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I am not from an upper caste either, but my experience doesn't match with yours at all. My peer group is less culturally Indian than others, but I wonder if exp
by screye 6y ago
I am not from an upper caste either, but my experience doesn't match with yours at all. My peer group is less culturally Indian than others, but I wonder if experiences such as yours are more pronounced in certain regions or groups, more than others.
I have never once been asked my caste, and I have never once seen my friends be asked their castes. But, I realize that being middle class in an Indian metro city already puts me in the 10% class of India that is somewhat shielded from this stuff. I also know that caste becomes a huge thing during marriages and dating. But, I haven't seen much of it in tech. It is far more prevalent in careers where you need communication with under-skilled workers (mechE, civilE), since these workers stick by castes quite closely.
> My college fucking put the caste next to people's names on notice boards
Would you be willing to tell me what university this was. I can't imagine this being the case in any metro city in India.
I won't call you a liar, but this is the first I hear of it and the burden of evidence is on you.
> I'm light skinned so people assume I'm "upper caste"
Oh yeah, I am too, and I can completely empathize with this people making this assumption. Although, it has been more commonly used in situations where it is used as a way to say "you do not understand the problems of lower caste / dark skinned people in India" than anything else.
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Caste based discrimination is a huge problem in India, especially in non-metro India. But, my 2 cents, I have yet to notice any in my time in Tech in the US. ( I did go to a university/location with low south Asian%, but my peer groups in university were very Indian, as are most masters programs, but YMMV)
- fakedang 6y agoI know in my brother's university (IT-BHU), they put caste names next to students' names. And this was a top-tier government university at that! In my University (IIT-D), I believe certain scholarship announcements revealed details about students' categories, ie whether they were SC/ST/OBC/General. Especially if it were a means scholarship. Worse case, professors in India have zero personality training, and will casually ask such questions of their students.
- legolas2412 6y agoAren't those merit-cum-means scholarships actually have a caste-based criterion? In that case they are just being transparent, and claiming it to be casteist is ridiculous. You might as well say that reservations revealed caste by showing people got through reservation quota, hence there is caste discrimination, hence more reservation is required.
- fakedang 6y agoThey could do the same without putting student lists on public display. Guess it's up to the authorities that be to weigh the decision whether it's better to be more transparent or whether to preserve a sense of anonymity in certain key topics. There was this online portal built at the time, where students could check the rank of any person, just with a name or IIT-JEE exam pass number. Of course a lot of people searched, and within one month (the feature was released in December), a lot of friendship circles changed, thus rendering moot the whole point of bringing every student to live under the same roof.
- crossroadsguy 6y agoIn BHU (and by extension at IT-BHU as well and have heard it has continued at IIT BHU as well) and many other universities in the North it's called phylumbaazi. Phylum + Baazi.
- pkphilip 6y agoIn TN they even demanded wrist bands for students to identify their caste...in 2019 at the school level. This was abolished after a lot of opposition. https://www.edexlive.com/news/2019/aug/18/caste-in-stone-why-caste-bands-in-tamil-nadu-schools-are-just-the-tip-of-the-discrimination-iceberg-7505.html https://www.edexlive.com/news/2019/aug/18/caste-in-stone-why...