Yes caste discrimination exists to various extants. You may not have seen it as most people who come abroad as professionals are "higher" castes who were histor

Yes caste discrimination exists to various extants. You may not have seen it as most people who come abroad as professionals are "higher" castes who were historically economically and educationally privileged though this is changing slowly - not unlike how the impact of slavery and segregation is still quite obvious in people of color communities in the US. Surnames and to a much lesser extent skin color/facial features indicate caste quite easily to people who have grown up in India. Often castes / surnames were historically also linked to professions which followed down family. In fact in early medeival Europe too surnames historically indicated profession (Smith, Wright, Cooper, Ward, Chamberlain, Shoemaker...) but I believe the major labor shortage and dislocations caused by the black death and frequent warfare requiring conscription across all social classes pretty much ended any likelihood of social rigidity coming out of this. It will be interesting to see though how the capital and political power accumulation by the wealthier Americans plays out over the next few centuries. In India, the way society developed was to restrict warfare largely to be carried out by certain upper castes and for most of the society, it didn't really matter who the ruling king was - at least until late medieval periods when proselytization started with Islamic invasion. So the caste system developed into something deep rooted, pernicious and divisive. Interestingly in India, while Christianity and Islam don't have castes in theory, in practice it is commonly observed that their adherents too observe such distinctions which tells you how deep rooted the problem is. Specifically to the community of the activist, the Dalits were actually considered to be "people with no caste" historically and were treated as "untouchables". Very likely they were the people who got the wrong side of the stick during the Aryan invasion ~3000 years ago which forms the basis of much of Hindu culture though there are obvious deep rooted integrations from the pre-existing pre-invasion culture (Shiva, Durga etc..) likely from the people who were integrated into the Aryan society. You don't really see "untouchability" today especially in urban largely as a result of efforts of freedom movement era social reformers like Gandhi and Ambedkar followed by "vote bank politics" in the nascent democracy. Some communities also stopped using surnames. However i still recall when we were very young, our great grand parents generation still observed some of the discriminatory structures. So it has taken a couple of generations to get rid of untouchability - ie parents who saw discrimination as children but don't practice it raising children who understand it but haven't seen it raising kids who only know of it intellectually). It will probably take a couple more to eliminate caste discrimination but we are half way there