009 for number of homicides and reach the staggering number of 300 homicides in a year.
I don't know but I suppose that it is something that it is considered I won't say normal, but not far from something in USA they expect from a city like LA.
Maybe not 300 homicides in a year, but 200? Maybe yes.
In Rome, a bit smaller than LA, more or less the same size of Chicago, there were 12 homicides in the whole 2019.
In the entire Italy (60 million people) in 2019 homicides were "only" 276.
I couldn't believe it when I was staying there that dangerous really meant "Escape from New York" dangerous.
My point is it's easy to say to expat to "integrate" when you are living in a violent society and where police on the street is armed to the teeth enforcing God only knows what law.
It's much less easy to adapt to foreigners when they are the ones not integrating and bringing their violent culture at your doorstep.
My father fully integrated but does all of those things. If all of your friends are from your culture, if you watch TV only from your own culture, etc. you’re not fully integrated. If you do the host country stuff AND your native stuff you are.
How many hours of American television are you going to require immigrants to watch? Lets use folks from Mexico as an example. Does Spanish-language television created in the US count? What about English-language content that was created in Mexico but for Mexican-American consumption? How many non-American friends do you have? What ratio of American friends does an immigrant need to have before it's okay for them to be here?
This is xenophobic bullshit and has no place on a forum like this.
I've watched thousands of hours of Americans television over the past 45 years, read a lot of their authors, especially underground and subcultures like comics, I've heard a lot of their music, immersed in a lot of their culture, have many friends who are Americans, I lived there for a few years, but I still think that fully integrating with US culture is a big mistake, because it's simply not relevant enough to give up other cultures.
The more you watch it, the more it's people shooting each other over a bar fight or people killing themselves to get a promotion at work or competing in general over things that have no real connection with happiness.
That's why many don't care about it and spend their time with people more like them that share a common background.
Understanding each other is more important that following every single rule to "integrate" in a culture that have basically no historical background other than avoiding taxes in their homeland.
Mexicans, on the other hand, have been there for millennia.
That's basically what immigration restrictions do. Only it is done through restricting the number of people from any one area rather than require complete cultural whitewashing.
I guess that's exactly what native Americans should have done
EDIT: I'm sensing a lot of guilty conscience from the downvotes (always appreciated when it's about exposing atrocious ways of thinking) but this time it was simply explaining what the natural consequence of that sentence woul be: US would not exist.
And maybe all of us would be better off, who knows...
This seems to have gained quite a lot of popularity. I think it's the third time I've seen this on the HN front page in the last month.
Although I find it abominable that even one person has carried their discrimination with them, I'm also surprised that this is a pattern. I've been in North America for about 4 years now and the only times caste has come up as a topic is westerners being curious about it.
Also not all Brahmins wear the thread on their shoulders and not everybody who wears it is a Brahmin, so it's a poor test.
I'm a non Brahmin who has had the thread ceremony. I used to wear the thread (I don't anymore because I'm not really religious and its too much of a hassle...)
I've been around silicon valley for decades. Caste discrimination hasn't 'arrived', it's been there for as long as I can remember.
Ask any Indian and they will tell you all about it. What they may not tell you is how hiring often is within certain ethnic demographics, also sometimes the case with eastern and central europeans.
My personal experience, admittedly anecdotal, for context: My cofounder and I have started 2 businesses together, across 11 years and I have no idea what his caste is. Of the 50+ Indians who work at our company I think I know the caste of two of them - because of a shared family last name. In my 17 years in the workforce working as an Indian with Indians in America, I have only once heard someone mention their own caste - which was to share A personal account of discrimination the previous generation of their family faced in India a few decades ago. Having said that, caste discrimination is alive and well in large pockets of ignorance in India and the larger a group of people the higher the likelihood of ignorance and bias. Given the sad history around caste in India, this is not a problem to ignore.
I know a Brahmin gentleman of my parents' generation, living in the US for decades. He was plenty fond of steak, until his kids got to marriage age, at which point he became vegetarian. He made it clear non-Brahmins would not be acceptable matches for his kids. So it may not be a big deal for your group, but it may be for others.
If US corporations actually followed the law and were held to account by a functioning government this wouldn't be an issue. This is only an issue because EEOC is only followed when it is useful to their leftist management. Otherwise, in the name of D&I, we get companies in the US mainland that are 97% Indian nationals on H1B. That can't happen in a fully functional US corporation that is following the law where laws are enforced. So it is really pointless to point out caste discrimination when US corporations are lawless and the US government is powerless.
You know, one thing that might help us outsiders is, what actually is the caste system?
Is it based on race (skin color), lineage (surnames) or some geographical criteria (article mentioned "do you swim" like maybe being near the ocean means you're better off or something)?!
Seriously, what are the hierarchical structures and how deep does it go.
This is to be expected. People will bring over their culture to wherever they move.
The only counter to this is cultural integration; however, some people will see that as cultural imperialism, or whatever other name is current.
The same issue is seen in Africa when new populations move into non traditional areas and bring their customs. If they are dispersed and don’t clump ala enclaves, they adopt local culture, but if they form enclaves and only hang out with others from their origin they just continue what they knew.
In the US so long as immigration was “stretched out” it allowed for slow integration. The speed of growth though allows for the culture migrate along with the population. That’s just how it works. An additional “phenomenon” is usually the transplanted population changes more slowly than the home population.
As a Singaporean Indian (Tamil) I've always found caste identity talk in the US/India very intriguing. I've never heard caste mentioned here in SG; in fact I don't even know what caste I'm from. How would one identify your caste? Can't those from a lower caste just claim that they are brahmins?
That can be generally done by checking what traditions one follows. For example, Brahmins are supposed to be involved with all priestly work and a strict Brahmin does not eat meat and wears Janeu[1].
As Dravidians your people have been on the receiving end of caste imposed by Aryans, so unless you were Brahmins they did not have the same incentives to preserve the system once they left the suffocating environment of India.
This story and related stories seem very coordinated. Also its not "richest tech companies", its just one incident at Cisco so the title of the story is really misleading. However, if anyone is found actually discriminating against an employee in terms of opportunities, I hope the law against bias gets enforced.
I am sympathetic to the cause but it seems like the Cisco incident is the only one being cited and it’s making the rounds every few weeks. Any sort of discrimination is terrible but this is getting disproportionately more attention than the other problems in the country.
This is one area I'm grateful for my own ignorance. I feel like not knowing about this system helps protect me from unconscious bias. The flipside of course is that I'm likely blind to discrimination if it's happening around me.
There is a narrative in the comments that the British have to be burdened with the majority of the blame for the malaise of the caste system. Here is a young untouchable girl's article in 1855 that sheds a light on the brutal oppression and subjugation that was already deeply ingrained in Indian society, and how the British introduced some balance.
The Mang and Mahar children never dare lodge a complaint even if the Brahman children throw stones at them and injure them seriously. They suffer silently because they know they have to go to the Brahmans’ houses to beg for the leftover food. Alas! O God! What agony this! I will burst into tears if I write more about this injustice. Because of such oppression, the merciful God has bestowed on us, this benevolent British government. Let us see how our pain has been mitigated under this government.
Earlier, Gokhale, Apate, Trimkaji, Andhala, Pansara, Kale, Behre, etc [all Brahman surnames], who showed their bravery by killing rats in their homes, persecuted us, not sparing even pregnant women, without any rhyme or reason. This has stopped now. Harassment and torture of Mahars and Mangs, common during the rule of Peshwas in Pune, have stopped. Now, human sacrifice for the foundation of forts and mansions has stopped – now, nobody buries us alive. Now, our population is growing in numbers. Earlier, if any Mahar or Mang wore fine clothes, they would say that only Brahmans should wear such clothes. Seen in fine clothes, we were earlier accused of stealing such clothes. Their religion was in danger of being polluted when Untouchables put clothes around their bodies; they would tie them to a tree and punish them. But, under British rule, anybody with money can buy and wear clothes. Earlier, punishment for any wrongdoing against the upper castes was to behead the guilty Untouchable— now, it has stopped. Excessive and exploitative tax has stopped. The practice of untouchability has stopped in some places. Killing has stopped on the playground. Now, we can even visit the marketplace.
Caste discrimination is even written in Mahabharata too. Do you guys think this caste discrimination in India and Indians is going away soon? I don't think so.
All Brahmins worship gods who are non-Brahmins in their avatar. To say that Brahmins practice caste discrimination is to say that Brahmins discriminate against their own gods. Doesn’t compute.
Indian lived in India for many years and in the UK. Never been subjected to caste discrimination or seen it, only heard the odd jokes in Punjabi songs, Jatt ones but never seen high caste Rajputs, Brahmins etc say anything. If anything I think the problem is economic background, its always money that determines real status and that too the poorer suffer most.
Yeah, no. You can't really claim that the treatment of the Dalits in India and the Irish travellers Ireland is somehow equivalent, that's simply a lie. The racism of the Caste system in India and its violence has absolutely no equivalent in the West today. Even Roma in Europe are treated better all things considered and it a low standard.
The Roma are much closer to a caste, as far as I know. I mean in terms of their history & behaviour (for want of a better word): the borders of who is & isn't a traveller have been more porous over time, while I think the Roma have been about as isolated as any other Indian caste.
I understand the misuse you're against here. "To lie" means to knowingly speak or write a falsehood. However, any reader knows he isn't claiming the speaker is a liar. He's claiming the statement is false, whether the author knows it at all. It's imprecise, but still legible.
I don't have a problem with the word I used. These situations are not equivalent at all, why bring that here when it's has absolutely nothing to do with topic at hand? in a dubious attempt at whataboutism? I stand by what I said.
I’m curious whether there’s data showing the age breakdown of the perpetrators and victims in these cases and whether the rise of Hindu nationalism contributed to an increase.
If you are living in the more progressive parts of the country (generally more urban) being found out things will make things... awkward. Not in the sense that there will be consequences, but you will have aired out your insecurities to others.
This is shameful. I thought Indian American community had moved on from things like these. I suppose there will always be some people who do these kind of things.
These things are rampant in India at the time of marriages. Some parents in India emotionally blackmail their children into marrying into their own caste. Sometimes people have to marry into their own subcast.
(I am talking about people being forced to marry against their will and give up on love)
A thread that shows the membership to higher castes or the lack of.
WARNER: They patted his shoulders to see if he was wearing a white thread that only Brahmins wear.
CORNELIUS: So with you not even knowing, they will try to pat your shoulder and try to see - the finding this thread.
WARNER: Was he a Brahmin like them?
CORNELIUS: In other ways, they will call you for a swim, you know? Hey. Let's go for a swim - because everybody takes their shirt off. And all they know who are wearing threads, who are not.
Hinduism is divided into four societies, Brahmins- the highest, Kshatriya- The nobles and warriors, Vaishyas- The traders, Shudras- Traditionally artisans and labourers also untouchables. The first three Varnas (as were called) had the rights to pursue Veda, where as the forth were considered very low and weren’t even allowed to enter temple.
Going to expose my ignorance but I read a similar story of people giving back massages to feel for some kind of necklace or undergarment that indicates caste position.
I forget know the details I’m sure someone can correct me.
Indian Brahmins wear a thread across IF they are religious. Indian women don’t wear it. Not all Hindus were it.
Wearing that thread means the person upholds certain rituals and dietary restrictions. They fast on certain days and have to offer prayers to their ancestors. They change it once a year. It is religiously required to change it with other men of your faith and sub-sect(like a Jewish minyan). All Hindus and even women wore sacred thread at one time because it was necessary for rituals and for performing death austerities. But Brahmins had more duties towards it. They have to pray thrice a day touching it. They have to fast and follow ritual purity because the thread is what connects them and their families to their ancestors. If you see it..it will be knotted sometimes or have stuff tied to it. It is code for whether one is married or not. How many children they have..if their parents are deceased or not etc.
And that’s why there is so much secrecy and protectiveness around who has ownership and scholarship over which books. Don’t you see? Vedic Hinduism was the woke liberal version and an experiment of an ancient people who wanted to bring the immigrants and the invaders and the local population, but membership means adherence to a closed group. The rituals were perimeter security. There are four main books of faith for Hindu Brahmins. They are called Vedas. Three of which are commonly followed. Parts of the fourth one is lost.
Vedas are canon. It doesn’t change. A Brahmin belongs to a group that follows one of the three books. You can’t follow more than one and the belief is that all those who follow that particular book share the same pool ancestral souls.
Even prayers differ between them. Their way of life too. If you read the vedas, it’s about the way of life. There is no mention of god. But there are some puranas(stories derived from commentaries based on the vedas), you would find stuff like tax codes. How to eat, how you farm, how to create weapons..where the borders are ..when will the eclipses occur etc. these are not for public consumption and to share. This had to stay within the insiders only. It was memorized by the Brahmin priests and they knew how to decide the ciphers because their duty was towards the kingly caste. In the olden days, if anyone can read it..it’s like allowing anyone to read classified files.
Ancient India was super codified. There was a place for everyone in terms of what dharma or job they have to do. It’s rigidity also gave it stability. But also made it brittle. Anything that influences from the outside thus structure would weaken it. That was the reason behind the closed looo socio economic system.
Clearly it lost its usefulness. With the British abolishing princely states, an entire class of Kshatriyas disappeared. It’s like a table standing on three legs. Brahmins who were supposed to be in service of Kshatriyas became redundant too.
The balance used to be that Brahmin priests had knowledge but must take a vow of poverty..Kshatriya Kings must rule the country and be ready to die for their people..Vaishyas were wealthy but must fund the kingdom by paying taxes and bearing all the costs while the labourer Shudra class did manual work and contributed nothing else. Dalits were outside this system. They were the outsiders who didn’t subscribe to this social order.
The Vedas say that a Brahmin ceases to be a Brahmin when he crosses the oceans. Everything we do here as immigrants are either religious or nostalgia. The mathematician Srinivasan Ramanujam refused to set sail to England because he was a Brahmin and crossing the oceans meant that he has abandoned the religion of his forefathers. SV Brahmins still consider themselves Brahmins...but when they step away from their practices (a lot of it defined by the sacred thread), they are Mlecchas themselves within each other. A Brahmin not wearing the thread won’t be invited to the annual thread changing ceremonies. Why? It has nothing to do with him. Just like a Dalit or a white person has nothing to do with a brahmin’s religious activities.
Women have identifying jewelery too. At least in the south, look at the marriage chain they wear (because we don’t have wedding rings), you can find out what kind of family she is married to and even within Brahmins, you can figure out which region they hail from and which broad subsect they belong to.
Why? Because women had rules too. For example, there is a Brahmin sub sect where they have marks on their shoulders. Like a quick branding of a religious symbol. If a woman has these ritual marks on her body, she will not eat in anyone’s house. She will not allow anyone into her kitchen..her domain. Except other women who have that branding too. Because now only those who follow the kitchen code have access to it.
I am a Brahmin but I was not allowed kitchen access into many of my friends home kitchens after a certain age.(children are exempt from these rules) I had my own set of utensils when the mom of the house invited me to join me for family lunches. It was beautiful sterling silver and expensive, but it was meant for guests. We just laughed about it because we knew why. Even my mother was given the special ‘separate tableware’ treatment despite being a Brahmin who also followed religious and ritual purity. Because she was not from that family.
I can tell within 30 minutes where another indian is from ..language, food, clothes, jewelery. Even the dot we wear between our brows. Men have less distinguishers in their western office wear. And yes, it’s important for me to connect to people just like me. Why? Because I am human. I seek comfort with my kin. Doesn’t mean I am a casteist.
There is meta to this too...for example, there are many subjects I won’t speak to men that I would with other women easily. Why? Because as opposite gendered individuals, we don’t have shared experiences and sometimes one just wants to feel comfortable with someone who understands. I don’t have the time and energy or money to seek a $250/hour therapist to ‘talk about things’. I want community. If I want to talk about my mom, I will call my cousin. Not my co worker.
>Other tests include patting an Indian man on the back to see whether he is wearing a “sacred thread” worn by some Brahmins, the highest-ranked caste. (This gesture is sometimes referred to as the “Tam-Bram pat,” in reference to Tamil-speaking Brahmins.)
Most of the Indian population lives in small towns and villages where everyone knows one another. People would notice if you suddenly start claiming to be from a different community.
The classification of higher and lower caste itself is an oversimplification.
Wearing the thread implies that you are from a Brahmin community. Brahmin is just one of the many communities that exist in India based on geography, language (including numerous dialects), wealth and religion (including different sects). Each of these communities think they are better than some subset of indian ethnicities.
Some groups (Dalits being one of the prominent examples) are unfortunately at the receiving end of biases from almost everyone else.
The popularity of the Indian version is a gift of spite from the British colonial rulers before they quit the subcontinent after successfully splitting into many nations with their only strategy ‘divide and rule’.
I literally don’t know even one culture or country that doesn’t follow its own version of caste system. To understand it and get rid of it, we have to ask why it is able to survive.
I am from the sub continent. We are a billion plus people beating the same name. We have hundreds of languages. I am certainly going to ask anyone who calls themselves an Indian to figure out if they are my kin. Why? Because as an immigrant in a foreign land, I want to be friends with someone like me. I can’t be friendly to the millions of Indian immigrants.
I want to hang around with someone with whom I share more things Indian because I miss home sometimes. I miss the language, the food, the smells of a Hindu Brahmin kitchen and all the things that reminds me of my community. That’s not castesim. To equate this to casteism makes a mockery of the horrors and injustices of caste system.
No. There is no caste system amongst Indians in the Bay Area. We should ALL be grateful to be living during these times. It’s infinitely better than how our ancestors were living. It can get even better.
Mockery. This lawsuit makes a mockery of the ancestors of CA Dalits who have had the opportunity to step outside of the system and still engaging in this sort of manufactured divisiveness.
Dalits were not part of the varna system in India. The texts say that there were four castes and everyone else was considered an ‘outsider’. The word ‘Mleccha’ means outsider and that included anyone who didn’t follow the structure of society with the four castes. People with unfamiliar behaviour and different food habits. The Greeks for example were Mlecchas. The Dalits and possibly the local tribes were Mleccha too. They were excluded and when the people who formed the Hindu society became dominant, the local population were at the fringes of society but now dependent on a domainant society that rejects them.
India has thousands and thousands of years of history and so many migrations and invasions. It is insane to look at caste system from that framework.
1. Is the social structure in India problematic? Yes.
2. Is something being done to rectify it in India? Yes.
3. Does it have anything to do with indian immigrants in Silicon Valley? No.
The very term ‘tam-bram’ pat is offensive. Not all non Dalits are Brahmins and not all Brahmins are tamilian.
The state of CA is suing Cisco. That by itself goes to show that this lawsuit is politically energized and has no legs to stand on. For shame!
Caste Confusion and Census Enumeration in Colonial India, 1871-1921
Pretty illuminating..about the British understanding of caste and how they conducted their census.
[..] Caste data also failed to meet the goals of uniformity and comparability. Most Muslims listed their caste even though they were assumed not to have one. Part of this confusion was due to enumerators not following instructions: “the enumerators must understand that they have nothing whatsoever to do with Caste Classification, this will be done afterwards by the Compilers, and, in this column, they are to enter the Caste or Class as it is given to them by, or for, each individual.”41 Another problem with knowledge of India that emerged through this process was that local colonial officials patterned their own cate- gorization on pre-existing understandings of caste, which were not nationally consistent. From these data, Waterfield could only conclude that the “caste system is perhaps as prevalent among the Mahomedans as among those pro- fessing the Hindoo religion.”42 Even Christians listed their caste, Waterfield lamented, which led him to explain that those who did list their caste must be Hindoo converts.
In addition to people’s skill at manipulating the caste lists were the highly dis-
43
44
no sides in these feuds.
Waterfield concluded that the main problems with caste calculations were
“due partly to the intrinsic difficulties on the subject, and partly to the absence of a uniform plan of classification.”46 Commenting on the 1871 census effort, C. Elliot, Secretary to Government for the Northwestern Provinces, wrote:
[T]he caste statistics are the most unsatisfactory part of the return. Greater accu- racy than before has been aimed at, and probably obtained, but still there is much error and confusion in the figures. A really scientific and sound classification is hardly possible in the face of the general ignorance of this subject which prevails among the people themselves, the frequency with which the same caste is called by different names in different places, and the tendency to confuse caste with occupa-
47
Frustrations in the first set of censuses stemmed from procedural problems compounded by the lack of suitable conceptualization. The grand expectation that colonial census commissioners would need only to collate caste data was thwarted by widespread uncertainty in India about what caste was.[..]
[..] There was also growing unrest concerning caste categories among India scholars and activists. By the time of India’s third national census in 1891, “many Indian political activists had become extremely census-savvy and were beginning to debate the definitions of the terms being used to describe them.”63
The fact that the census introduced new labels for various groups did not automatically transform Indian reality. There is evidence, however, to suggest that people were subscribing to census definitions and that they attached impor- tance to how they were classified. Quite often, to the irritation of enumerators, respondents would “describe themselves as anything but what they are.”64 This was the opposite of the sort of self-identification for which census planners had hoped. On this note, J. A. Baines argued in 1899 census correspondence that “I am inclined to advise the omission of caste from the Imperial schedule, and to make use of the returns of 1891 as a standard until 1911.”65 There still remained a great deal of confusion among all involved in the census project about how to classify caste. In his report on the 1891 census of India, E. Maclagan wrote, “The instructions I issued are in many parts word for word the same as those issued in 1881 . . . they were not, however, free from faults . . . the terminology was in many cases different from that of the translation issued to enumerators, and many of the superior officials were much puzzled at the inconsistencies of the two sets of orders.”66 Inefficient enumeration and lack of consensus on a definition of caste fostered more confusion. The tension between the pragmat- ics of administration on the ground and the imperial objectives of accumulating knowledge for the governance of populations led commissioners Plowden and Baines to suggest removing caste from the census.[..]
A similar sort of thing exist at most companies in one form or another. For example, at my company some people's opinions are valued more than others. People base their evaluation of others on communal opinion which can contain discriminatory trends. It produces a strata within the organization whether that opinion comes from a last name or heritage, or some other trait like sex, accent, philosophy, etc.
> For example, at my company some people's opinions are valued more than others
At your company people with lighter skins are more valued than others? Because that's what we're talking here in regard to Indian castes. Please name your company.
I'd like to keep my job, so I can't say the name. It is in the financial services industry.
There is discrimination on sex. You can also see that there are very few people of different ethnic backgrounds in positions of leadership. I've had other people with more tenure than me state that if you have specific qualities, you are likely to go farther (white/Irish decent, male, catholic).
Also, what we are talking about is the discriminatory stratification of a group (company or country).
How the world turns! 100 years ago, an Irish last name in America would relegate you to menial labor with no hope of advancement. Being Catholic (at least in the Sourther USA) would land you with a cross burning in your yard at night.
Yep. It's all based on the current people or group of people in power. It seems that if you want to be CEO at my company, you must be a male of Irish decent (all the CEOs of the past 30-40 years have been, maybe even for the complete history of the company and I know who the next one is planned/rumored to be and he fits that too). I'm sure there are still areas or companies that do discriminate the other direction too.
Wow, this needs to be more widely discussed. This is eye opening. I’ve definitely seen this “dance” going on between new Indian coworkers and could detect there was some shared knowledge I was missing but had no idea what it meant, what was going on, or if it was friendly or not.
(Especially the vegetarian question and asking if “that was out of choice or cultural”. I figured this was dog whistling to religious affiliation and felt uncomfortable about it but regrettably just stayed out of it.)
I want to apologize to my Indian coworkers and especially directs, that I was so naive to this. You absolutely do not deserve this kind of treatment anywhere but especially the US and immigration status really compounds this and makes this oppressive.
I am absolutely going to be more aware and diligent about this and raise flags when I see it going forward. Not okay. I am so sorry.
I have witnessed this as well, and it has been absolutely shocking and disgusting. Here is my experience. I am leading a meeting with about four native Indians that were here in America, and a couple that were dialed in from India. The meeting was with a large US based financial institution. Towards the end of the call, a senior member of the team joined. The mood of the meeting changed entirely. Everyone on the call kept asking for his opinion and what he thought, and he had nothing to add and no context about anything we had been discussing. I thought that was weird, and then started googling their last names and caste systems in India on a hunch. Yep, it was the reason, I deduced. I have no proof, but if I were a betting man... I always thought the highest castes in India were religious, so it seems like this is a battle between the castes lower than that. Regardless, there is no place for this in America.
Let me clarify my point here. It was not that I 'saw people asking for opinions', it was the whole interaction. Literally, is was shocking. The silence, the agreement, and everything else. People that had made a point before were afraid to express it. People that were speaking did not speak anymore. The incorrect path was taken, and it was not the first time I've seen this behavior. I look up everything I suspect online, and I don't think that's making a leap. It is simply using tools available to shine a light on the truth.
That question has nothing to do with Caste specifically. It is more of a thing between North and South Indians where North Indians are usually more of a meat eater than South but again it depends on the region. Plenty of North Indians are hardcore Vegetarian. It has nothing to do with caste or religious affiliation. Being a vegetarian in general is looked down upon even in America, isn't it ? Go watch the movie "escape plan" where schwarzenegger says "You hit like a vegetarian". Also the vegetarian question comes up with Indians because it is difficult to go to a non Indian Restaurant with hardcore vegetarians as they may not find many options. So when a group of Indian coworkers go out to eat, they have to know who are hardcore vegetarians and choose a restaurant accordingly.
>That question has nothing to do with Caste specifically.
It has everything to do with Caste specifically. This is the question we often get when upper caste folk are not able to figure out our caste from the names.
>So when a group of Indian coworkers go out to eat, they have to know who are hardcore vegetarians and choose a restaurant accordingly.
Do you know why this happens? The vegetarians consider non-vegetarians as 'impure'. They want to follow their tradition of not eating in an 'impure' place. This is one of the main forms of discrimination that lower castes face.
pls read this to understand that not so hidden meaning behind the word 'non-vegetarian'
It is absolutely true that some pure vegetarians consider anything that has been in contact with meat to be "impure", though the extent to which they insist upon this varies. Eg if the cook has handled meat, the pure vegetarian might insist the cook washes their hands thoroughly before preparing the vegetarian's food. I've seen pure vegetarians in Subway restaurants ask the cook to change their gloves before making their sandwich.
But it's wrong to assume that by default every pure vegetarian extends this concept of "impure" to the non-vegetarian person, let alone discriminates against non-vegetarians. I don't doubt that some people do it, but it is by no means universal. To ascribe this ulterior motive to every Indian that asks another Indian about their vegetarianism is just silly. It's just a conversation-starter, an ice-breaker, because pure-vegetarianism is so common in India in the first place. And is useful when choosing restaurants for group lunches.
Especially if we're talking about Indians living in the US, treating non-vegetarians like untouchables is going to be a very hard task for them, unless they don't interact with anyone who isn't Indian either. Is it possible? Sure. Is it the norm? Absolutely not.
Not sure if you know, but there are 'Upper Castes' that eat Non-Vegetarian food. Asking someone if they are vegetarian or not, just to ascertain their caste would be a dumb thing to do, especially when you can know someone's caste from their last name (and maybe some googling on top, if you really really wanted to know their caste)
I have a shellfish allergy. I am also high caste Brahmin. Me asking about people’s dietary preferences before going to a restaurant would make me a casteist?
I am not saying caste discrimination doesn't exist. But as an Indian American living in the United States for 20 years, I can tell you that I have never seen/experienced/practiced it here in the US and I will not let anyone do it either on my team (I run a company) or personal family/friends. Having said that, it is a very common joke among a group of Indians when they get together about the whole "vegetarian" vs "non vegetarian" thing. You can argue that it is bad to joke about this topic but it has nothing to do with caste or religion. That's what I am saying.
Are you yourself higher caste? Being a member of the group that isn't discriminated against frequently makes it harder to see the discrimination. My wife is Indian-American, and her parents are a mixed-caste marriage; I've seen caste bias between her own relatives, even though they're all in the US and have been since the 1970s.
Segregation based on caste is the way of life. Its also the reason why arranged marriages exist. To maintain caste purity. If you notice something clearly the only ones who are denying caste discrimination are the upper castes.
They are getting uncomfortable because the white people are learning about it.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24552047