This is extremely misleading and a copout to suggest that even SC/STs wear the thread. Reality is that 99.99% of them don't.

I wouldn't trust Sai Deepak with anything, he's a nut job who for some reason sounds eloquent to the upper class Hindus.

>Reality is that 99.99% of them don't.

This is incorrect. I can vouch this is a relatively common practice in Maharashtra.

I don't belong to the SC/ST group. I don't wear the thread and none of my friends (no matter which group they come from) do. So I am not sure what is your point? Once again this is some stupid journo not doing research and spreading FUD. If Westerners want to be moralizing the first thing they should start with is being sound about their research. Even actual issues will be dismissed in future by larger population in India if this is the kind of work that is presented as truth.

Not sure what you are trying to say?

> Deepak mentions that 15% of those classified as SC/STs also wear the sacred thread

My point is that this is incorrect.

For what reason do you say that?

edit: asking this question to clarify since the other reply(ies) take this as a given.

> he's a nut job who for some reason sounds eloquent to the upper class Hindus.

This is true for any demagogues btw. It’s why Jordan Peterson appeals so much to upper class White Americans.

> Unsuprising that the Western press and academia has the nuance of a brick, perhaps because their own history is so grotesquely checkered.

There will always be an element of the intangible in any effort by the Western mind to understand India. The experience is one of irreducible complexity, the subject receding from attempts to form a mental framework that permits nuanced understanding.

This documentary is 50 years old. Nothing has changed.

https://youtu.be/XFGO8oL0RLk