Question from a layman. How does one know that someone is from another caste? If I was someone from India, how would I know what caste my fellow Indian is from? Is there some kind of code? Or where you are from?
Here in New Delhi, people will straight up ask you, especially if they're older.
Trying to get a house in Delhi as a single, straight male is an exercise in discrimination 101. Landlords will ask you if you drink alcohol, eat meat, have female friends, belong to a non-Hindu religion (especially if you're muslim), your caste, and heck, even what city/state you're from.
My friends have been denied housing simply for being from a state with a somewhat poor reputation. Some were denied because they were lawyers AND from a specific caste (the landlords feared that my friends would somehow take over the property through legal shenanigans). And I won't even get into how hard it is for a muslim male to find housing in India, especially outside of big cities.
So much of this simply never gets talked about in Indian society. But its just accepted as something that happens. Sometimes feel that we're developing backwards as a society.
It's true in places you mentioned from even my understanding from multiple people. But it's the same in the whole of India is not correct, as Kerala comparatively has very less problems like this. It's actually surprising for people from Kerala to even know such issues still exist even in metro cities of other states. True that it makes sense to generalize your comment as Kerala is just 2.5 - 2.7% of the Indian population.
Usually you know someone's caste from their last name.
I am someone who was not given a caste-based last name because my parents were influenced by a regional movement against caste. (I didn't even have a last name to begin with but eventually added a non caste-based one to avoid visa issues.) Whenever I traveled by train and chatted up with a co-passenger, almost surely they would ask my name and would never be satisfied with just knowing my first name. They would get visibly confused when I would tell them I didn't have a last name.
Edit: Curiously, based on the last name of the person (Soundarajan) whose talk got cancelled, I would actually have guessed that they were upper caste (Brahmin - the highest).
For the same reason that I, a white English-speaking person, am not going to be able to fool a British old-money old-boys club that I have the same cultural background that they do.
As far as I know (from some coworkers) they do.
But last name is only the first step/flag in identifying to which caste person belongs. Sorry, I don't remember exact details, but there some additional steps like special clothes I think?
> Edit: Curiously, based on the last name of the person (Soundarajan) whose talk got cancelled, I would actually have guessed that they were upper caste (Brahmin - the highest).
This is most likely because her parents/grandparents changed to using patronymical last names, precisely to avoid this problem. There was a very popular movement in South India (particularly the state of TamilNadu), called the self-respect movement, which a large part of society (except for the upper castes - who had a lot to lose), adopted.
This is why my own name does not give away my caste. Because my grandfather switched to patronymics from the existing caste based last names.
I’m curious: would you say the absence of a surname implied anything about caste? I’ve dealt with the children of people with leprosy (mostly SC, with a little ST and OBC) in the vicinity of Hyderabad, and it wasn’t dreadfully uncommon for their parents or grandparents to have no surname on their Aadhaar card, at least, and perhaps even a few of the children.
(In Telangana, surnames are almost exclusively used as just an initial preceding the given name, and sometimes that’s even all that ends up on official documentation.)
I don't know, in my personal case, this was definitely a regional movement - with plenty of upper caste families also giving their children no surname or a generic non-caste based ones. That is why you will see a lot more "Kumars" and "Anands" and "Ranjans" and "Jyotis" from Bihar than from other parts of the country.
> Whenever I traveled by train and chatted up with a co-passenger, almost surely they would ask my name and would never be satisfied with just knowing my first name.
What happens of they find out you’re a lower caste, so they just stop talking to you, talk down to you, etc.?
I don't think any of those things are true. Indians in general are hyper "hierarchy" aware (not just with respect to caste btw). They just feel the need to know how to place you.
I'm also not lower caste (or particularly upper caste for that matter) and my parents were doctors, so my family was relatively well-off in a very, very poor part of India, so almost all other social indicators would tell them to place me higher in social status. So, the experience of others would vary.
Your parents tell you your caste. You can also get a caste certificate from you local municipal office which helps you take advantage of some perks if you belong to a "lower" class.
Generally you wont be able to figure the caste of someone but there are clues like skin color, fairer skin generally is "upper" caste, sometimes your surname also gives away your caste.
Unfortunately some Indians specially from the "upper"caste take this very seriously and think they are superior compared to other Indians.
fair skin thing is nonsense. I'm a Tamil Brahmin (Brahmin being the highest caste) and I'm one of the darkest skinned people in India. Most of my friends are far darker than most Indians from North India. It's much easier to identify through surname (Pichai I'm pretty sure is a brahmin surname), but certain states like Tamil Nadu banned surnames for this reason. If people ask me my surname, it is T. Every government document has T as my surname, I just go with that
Well it is a stereotype, and they are often true, but not always.
eg, in TN, the average brahmin or upper class individual will be fair-skinned while the lower class one would be dark skinned.
I guess up in the North, this does not hold.
> but certain states like Tamil Nadu banned surnames for this reason.
The govt did not ban it. It was more a social movement where one was looked down upon (and even discriminated against for showing they belonged to the higher castes). That's why there are still folks who continue to keep 'Iyer' in their name.
Well if Surnames are banned, why is the name Pichai still used? Genuinely asking. I also see tons of engineers from Tamil Nadu in the US with last names Iyer and Iyengars.
It wasn't banned. It was one of the side effects of the popular Self Respect movement which saw most people switch to patronymical last names from caste-based last names.
Ofcourse the Iyers and Iyengars wouldn't switch because they had more to lose than they gained from hiding their caste identity (they are the so called upper castes who have traditionally held a much priviledged position).
The point where caste defines purity. Classism is a separate axis from the notion of religious purity that is a fundamental part of caste (which is effectively an amalgamation of the two). As such, the closest "reference point" for a U.S. citizen is the attitudes held by antebellum slaveowners regarding race. You can't comprehend the sort of...emotions that inspire the strict anti-miscegenation of racism or caste-ism, from a lens of "knighthood in the olden times".
Nevermind that one can be "knighted" - the idea that one could be "brahminated" is no different from thinking one could be "whited" in the antebellum south. (And no, the "honorary whiteness" given to certain asian ethnicities is not akin to "whiting" - it's merely defining a subdivision of a caste to be slightly higher than the other lower castes)
If we're being strictly anthropological Western 'racism' is a type of caste system but all caste systems have the trait of assigning better or worse outcomes to disparate breeding pools, however defined, and re-enforcing breeding rights on some level. Almost all human societies are caste systems of some sort since the introduction of farming at least, and from a more modern perspective is a composite of multiple, simultaneous caste systems (usually referred derisively as 'isms').
At no point. Indians have a distorted view of caste because of 400 years of British invasion after 500 years of Islamic invasion.
Since economic mobility was greately reduced because of economic stagnation caused by centuries of invasion, they re-applied the originally profession-based caste system using racial discrimination brought to India by the Mughals and the British.
Unfortunately, it has to be. If you want to decrease the effects of centuries of oppression, the oppressed have to be given a giant helping hand. Which is done by both the union and state governments in India in the form of reservations for people belonging to oppressed castes. Now this is a controversial subject, because there are people who have abused the reservations system, but overall I am of the opinion that it is a much needed system. The only way to enforce that only the oppressed castes get these benefits is to officially recognize castes and issue certificates attesting this.
That problem and increasing intercaste marriages is why casteism is dying in many parts of India. The new generation doesn't know how to determine the caste and are generally not interested. Most of the system in large parts of the country will die out with the previous generation.
That NPR story was great, thanks. The transcript is definitely worth reading for anyone curious about this.
In a nutshell, people can sometimes tell by your last name, and if they can’t, they will ask you questions about your background, such as what town and/or neighborhood your family is from, until they figure it out.
In one example in the story, a guy is outed as a Dalit by a coworker who knew him from college.
Outing a co-worker is pretty mean. And asking all kinda of private background questions in order to judge someone's social standing and treat them accordingly is intrusive and bigotted. As usual, racists are more often than not mean bigots.
It is somewhat different if you grew up in the caste system, and the discriminatory behaviour was just ingrained. If you start falling back to that based on, e.g., surname it's hard to avoid. Actively seeking information you can use to treat people like shit is a different level all together!
> And asking all kinda of private background questions in order to judge someone's social standing and treat them accordingly is intrusive and bigotted.
This also happens in the west and it's not caste-related. Go to a suburban barbecue or something, and observe: people will ask what you do for a living, which neighborhood you live in, how long have you been living here, where did you originally come from, and so on. Often they are doing this kind of small talk just so they can figure out where you are on the social totem pole.
It varies from place to place. For example, people are segregated by caste in many places. In other cases, it's easy to identify from surname. But there is one method that you should be aware of - it's more relevant to silicon valley. There are a lot of cases where it's not immediately possible to distinguish caste from name or looks. People from all castes look more or less similar. In such cases, the caste believers would do covert background research. That might be from your social media profile, public and political connections or even professional service records. There are also cases where they make the determination based on subtle differences in traditions (like marriage ceremonies or celebrations, clothing styles etc). And then there are some obnoxious methods like patting someone on their back to see if they wear a 'sacred thread' under their shirt.
In many regions / castes, the last name is specific to a caste. Also sometimes you can tell by appearance, e.g. I can often recognize Brahmins from my ancestral region just by looking at them.
That said, one of the reasons I'm really skeptical claims that casteism is widespread in Silicon valley is that I have a last name that's caste-ambiguous (could be anything from dalit to brahmin) and yet I've never been asked my caste. So it's rather bizarre that casteism could be so widespread without me having ever encountered it.
Aside from last names, diet is a big giveaway. If someone is vegetarian, it is highly likely that they come from the so called "upper" castes. In certain interpretations of Hinduism, which are now becoming the dominant ones in India, meat is considered polluting. If you eat meat, you are dirty, and this "dirtiness" is at the root of why some castes are still considered untouchable.
