An effort to ban caste discrimination in California has touched a nerve

Re:An effort to ban caste discrimination in California has t... by eldaisfish on Monday September 04, 2023 @07:24PM (#37386162)

This is wrong and is a flawed understanding of how caste works in the indian subcontinent. Every single brown person has a caste. They may be unaware of it (in which case they are likely not lower caste) or not acknowledge it but it definitely exists. It certainly exists among muslims, sikhs and christians in the indian subcontinent. In those cases, religion is the perceived identity to the outsider but caste is right there, under the surface.

Hinduism codified and forms the basis for the caste system but every other religion evolved later or was forced upon people who already had caste.

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Re:An effort to ban caste discrimination in California has t... by catlover76 on Tuesday September 05, 2023 @11:33AM (#37393103)

I'm of South Asian Muslim heritage, and that's just not been my experience at all. Literally nobody I know, ranging from relatives to friends (thus spanning several ethnic groups and a range of wealth/social status) has a concept of this.

There are definitely things like social stratification based on wealth or ethnic group, and you can see things which, I suspect, are remnants of things adjacent to the caste system, such as Jatis, in the form of things like the Memon community.

Granted, even though I am talking about a range of ethnic groups, I'm still talking about north-west Indian ethnic groups: Gujratis, Panjabis, UP/Delhi people, and Pashtuns. Thus, maybe what you're saying holds true in other parts of the subcontinent--or perhaps just in very rural areas (?)

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