As an Indian, I kind of hate this generalization. It is absolutely our responsibility to explain and also to root out caste discrimination. Just because we had millennia long history with it (through foreigners, no less) does not mean we must not extricate it whence it currently stays.

For disclosure, I am not a high caste Indian, and both sides of my family eat meat.

The main issue is that a good chuck of tech folks upvoting and making this a big don't want to understand. They want to use this as an issue to not let Indians get promoted to managerial positions instead of them. It becomes easier now to say "hey, Indians are casteist, don't make them a managers'.

It's similar to how there is always mass confusion around here for the requirements for scouting for local applicants for work visas vs green card applications.

They don't seem to be looking for facts, that's why the discussions are so strange with real experiences downvoted, and some vague notions of high rates of caste discrimination in the US are upvoted.

It's a bit interesting that you had that disclaimer, not commenting on it but just noticing it myself.

I am honestly not sure why Indians would not become managers. A lot of Indian managers have existed in the companies I've been at.

> It is absolutely our responsibility to explain and also to root out caste discrimination.

Well, I am trying – what about you?

Go add some more history sources to mine in the comment below that's asking for them!

Thanks. Why is it history sources I must add? I just try to speak out against it whenever I see it. Sadly it's usually the older Indians who insist on it, unfortunately.

Non-Indian here, I’ve heard there are temples that cater to different castes, but honestly not even close to my lived experience

where do you see caste discrimination show up ?

Which history books would you recommend?

Reading about Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, who led reforms against casteism and wrote the equivalent of affirmative action into the Indian Constitution is probably a good start. He was the Indian equivalent of Dr. Martin Luther King.

His writings are mostly in English and present a deep study of the subject, especially given that it affected him personally.

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[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B._R._Ambedkar

> wrote the equivalent of affirmative action into the Indian Constitution

Reservations are not equivalent to affirmative action in America. Dr. Ambedkar was the Chairman of Constitutional Drafting Committee. In popular imagination, he is often called the author of the Indian constitution. Reservations are a small part of it.

> He was the Indian equivalent of Dr. Martin Luther King.

I understand that you are trying to make the context relatable to an American audience but I find this framing rather grating. I don't mean any disrespect to Dr. King but this is selling Dr. Ambedkar short.

He was MLK, James Madison and later Malcolm X rolled in one.

This framing is probably better, while still remaining relatable to an American audience – I like it!

Pardon the ignorance but why does one need to understand history or the caste system in this context? The fact of the matter is dead simple, are you or are you not making decisions that hurt someone in any way based on biological factors they cannot control?

This is not politics or history, or even western thinking. It is fundamentally unfair and unjust. Treat others as you would like to be treated. This concept of justice is not foreign to any country or belief system as far as I am aware, please correct me if I am mistaken here. But every culture has ways and means by which laws, norms and traditions have been established that subvet the most basic senses of justice anyone can have.

I do not need to understand the history between tutsi and hutu in rwanda or serbs and bosnians or native and white americans in latin america or black and white people in the US.

Again I ask, unless you are arguing to justify the injustice, why is the reason behind it unjust?

I would say that I personally don't think any generalizations about "indians in seattle" or elsewhere is correct but individual experiences are not to be ignored either.

I don't see why HR and EEOC won't treat this like any other type of discrimination.

Matter of fact, I don't think seattle should need to ban caste discrimination. It is already illegal at the federal level!

It’s just gatekeeping. The idea behind such gatekeeping is that you don’t want people who don’t understand the nuances of it to apply it blindly to situations where it doesn’t apply. For example, I have on a couple of occasions struggled to get along with other Indians. Nothing related to caste, because neither of us knew the other’s caste (AFAIK). A well meaning but ignorant person would have made this situation worse by applying a caste lens to it.

I get what you’re saying - it’s just discrimination like any other discrimination and all discrimination is outlawed implicitly. I mostly agree. I just wouldn’t want this to become the first and only thing that people think about while trying to mediate relations between Indians.

As an American, your metaphor makes absolutely no sense to me.

Why would a European think an American would possess a gun in their country? And how would they get it there through customs - it’s not an idea? And a gun is a lethal weapon - is the caste system?

Sorry, I’ve spent a bit of time in Europe (including living for a stint). I’m also from a part of the US that has plenty of firearms. I just can’t make sense of this metaphor.

> Why would a European think an American would possess a gun in their country? And how would they get it there through customs - it’s not an idea?

Yeah, you know how stuff works in Europe, so this transparently sounds like nonsense to you. Similarly, the OP's assertion that caste and sex discrimination is "rampant" among Indians in Seattle sounds like nonsense to me.

> And a gun is a lethal weapon - is the caste system?

Definitely, in a bad way. People have been murdered in India over inter-caste marriages.

> I just can’t make sense of this metaphor.

I'll try to explain it point by point:

- Caste-based discrimination is a terrible thing that happens all the time in India, similar to how gun violence is a terrible thing that happens all the time in the US.

- But if a European said to you "You Americans in my country are super argumentative! You seem to be ready to pull a gun on each other all the time against each other, it's just like what I read in the paper!", you'd think it was nonsense that was basically stereotype-matching.

- Similarly, I find OP's comment about rampant caste discrimination nonsensical because it relies on simplistic stereotyping.

Yeah, people dont understand _at all_ how it works because they were not and are not directly involved, The other side of the coin is they simply condemn all Indians as the modern equivalent of racists.

You are also not obliged to teach people anything, but as you've seen the people will judge you based on the information presented. Not contributing to the narrative only leads people to base judgement on the supplied information.

This doesn’t follow to me. We brought a system of oppression and subjugation over to your continent, and now it’s your responsibility, racist westerner, to read a history book about it?

Most of us in the West never wanted anything to do with caste! This is a uniquely Indian problem which requires Indian efforts to fix, this isn’t something that can be passed off to western social justice movements to solve for you.

No sorry, you don't get to say this in America. Europeans brought guns, slavery, and racism to America, and I live with the consequences of it every day.

I don't pass off racism or gun violence as "a uniquely European problem which requires European efforts to fix". I study the nuances and try to help where I can.

You should think about doing the same.

If you're trying to compare the entire concept of human violence to the very well-defined and narrow concept of caste discrimination, you're not going to get very far I don't think. And for the record, caste politics rears its ugly head in the Desi community in my country of Canada all the time, yet somehow we've managed to avoid the ugliness of gun violence and slavery that you somehow found relevant.

It makes for uninteresting discussion of the misgivings of different countries when the first thing you're able to reach for is "well what about colonialism?"

I agree that it's uninteresting!

It's mainly meant as an illustration of the OP's "We never wanted Problem X, take it back to your country!" argument, which is simplistic and uninteresting.

I'm sorry, but slavery and racism existed in America long before the Europeans arrived.

Slavery and racism existed in America before Europeans. You're right about the guns.

The downside to telling people to do their own research is that many of them will end up on your opposition's articles and websites, who will take the time to explain their side while denying you the ability to refute them.