To answer some : 1. Indian legal and governance systems maintain a list of recognized castes , these exists for reservation for government jobs, loans, elected

To answer some : 1. Indian legal and governance systems maintain a list of recognized castes , these exists for reservation for government jobs, loans, elected seats[4] university admissions or promotions in government companies/departments - there are many problems with the list (outdated, lot of politically influenced changes ... ) 2. Caste is hereditary, caste originated from family profession , somewhat akin to occupational surnames in some western countries like Smith [1]. Indian surnames also can indicate caste, the Self-Respect Movement from last century in the South evolved to drop surnames to reduce discrimination [2], and many people in parts of the country ended up use mononymous names. 3. Switching castes while occasionally practically possible was extremely hard, in the traditional orthodox system caste can be lost but not switched, typically lost when the parents are from different castes marry. In practice changing your profession or your son's profession would be the way to switch. Education and vocational training however was denied back in olden days to keep it hereditary if you couldn't prove your caste background [3] you wouldn't be able to get a teacher or be apprenticed under a master. If you could get away by lying about it or someone from that caste vouched for you then yeah it could be changed. 4. Caste based registrations are a thing in India, mainly used to claim affirmative action in government 5. There is case law in Indian Juriprudence albeit in a different framework. Legal affirmative action frameworks(not the same as anti discriminatory approach in U.S law) are fraught with problems - Indian law has tons of problems of enforcing equitably. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Occupational_surnames https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Occupational_surnames [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-Respect_Movement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-Respect_Movement [3] A poignant story on this topic from mythology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ekalavya https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ekalavya [4] Election candidates in some areas are reserved to specific caste categories to represent the population better.