> Iyer was a graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), and grew up in Bombay as an upper-caste Indian. He also completed his PhD at Stanford, founde

> Iyer was a graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), and grew up in Bombay as an upper-caste Indian. He also completed his PhD at Stanford, founded two companies that were both acquired by Cisco, and has been named MIT Innovator of the year. A man of science and reason, and a person who places a premium on ideas, you would imagine. > Much like Iyer, John Doe also graduated from IIT. > The lawsuit alleges that the upper-caste Iyer recognised John Doe and instantly began ridiculing him in front of all the other higher-caste Indian employees at Cisco, saying that John Doe was a Dalit and only got into the engineering school because of affirmative action, which India implemented in 1980 under the then-Prime Minister VP Singh. This behavior is absolutely not acceptable. I want to provide some context to avoid the narrative being dragged into areas that are unproductive. IITs are like the Ivy League Universities in India. Admissions into IIT are based on a notoriously competitive entrance exam - it’s common for people to take a multiple year break after high school just to prepare for this exam. For those who end up scoring high enough to get into the IIT, it ends up being the defining achievement of their lives. There’s also an elitist attitude that plagues many IIT graduates. Wrap your head around the idea that there are dating/match making services that are exclusive to IIT graduates. It’s pretty bad. The implementation details of the Indian affirmative action programs are such that underrepresented communities are ranked separately from the rest. On these lists, the competition is less fierce. There is a lot of resentment around this from multiple sides - it’s sort of similar to the recent lawsuits against Harvard for discriminating against Asians. For various reasons, Brahmins have a multigenerational advantages when taking the IIT entrance exams. They are over represented in the top 500 scores for example. I say all this because it’s important to understand the nuances of India’s cultural problems. It looks similar to Racism in America at first glance, but on a closer look, it’s a very different (and a more serious) problem in many ways.