This is blatantly untrue. Caste discrimination is a harsh reality in India that millions of people face on a daily basis.

For the millions in villages, yes. It is not common in cities. Are you Indian? How often do people ask you for your caste? And please don't tell me my own lived experience is "blatantly untrue".

It is still very common in the cities. A survey from 2018 points to how prevalent it is in the urban regions - including in Delhi - even untouchability is practised in the cities.

https://indianexpress.com/article/india/untouchability-high-...

Without linking to the actual questions and the data, this is yellow journalism. In one paragraph, it is “self or family member”, but in the next paragraph, it becomes "50 per cent of respondents in urban Rajasthan admitted to practising untouchability". This is the same kind of yellow journalism that in the US lead to prominent figures touting "one in five women on college campuses is raped". There is no epidemic of rape in US college campuses either.

I asked you how often you get asked for your caste, which you did not answer. I have a few very visibly brahmin colleagues. When we work together, they don't discriminate against any of my colleagues or me. When we go for team outings, they don't go to restaurant kitchens and ask the cooks and waiters for their caste, and more often than not, the restaurant serves meat.

If you think that is yellow journalism, may I present to you a survey conducted by researchers from Princeton university: https://paa2015.princeton.edu/papers/153481

Please scroll to page 8. The data shows about 27% of Indian households ADMITS to practising untouchability.

May I present to you another survey - this time from EPW. https://www.epw.in/journal/2020/2/special-articles/continuin...

You can see a summary of this research here: https://newsmeter.in/more-than-40-of-brahmin-households-prac...

You are looking for anecdotal data when I am presenting you with actual survey data. You want to extrapolate from your own situation (as well as mine) to decide what the situation is nation-wide. That is not how things work.

In your particular situation - which may not be representative of the situation of others, you may not be a racist/casteist in your thinking, but you certainly can't extrapolate from that for what the situation is like across the board.

> Please scroll to page 8. The data shows about 27% of Indian households

Good, so these figures are not even close to the 50% figure for urban Rajasthan. Why do you think the figures differ so drastically? Also, clever of the "researchers" to inflate figures using "households". Absolutely zero among my hundreds of colleagues have demonstrated casteist attitudes, so let's ask about their grandparents. That's how you get "households".

> You are looking for anecdotal data when I am presenting you with actual survey data.

Correct. Because sociological "studies" are rife with methodological failures. They drive an agenda worse than any autorickshaw driver drives his auto. This is the field that gave us "one in five women on college campuses are raped" and "India is the least safe country in the world for women". All obvious bullshit, but here we are.

> from your own situation (as well as mine)

This is the interesting part. We don't know each other. You could have told me anything at all about how you have been discriminated against by the "upper caste". Yet you didn't. It goes to show how believable you, yourself, would consider such stories would be.

There is an interesting parallel between believing BS of the holy men in the past (the priests, the prophets) and believing the BS of today's holy men (the academics). Some fields are taking active steps to addressing the replication crisis. Sociology is not one of them.

Hi, yes I am an Indian and its astounding to me that you as an Indian whose life, education, wealth, quality of life, access to healthcare, choice of life partner, friends, status in society, place of residence is all determined by your caste being completely oblivious to it.

You have been so internalized into the caste system that you count only explicit and physically hurting ones as forms of discrimination. You are either incredibly privileged possibly a Brahmin or you're ignorant so much that you deny the suffering of more than a billion people as outright false!!

How many millions? There are 1400 million people in India.

The total population of brahmins is less than 6% in India. People from other castes - especially the tribals and the dalits (more than 40%), experience caste oppression regularly.

Are you saying 6% of the Brahmins are oppressing 40% of the remaining population?

Source?

[..] India is home to over 200 million Dalits. According to Paul Diwakar, a Dalit activist from the National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights, "India has 600,000 villages and almost every village a small pocket on the outskirts is meant for Dalits."[..]

Indian population is 1400 million

You do realise that just a few thousand British controlled the entire nation of India for 100s of years, right?

Presenting you some data on how this works: https://paa2015.princeton.edu/papers/153481

Just consider the Indian judiciary. The vast majority of judges are brahmins when they constitute just 5% of the population of the country.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/ravikiranshinde/one-too-many-mishra...

As for the undertrials and those in prison, the vast majority are from lower castes. https://www.newsclick.in/how-caste-plays-out-criminal-justic...

It is impossible to have a fact based discussion with you. Your arguments so riddled with logical fallacies that it would take me hours to tease everything out with definitions and explanations. I find myself facing a poverty of time currently and in the near future to be able to engage you further. Thanks for the discussion so far. Have a nice day.

Aristocracy is France was around 10%. There are plenty of upper caste Indians (around 18% to 30% total depending on how you count it) who benefit from this societal structure.

Ok. The original comment said Brahmins are oppressing the Dalits.

What has this got to do with the French? ‘Upper classes’ are not all aristocracy. I think you are confused.

I’m not confused, thanks. I’m saying a small population can easily oppress a larger population, especially with consent and cooperation from other populations.

Numbers from here or wikipedia https://www.statista.com/statistics/1001016/india-population...

Entirely irrelevant here.

Unless you are stating that Dalits are a larger number than a smaller population of Brahmins.

And that the latter is oppressing the former?

In which case: source?

Thanks.

You’re just saying random things in an aggressive manner without making any sense.

No. I am merely asking for the source of pretty specific numbers.

Once again: source?

So what is it - 6% or 30%? And where's the source?