Re:Caste violence erupts in India over 200-year-old faultline
by jxramos on Friday January 05, 2018 @04:24PM
(#16081792)
One of my former supervisors informed me to this reality. He laments having to travel through Singapore because the experience of an Indian over there is more troubling as he is in the minority being well todo and educated while the bulk of Indians in Singapore are lower class/uneducated and treated differently. He said something to that extent, and I realized that yes the ones who managed to make the big trip here had in fact passed through a filtering process, while more local regions about India can receive those with lesser means and do.
Re:Caste violence erupts in India over 200-year-old faultline
by danans on Friday January 05, 2018 @04:51PM
(#16082023)
Another angle to consider is that well to do Indian immigrants in the US, while less likely to follow the traditional codified restrictions of caste, are quite likely to engage in their adoptive societies' own (often unspoken) rules around class.
Hence, in places like the US, Indians are more likely to have professional spouses, whether those spouses are Indian or not.
Most of the violent aspects of caste discrimination occur at lower socioeconomic levels, where the intensity of the tribalism is exacerbated by poverty.
However, many middle class Indians in the US still follow traditional caste rules in aspects of their personal lives, particularly in marriage, and sometimes in other social associations.
There is also some selection bias among many Indian immigrants towards egalitarianism, leaving behind stifling aspects of the old culture.
The horrible acts of discrimination described in the article are a product of both the Indian social structure and the local communal conflicts.