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This doesn't sound right. Weren't castes based on race and conquering populations initially? How would you describe casteism's status among expatriated Indian

by tomrod 4y ago

This doesn't sound right. Weren't castes based on race and conquering populations initially? How would you describe casteism's status among expatriated Indian populations at a population level? Or is the fact one refers to a population at all to be help in contempt as "racism"?

FlyingSnake 4y ago
> castes based on race and conquering populations initially. No. Varnashram and Jati system were not formed due to any imaginary invasion from the outside, that’s the discarded Raj era AIT speaking.
- tomrod 4y ago
  Oh, the Indus valley was always Indian and never had external population migrations or conquests that left an impact on culture and dynasties analogous to England's Norman conquest of 1066 and earlier Saxon migrations that impacted the culture to the present day, reflected in socioeconomic class distinctions? Man, guess history is completely wrong.[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_India
  - FlyingSnake 4y ago
    How is all this diatribe related to the fact that AIT (not AMT) is a discarded theory, and jati vyavastha has nothing to do with imagined external conquests?
    - yywwbbn 4y ago
      So you’re claiming that the Indo-European migration/invasion of Northern India is “imagined”?
      - ummonk 4y ago
        No. They're saying that an invasion that came and imposed a caste system is imagined. It was a reasonable hypothesis a hundred years ago but has long since been discredited. Migration on the other hand is the current consensus theory.
    - tomrod 4y ago
      The statement was not a diatribe as it was neither forceful nor an attack, but I see that you perceive it as such and hence recommend re-reading it under a steelman approach. 1. My statement points out to another population that still has class-based bigotry from prior conquests and migration 2. If you note, you brought invasion into the conversation after my initial comment which neither supported nor refuted AIT, AMT, or other migration theories. I really don't care which theory people believe, because, ultimately, however history unfolded, it's today's Markovian state of the world that holds highest weight.
danans 4y ago
> Weren't castes based on race and conquering populations initially? We don't know the exact process, but there were several culturally, ancestrally and often phenotypically distinctive populations that encountered and mixed with each over millennia in the subcontinent and engaged in both conflict and cooperation, mostly for arable and pasturable land resources and access to water. The societal power and identity structures and population genetic patterns that emerged from that process manifest in, but are not limited to, the caste system. A latter such migration brought the Indo European language and customs, and it has had an outsized impact on elite cultural artifacts like religious literature. Colonial philologists discovered the Indo European linguistic connection between Sanskrit and European sacred languages and some became fetishized on it due to their own ancestral connection to it, while discounting the relevance of other South Asian ethnolinguistic groups. In response, current Indian nativists have promoted the wholly unfounded idea that South Asia was closed to human in-migration until the Islamic era, and that Indian culture and peoples are strictly indigenous in ancestry. Both the colonial theories of a single conquering Indo European invasion and the nationalist out-of-india theory are highly oversimplified and marketed towards their respective societies' ethno-nationalist impulses.
ummonk 4y ago
> Weren't castes based on race and conquering populations initially? No, that's a discredited theory from a century ago. The caste system as we know it began to come into being about two millennia ago, and the relative ancestries of some of the castes did to some extent reflect the impacts of invasions that had happened long before that. But the ancestry correlation is much stronger geographically and isn't even monotonic with respect to the traditional caste hierarchy. > How would you describe casteism's status among expatriated Indian populations at a population level? Or is the fact one refers to a population at all to be help in contempt as "racism"? If you're assuming that it's widespread amongst educated Indian-Americans in top tech companies, then yeah you're probably just engaging in racist stereotyping.
- tomrod 4y ago
  > If you're assuming that it's widespread amongst educated Indian-Americans in top tech companies Apologies as I'm not in FAANG, so I am fairly uninformed as to their corporate plights and struggles. What population is using the Indian caste system as a basis for discrimination?
  - ummonk 4y ago
    The ones I have direct anecdotes of myself involve strong subcultures with strong ethnic and caste ties (e.g. Punjabi Jatts in the Central Valley or to a lesser extent, Patels) sometimes retaining casteism (even inter-generationally). It also wouldn't surprise me if the Cisco allegations are accurate (less selective / meritocratic places are more likely to retain old prejudices), though the constant media claims of casteism in FAANG make me hesitant to take any allegations at face value. Edit: to be clear, I don't want to imply those subcultures are always casteist - plenty of Jats and Patels are really chill and accepting, and to stereotype them as casteist would ironically be casteist in itself.

by tomrod 4y ago

FlyingSnake 4y ago

> castes based on race and conquering populations initially. No. Varnashram and Jati system were not formed due to any imaginary invasion from the outside, that’s the discarded Raj era AIT speaking.

tomrod 4y ago
Oh, the Indus valley was always Indian and never had external population migrations or conquests that left an impact on culture and dynasties analogous to England's Norman conquest of 1066 and earlier Saxon migrations that impacted the culture to the present day, reflected in socioeconomic class distinctions? Man, guess history is completely wrong.[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_India
- FlyingSnake 4y ago
  How is all this diatribe related to the fact that AIT (not AMT) is a discarded theory, and jati vyavastha has nothing to do with imagined external conquests?
  - yywwbbn 4y ago
    So you’re claiming that the Indo-European migration/invasion of Northern India is “imagined”?
    - ummonk 4y ago
      No. They're saying that an invasion that came and imposed a caste system is imagined. It was a reasonable hypothesis a hundred years ago but has long since been discredited. Migration on the other hand is the current consensus theory.
  - tomrod 4y ago
    The statement was not a diatribe as it was neither forceful nor an attack, but I see that you perceive it as such and hence recommend re-reading it under a steelman approach. 1. My statement points out to another population that still has class-based bigotry from prior conquests and migration 2. If you note, you brought invasion into the conversation after my initial comment which neither supported nor refuted AIT, AMT, or other migration theories. I really don't care which theory people believe, because, ultimately, however history unfolded, it's today's Markovian state of the world that holds highest weight.

danans 4y ago

> Weren't castes based on race and conquering populations initially? We don't know the exact process, but there were several culturally, ancestrally and often phenotypically distinctive populations that encountered and mixed with each over millennia in the subcontinent and engaged in both conflict and cooperation, mostly for arable and pasturable land resources and access to water. The societal power and identity structures and population genetic patterns that emerged from that process manifest in, but are not limited to, the caste system. A latter such migration brought the Indo European language and customs, and it has had an outsized impact on elite cultural artifacts like religious literature. Colonial philologists discovered the Indo European linguistic connection between Sanskrit and European sacred languages and some became fetishized on it due to their own ancestral connection to it, while discounting the relevance of other South Asian ethnolinguistic groups. In response, current Indian nativists have promoted the wholly unfounded idea that South Asia was closed to human in-migration until the Islamic era, and that Indian culture and peoples are strictly indigenous in ancestry. Both the colonial theories of a single conquering Indo European invasion and the nationalist out-of-india theory are highly oversimplified and marketed towards their respective societies' ethno-nationalist impulses.

ummonk 4y ago

> Weren't castes based on race and conquering populations initially? No, that's a discredited theory from a century ago. The caste system as we know it began to come into being about two millennia ago, and the relative ancestries of some of the castes did to some extent reflect the impacts of invasions that had happened long before that. But the ancestry correlation is much stronger geographically and isn't even monotonic with respect to the traditional caste hierarchy. > How would you describe casteism's status among expatriated Indian populations at a population level? Or is the fact one refers to a population at all to be help in contempt as "racism"? If you're assuming that it's widespread amongst educated Indian-Americans in top tech companies, then yeah you're probably just engaging in racist stereotyping.

tomrod 4y ago
> If you're assuming that it's widespread amongst educated Indian-Americans in top tech companies Apologies as I'm not in FAANG, so I am fairly uninformed as to their corporate plights and struggles. What population is using the Indian caste system as a basis for discrimination?
- ummonk 4y ago
  The ones I have direct anecdotes of myself involve strong subcultures with strong ethnic and caste ties (e.g. Punjabi Jatts in the Central Valley or to a lesser extent, Patels) sometimes retaining casteism (even inter-generationally). It also wouldn't surprise me if the Cisco allegations are accurate (less selective / meritocratic places are more likely to retain old prejudices), though the constant media claims of casteism in FAANG make me hesitant to take any allegations at face value. Edit: to be clear, I don't want to imply those subcultures are always casteist - plenty of Jats and Patels are really chill and accepting, and to stereotype them as casteist would ironically be casteist in itself.