Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

India’s caste system remains entrenched, 75 years after independence

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 86 posts

Re: India’s caste system remains entrenched, 75 years after independence

#61

Post by bsanr2 »

silicon2401 wrote: post #56
newsclues wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wrote that it doesn’t get talked about which isn’t precise. It’s largely ignored by most, dismissed or downvoted, and our society tends to pretend it’s not a problem.

I agree that the class issues are given disproportionately little attention compared to other issues like race, despite the fact that a poor white guy with no connections has it way harder than a rich black woman from a family like Thomas Sowell. However I don't know enough about India to say that it's comparable to the US in that regard. At least we can say that they seem to be much more overt in India (based on thi…

>despite the fact that a poor white guy with no connections has it way harder than a rich black woman from a family like Thomas Sowell.

I think it's interesting that this comparison is the metric on which you come to the conclusion that class is more of a determinant to outcome than race. I dare to say that it's a sort of "Obama Fallacy" in action.

Re: India’s caste system remains entrenched, 75 years after independence

#62

Post by alisonkisk »

OliverJones wrote: post #26

It's interesting for this white american guy to learn a little bit about other cultures' prejudicial tribal structures. (That's my attempt at neutral language for what american sociologists call "structural racism".) I suspect it's trickier to learn about those structures in one's own culture.

"structural racism" is the neutral scientific term.

Re: India’s caste system remains entrenched, 75 years after independence

#64

Post by amriksohata »

nyolfen wrote: post #36
raven108 wrote: post #21

India vedas talk about “varna” - class system based on ability & skills, not caste system. Modern Indian caste system was introduced by British to divide and conquer. Economist with a long history of Hindu phobia and in the vein of colonial British rake it up every now and then. Caste comes from Spanish casta, no equivalent term exists in sanskrit for this.

jatis have been endogymous for ~2000 years according to genetic studies. nowhere else on earth has this level of genetic segregation within a single region.

jatis yes, but not segregation, classification yes, not hierarchy on steroids until the british came in

Re: India’s caste system remains entrenched, 75 years after independence

#65

Post by amriksohata »

The word "caste" comes from the Portuguese word "castus" which means clean and pure. No such word exists in any Hindu scripture and certainly Varna does not mean clean and pure. The Varna system was designated occupational duties based on character alone, yes there was conflict but it was only till the British adopted the word and used it to divide and rule people did it become a major problem.

Re: India’s caste system remains entrenched, 75 years after independence

#66

Post by mrlonglong »

300bps wrote: post #33
ramblerman wrote: post #22

This is a real risk when working with offshore teams in India. We had to get involved in the interview process multiple times as the talent is absolutely there. But left to their own devices a lot of the sites ended up hiring friends or "cousins". I'm not sure if that came down to Caste or just "you scratch my back, and I'll scratch yours" but it was far from meritocratic.

Hard to generalize about a country of over a billion people but in many areas of India there is a strong sense of “keep money in the family” which is why they like to hire their cousins. That’s also why even marrying first cousins is so common in certain areas. In the south, about 25% of people marry their first cousin. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cousin_marriage#India

This makes me shudder to think of the genetic damage being done to these people. The rule should always be fresh genes to keep the lineage healthy.

Re: India’s caste system remains entrenched, 75 years after independence

#67

Post by mrlonglong »

amriksohata wrote: post #65

The word "caste" comes from the Portuguese word "castus" which means clean and pure. No such word exists in any Hindu scripture and certainly Varna does not mean clean and pure. The Varna system was designated occupational duties based on character alone, yes there was conflict but it was only till the British adopted the word and used it to divide and rule people did it become a major problem.

It's even worse than that, over centuries the UK took trillions out of India to keep their world empire afloat. That's something that shames me as a Brit.

Re: India’s caste system remains entrenched, 75 years after independence

#68

Post by nyolfen »

amriksohata wrote: post #64
nyolfen wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

jatis have been endogymous for ~2000 years according to genetic studies. nowhere else on earth has this level of genetic segregation within a single region.

jatis yes, but not segregation, classification yes, not hierarchy on steroids until the british came in

yeah bro, dalits just really love cleaning waste

Re: India’s caste system remains entrenched, 75 years after independence

#69

Post by yumraj »

Caste system in India will not die till there is caste based reservation, which only seems to be expanding.

Those who benefit from the reservation have incentive to keep the caste system alive.

Those who do not benefit from caste based reservation develop resentment against those who benefit, furthering the caste based divide.

Due to the abuse there is no political will to change anything.

Re: India’s caste system remains entrenched, 75 years after independence

#70

Post by whycombinatore »

raven108 wrote: post #21

India vedas talk about “varna” - class system based on ability & skills, not caste system. Modern Indian caste system was introduced by British to divide and conquer. Economist with a long history of Hindu phobia and in the vein of colonial British rake it up every now and then. Caste comes from Spanish casta, no equivalent term exists in sanskrit for this.

Irrelevant where the word comes from. You're indulging in revisionism to make yourself look good. Caste system has been in existence for no less than 2000 years.
Post reply on HN