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The irony of this article is sorely missed by the Economist and most Western commentators in this thread. On one hand the Economist spreads tropes like "Brahmi

The irony of this article is sorely missed by the Economist and most Western commentators in this thread. On one hand the Economist spreads tropes like "Brahmins have a tendency for bookishness". Replace Brahmin with Jew and it becomes anti-semitic but saying it for Brahmins is ok? Should'nt the fact that the Brahmins who are poorer on average than the other two castes who "follow" them in the hierarchy disprove the notion of hierarchical caste system? If they really did dominate the hierarchy, could they not marshal capital given their abundant intellectual resources to dominate commerce in India? This reminds of the various Jewish world control conspiracies which are simply falsified by pointing to the horrific suffering that the Jews have suffered at the hands of said conspiracy theorists for over two thousand years. Similarly, the fact Brahmins that they do not dominate commerce or wealth generation prove that the so-called hierarchy does not exist? Commerce in India, as the Economist points out but then glosses over, is dominated by guilds just like it did in most of the world including Europe, China and Japan. It is pretty easy to get into the Diamond business if you are from one of the few families who were traditionally in the Diamond business from the State of Gujarat or Rajasthan. Even better if you were from the village of Palanpur [1]. Why? It is easy to apprentice in the industry, get access to capital, know-how etc. etc. Ditto if you want to get into one of the traditional industries that have a long history of being dominated by guilds. This even holds true in the US today - it is easier to start a Motel if you are a Patel because you can find someone in the extended family who is in the business, whom you can tap into for advice, funding or partnership. Same for starting a Donut join in SoCal if you are SE Asian, Retail if you are Syrian Jewish, etc. Brahmins have long been dominant in education because their traditional profession requires learning complex concepts and memorizing tens of thousands of pages. This was similar to how Ashkenazi Jews but not Sephardic Jews came to dominate the sciences and the Nobels [2]. I suspect that the selection pressures experienced by Brahmins are similar to those experienced by Ashkenazi Jews. Not a Brahmin, FWIW and neither is Parag Agrawal who is the CEO of Twitter. Another fact that should dissuade people from the notion of Caste-dominated industries is that 3-4 of the top-20 industrial families in India, (Tata, Wadia, Godrej, Shapoorji Pallonji, etc.), are Zoroastrians who came to India from Persia 1500 years ago fleeing Islam and are still practicing Zoroastrians. [1] https://www.rediff.com/business/special/how-palanpurs-diamond-merchants-conquered-the-world/20200207.htm https://www.rediff.com/business/special/how-palanpurs-diamon... [2] https://web.mit.edu/fustflum/documents/papers/AshkenaziIQ.jbiosocsci.pdf https://web.mit.edu/fustflum/documents/papers/AshkenaziIQ.jb...

manquer 5y ago
It is easy to get lost in the woods of it. Economist and BBC and other UK based journals do a bad job of addressing south asian topics as they think they understand and they don't . The point and problem is not any <community> specifically . All the communities exhibit clanish closed minded discriminatory mentality You mention Farsi companies and as a group of people. Even into 21st century TATA went with family and Farsi first with Cyrus Mistry(6th generation!) before finally going to professional management. Every Farsi and other family lead companies in other communities are all like this. Very few indian companies are professionally managed. It is just not in work either As a group farsi people are extremely closed and really like to only marry internally even Gujarati jains who perhaps are closest have hard time intermarrying. Almost every community in India does this a lot and that is discriminatory and bad. It should not matter what color my skin is, what my surname is, or who my great grandfather was.
- haltingproblem 5y ago
  BBC and Economist still have a colonial hangover and they address issues through the same lens as Lord Macaulay who said "single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India". You raise an interesting notion about the lack of intermarriage by Parsis, Jains and so on. I am glad that your analysis transcends the false lens of caste but still hangs onto the notion that individual communities, some of who, date back 1000s of years, have some obligation to erase their identity in pursuit of a (false) notion of Universalism. Why should Jains and Parsis have to intermarry and erase their identity? We don't force devout Christians and Muslims to erase their closely held beliefs and marry outside their religion? Why should communities like Jains and Parsis be asked to carry that cross? Do we ask Swedes/Japanese/Chinese/French to marry outside and then why do you hold up that standard for Indian communities? It is another issue if minority shareholders are being disadvantaged because professional managers are not being chosen but transferring voting power to their own in the case of Tata/Cyrus Mistry is no different than Reliance/Ambani (or Wipro/Azimji) passing the baton of Chairmanship to their family.
  - manquer 5y ago

manquer 5y ago

It is easy to get lost in the woods of it. Economist and BBC and other UK based journals do a bad job of addressing south asian topics as they think they understand and they don't . The point and problem is not any <community> specifically . All the communities exhibit clanish closed minded discriminatory mentality You mention Farsi companies and as a group of people. Even into 21st century TATA went with family and Farsi first with Cyrus Mistry(6th generation!) before finally going to professional management. Every Farsi and other family lead companies in other communities are all like this. Very few indian companies are professionally managed. It is just not in work either As a group farsi people are extremely closed and really like to only marry internally even Gujarati jains who perhaps are closest have hard time intermarrying. Almost every community in India does this a lot and that is discriminatory and bad. It should not matter what color my skin is, what my surname is, or who my great grandfather was.

haltingproblem 5y ago
BBC and Economist still have a colonial hangover and they address issues through the same lens as Lord Macaulay who said "single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India". You raise an interesting notion about the lack of intermarriage by Parsis, Jains and so on. I am glad that your analysis transcends the false lens of caste but still hangs onto the notion that individual communities, some of who, date back 1000s of years, have some obligation to erase their identity in pursuit of a (false) notion of Universalism. Why should Jains and Parsis have to intermarry and erase their identity? We don't force devout Christians and Muslims to erase their closely held beliefs and marry outside their religion? Why should communities like Jains and Parsis be asked to carry that cross? Do we ask Swedes/Japanese/Chinese/French to marry outside and then why do you hold up that standard for Indian communities? It is another issue if minority shareholders are being disadvantaged because professional managers are not being chosen but transferring voting power to their own in the case of Tata/Cyrus Mistry is no different than Reliance/Ambani (or Wipro/Azimji) passing the baton of Chairmanship to their family.
- manquer 5y ago