This is very weird, I notice a lot of apps are doing this.
Even Firefox Focus, considered to be a "privacy-focused" browser, has this notification pop up every time you add a character to their address/search bar.
> I'm a very white guy living in California and I often get the impression that caste is something that Indian folks living here are aware of amongst each other, but they don't really discuss it with white people.
The level of conformance (or even awareness!) to caste is different for different Indians even. Some don't even know much about the system apart from what has been taught in the textbook, being raised in a liberal environment. Some are steeped into it. Most are in the middle, and many are very very confused about the whole thing, which would mean that even if they tell you, their interpretation might be different from someone else.
In my opinion a lot of caste stuff is just hogwash. But certain remnants remain, and these remnants vary from person to person and place to place (some might put an emphasis on diet/religion, some on the education you receive, some on the gods you worship, etc). A lot of it has been used to divide people in the locality against each other, which is essentially just classic politics. But much of the new generation (depending on where they're from) is quite ignorant of/against all this, which is good.
Its not just remnants. In major cities like Bangalore caste is regularly a part of who people will rent their house or sell their property to and is definitely a major part of marriage discussions. All Indian dating portals have caste up front and center in their selection criteria.
As I said, ~not all places~ varies from place to place. Haven't myself had an issue yet, coming from a not-so-desirable caste, and I know plenty who haven't either.
> definitely a major part of marriage discussions
Again, not all of them; speaking from personal experiences. Most of those sites have a "don't know/don't care" field, and many have that option set :) I agree that the field itself shouldn't be there, but I tend to highlight progress wherever possible
I don't deny this happens, but it doesn't happen _all_ the time, or even the majority of the times nowadays (I can only say what I've experienced, I know others would have seen differently).
Maybe your experiences are different but from my friends and personal experiences it happens all the time. Two brahmin friend of mine who were looking to rent in a posh locality in Bangalore had to provide their contacts in the village to make it clear to the landlords that they were genuine brahmins from the right caste. Incidentally, both were PhDs from US institutes so that did not prevent the checks. Remember, Bangalore is a reasonably progressive city. Caste checks are routine and frequent in smaller towns and villages.
Which part of Bangalore did this happen? Landlords usually use veg-only as a dogwhistle to select brahmins. Also they are wary to let out to other religions, muslims especially.
I'm not a Brahmin (and am technically from a much "lower caste") and I wouldn't eat lard (I'm a vegetarian). IMO caste and vegetarianism are different concepts. While certain castes/communities/regions might promote vegetarianism and some might not, I'm not sure if they're always an identifying marker. A lot of people in India are vegetarian for a multitude of reasons and a lot of them who are new to the States might not know what contains lard and what not, so he might have been looking out for you in case you didn't know. I for one didn't know about rennet until much later, and am much grateful to an American dude who pointed that out to me.
I think it sucks that people conflate two different things, because it gives someone who isn't from an Indian background incorrect details. I'm not saying that that Indian-origin guy isn't casteist (given that he reacted against your "brahmin" comment that way), but certain nuances are lost here.
Vegetarian is a huge identity marker. Quote from a professor from my college to my then girlfriend about me - “I wish he was at least a vegetarian”. I happen to be a vegan now and I have a lighter complexion and I clearly get assumed to be “upper caste” and somehow “smart” goes along with it.
Answering to GP above - I don’t mind talking about it but some bar conversations have opened with it. That’s not pleasant. It’s not a light subject. It’s like me opening with some light chat about racism in America. It requires nuance to understand how deeply and yet subtly embedded caste is in India. You can’t get a house for rent in certain neighbourhoods of even major metros. It’s the reason I don’t use a last name at all. Not even legally. If people shun the practice of disclosing the caste it’ll one day disappear. But that’s not going to happen anytime soon.
I'm a total outsider and don't know a thing about the caste system, so forgive me being ignorant: how do others know to which caste someone belongs? Would it be possible to claim another caste and just roll with it? What if one changed their surname to something usually associated with a certain caste?
> Would it be possible to claim another caste and just roll with it? What if one changed their surname to something usually associated with a certain caste?
It is entirely possible, however it does require you to learn nuances of that caste. Otherwise you will get caught out especially while discussing with elders. That said when it comes to marriage there’s no way to hide your caste. The priest knows your parents their relatives and what not. Their surnames being different will cause all kinds of red lights to go off.
Also, for governmental purposes you are expected to produce “caste certificate” which you can’t forge. So it’s not unusual for people in India to marry into lower caste to reap the benefits of governmental reservation.
So, the answer is nuanced. If you want to take advantage of surname in a private company like say Cisco then go for it. For any other purpose, changing surname alone isn’t sufficient. In fact it’s impossible to hide your caste.
While we are at it, it’s worth noting that “caste” refers to two distinct and intertwined hierarchical structures called “varna” and “jati”. Which means even among Brahmins (the upper most caste, intact Brahmin is a Varna and not Jati) there’s a hierarchy, priest being the top most. Jatis are sometimes referred as “sub-caste”.
This Jati is so pervasive in India that even the non-Hindu religions such as Sikhism and “Lingayat” which were explicitly formed to be away from the Hindu caste system couldn’t escape it. So we now have a few dozen Jati within Sikhism and Lingayats with an overly of Verna.
As an academic topic it’s a fascinating one. The roots of this codified structure is still not clear, it’s an active area of research. Recent advancements in human evolutionary genetics is revealing some interesting insights but long way to go.
The person who responded had a bunch of good points, but one thing they didn't specifically respond to, is how members of my caste (Brahmins, top of the heap) would know how someone is NOT a brahmin.
So if you aren't a brahmin, you probably haven't had the same childhood experiences of temple-going and specific rituals. If I really want to ferret your caste out, I might casually quiz you on this background, maybe even in the context of innocently joshing about, "hey, wasn't that weird our moms would make us do blah blah blah." And if you didn't respond right away with a story about how your parents did that same thing, I'd maybe start to become suspicious ...
If you ever let slip that someone in your family got a job because they utilized an affirmative action program (called "reservations" in India,) it'd sound weird, and I'd get suspicious ...
If I started a joke about how some brahmins are better than other brahmins (yep, that exists. I know because I am the best Brahmin.) and you seemed clueless about the typology, I'd get suspicious ...
You do this enough times, I'm gonna cross you off my party list.
This might be related. Supposedly these were "sketches used by the police in the USSR to identify suspects based on race" - https://i.redd.it/4qzg51sezz751.jpg
> It requires nuance to understand how deeply and yet subtly embedded caste is in India
And this is the nuance I'm talking about. I understand vegetarianism definitely has positive connotations in India, but it's rarely about caste, which is what we're looking at here.
There's a lot of different opinions in a country of a billion people, but just labeling it as caste isn't going to do any of it favors.
> It’s not a light subject
None of it is. It's not fun being a vegetarian in the States; doesn't mean people have ostracized vegetarianism because they love their meat burgers. Two different things here, we can't get to the root of things if we don't parse them properly.
> vegetarianism definitely has positive connotations in India, but it's rarely about caste,
I’m not sure which part of India does this apply to. As an Indian living in India (born brought up, working now etc), almost every single instance vegetarianism was brought up in a discussion, it was immediately followed up with caste.
Sure, India is vast, but I just don’t know a place where diet is decoupled from caste.
Talking about myself, though I’m a Maratha Kshatriya my parents somehow didn’t prefer non vegetarian. So I ended up growing up a vegetarian dude. Only to be mocked by my relatives later in life “what kind of a Maratha are you who doesn’t eat meat”
It's not 1:1, but there's a clear correlation. To caricature a bit, the Brahmins at the top of the hierarchy can afford to have an elaborate "pure" vegetarian diet with lots of ghee etc (the Jains, mentioned earlier, even exclude root vegetables that would kill the plant), somewhere around the middle of the pile you start eating animals because you need to get your protein where you can, and at the very bottom are the outcastes who do the dirty jobs like butchering animals.
Yes well if we want to go all Veblen, we can see that throughout the world, not just India.
But let us be real here, there are a lot of people in poverty following vegetarian diets, especially because meat doesn't always come cheap in India, and dal/milk relatively are. Some follow it because they were raised in a vegetarian culture. Some do it because they dislike the thought of eating animals.
Brahmins aren't always rich/powerful, and the "lower castes" aren't always that hard off, and this has been the case throughout history.
Some of my friends my well-to-do friends eat meat (sometimes including beef) just fine, some don't. Same with people from different socio-economic levels. This just doesn't reflect reality any more.
I straddled a lot of classes growing up in India, and I can assure you that most people don't eat meat "to get their protein". If they are culturally inclined to do so, they'll eat it because it's tasty, it's a delicacy. I know a couple families which used to be able to afford chicken only once every few months. They were definitely impoverished, but when you're impoverished in India you definitely can't afford meat (the government has rations of rice, sugar etc, and you barely afford some basic veggies -meat is typically 5-10x more expensive). Heck, even eggs are too expensive for a large fraction of the poor here.
Sure, we're generalizing about over a billion people here. But I still contend that if you were to take statistically significant samples across the caste hierarchy, you'd find more vegetarians up top.
That would not capture Bengali and Kerala brahmins. In Kerala its kosher and common for a brahmins to have beef. Meat is a regular part of diet of Bengali brahmins, to the extent that they can afford it.
True, I suppose I should have been just as surprised by garlic/ginger/onion - the four just seem such basic staples in Indian cooking (and garlic/onion more generally).
The funny thing about infiniteness is that half of it is still pretty infinite - and that also works with garlic, ginger, and potatoes, at least (I don't know if it's true of all roots and bulbs though) in that they'll sprout from a part.
Although I appreciate that's probably not the point. But if it were, one could have parts packaged for sale, with the regulated promise that the rest of it was replanted, analogously to religiously-compatible slaughter.
It's fairly obvious that from the traditionalist point of view of the poster's friend a Brahmin is expected to care more than inferior people from no-good castes about religious and semi-religious precepts like not eating lard (to avoid eating inappropriate animals, not because lard isn't vegetarian).
Not always. As I mentioned, an American (not of Indian origin, and presumably without thinking about caste) warned me about rennet when he knew I was a vegetarian. Please don't misunderstand my words.
I talk about vegetarianism because the GP talked about it through the lens of caste, and I stated that I thought otherwise.
I'm actually vegetarian myself, though I typically don't assume tortillas contain lard (unless the places name is actually in spanish lol). This particular example (because we had a deeper conversation) was definitely about how Brahmins were supposed to be pure.
Heh, have had some similar conversations myself (how people like me are "supposed to be more X/less Y"). I've had little patience for those, and have let my own opinions be known. Thanks for adding some more colour.
Thinking about it as an immigrant, just the same way as the H1B: why punt on it if it is this variable? And why even depend of this? The entire problem is that immigration isn't working as it is supposed to. If even this can be gamed, what's the point?
I agree. Noped out of staying in the US last year even after finally getting an H1B in my third attempt. All the dollars in the world aren't worth it if I have to leave at any random point just because a politician wanted to pander to his base, or I get laid off for any reason, or <insert any random twist of fate here>.
The only way this nonsense will change is when more people who do have other options take them. This is mainly an image issue; in the Obama years, even though it was probably as bad as this today (just not overt), the risk-reward ratio of surviving all this was viewed as better than going somewhere else. All this changed with Trump being this transparent. There is going to be a lot of hesitation now for anyone who wants to immigrate. Anywhere except the US, and only if necessary.
> The only way this nonsense will change is when more people who do have other options take them.
Since getting them to do that is literally the purpose of the nonsense currently being executed, and which has been executed against immigrant and nobimmigrant aliens for the last several years, I think you are mistaken. It's not like that's been at all a secret.
You're exactly right, this is what I mean when I talk about the current government being this transparent. Immigrants tend to think of the risk-reward scenario, and a lot depends on image and perspective in their heads.
This image now is a lot nearer to reality than it previously was. When this leads to people not having US-citizen children, or not buying houses, or just not jumping on the boat to reach the US come what may, or just not being too optimistic in general (essentially not tying yourself to a country when the country hasn't done the same with you in terms of citizenship), things will maybe get a bit more sane.
Sorry I disagree. The decision to make it a temporary visa has to be based on the employer's decision to continue their employment and not some politician's whim. Going by your logic, no one should be optimistic in life because the government could do some random thing and ruin your life. Tomorrow, if Trump decides that the dollar is worthless, you'll not be saying that 'Ah well, I shouldn't have been too optimistic in life'.
I never said to not be optimistic; I said to not be too optimistic. On personal level, immigration decisions and everything that comes after needs to be tied to reality and consider what could happen in the future, including all the nasty stuff. You need to consider all realistic scenarios, including all the political, financial and personal issues and shenanigans which can crop up. As the above poster said, none of this is new.
> has to be based on the employer's decision to continue their employment and not some politician's whim
While everyone here would love for this to happen, clearly nothing's working as it should be, or how we want it to be. It hasn't been, for quite a while. This is realpolitik.
- My connections list would make a potential recruiter (and maybe even the Linkedin Algorithm) be slightly more confident that I am who I say I am, i.e. I did work at the companies and studied at the schools I listed) because there would be people in that list who have shared that history with me. I make sure these are the only people in my connections list, apart from a few recruiters I wouldn't mind chatting with again.
- I can be discoverable professionally/personally by a google search. I don't have any other social media accounts.
I take some effort to maximize this value and minimize the other irritations and distractions. Example: I unfollow everyone I connect, so my feed is mostly empty. I don't connect with people I don't know or those who don't bother interacting in any other way except just sending a request.
Some people could go a few steps further and use uBlock origin's element picker to permanently block the UI elements constituting the feed and anything else they don't want to see. This way all you get is maybe a few emails a month maximum, and potentially good job opportunities. Everyone else just sees a quasi-official page about my professional experience.
https://stephanpastis.wordpress.com/2014/06/07/ever-wished-t...