You yourself are the perfect example of an Indian that has refused to accept such traditions and have criticized it openly. This was the improvement I was talking about.

There cannot be an overnight change but I believe the change is happening.

Oh Sorry no. Im fortunate enough to be born in Tamil Nadu, South India where caste system was fiercely fought against starting from the 50s. It has helped our society to grow more or less equally. Not just upper castes.

Millions of Indians have criticised this in the past and continue to do so. To deny casteism in India is like denying racism in the USA. The systems/power structure has not changed. The same old rotten filth continues to decide our lives and sorry we are not privileged enough to be free from caste oppression if we hang out with upper caste friends.

I lived in India in the 80s. Hindu fundamentalists drove home ideas of caste-ism to exploit the populace. The southern states luckily called out “Brahmanism” and their populace didn’t suffer quite as much. Under Modi, it’s like history repeating itself.

The PRESIDENT is a dalit man. It would have been impossible for him to become the president two/three decades ago. This shows that we have indeed improved in certain aspects. It's true that a lot of work still remains.

That temple incident is certainly bad and many social evils still persist in the society. The only way to quickly get rid of them is to have a China style 'cultural revolution', which involves destroying temples and other religious sites. But I guess it's not something which will go well with any Indian.

I think they meant that having a Dalit man be presidett is proof that there has been some progress, same as Obama's presidency in the US. That showed that progress has been made in the battle against racism, even if it certainly doesn't mean that racism is over.

The president is not an elected post but a selected post. They selected a dalit exactly for this reason the person above states. For tokenism. The current govt is a Hindutva ideology based govt meaning they literally believe Dalits are just lower humans. The president from a dalit community was just tokenism.

I anticipated such a reply. Obviously you don't know anything about his law career and work towards the poor sections of the society[1].

As far as the tokenism goes, keep in mind that the current PM is from an OBC. So much for the 'lower human' theory.

1. https://m.economictimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/ram-nat...

Theory. Yes

Oh, OK, I wasn't aware, sorry. Thanks for the explanation!

Please ignore their reply. Our Prime minister, which is the most powerful position in the country, is also from a 'lower class'. They're deliberately giving it a negative spin as it suits their policial viewpoint.

I understand that possibility, but their reply is still right in that a named position is fundamentally different than an elected position, which I assumed the president to be. That of course does NOT mean that someone being named to such a position is automatically tokenism.

That's what I meant. Thank you.

This was a fake story. Read this report https://www.indiatoday.in/fact-check/story/viral-test-no-mis...

It's not. Read this: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.news18.com/amp/news/india/p...