[Dharmakirti]

the deracination in this comment is astounding. I grew up in rural India all my life and this cartoonish casteism is no longer part of the mainstream Indian society. There will be isolated cases, but I’ve seen times and again people freely drinking water from a _pyau_ irrespective of the caste of the person.

I implore you to take a rational look at Indian society and not rely on WaPo/NYT to know your own land.

[nindalf]

Yeah I thought one of you would come and say this.

Here’s a video that you might find illuminating.

- Caste Conundrum: Why do upper castes believe discrimination doesn’t exist? - https://youtu.be/vjt8aBoejho (1.4M views).

You speak of NYT/WaPo. This was published by an Indian newspaper ThePrint.

Now you might be thinking, that can’t be right. I’ve lived in India for a long time, I know it isn’t like this. That’s ok, I used to think like that too. Until I saw a map of india overlayed with the extent of untouchability practised in each district. Turns out, I lived in a district where it was barely prevalent. Here was me, living in one corner of India for decades and extrapolating that to the rest of India. Don’t make the same mistake I did.

You can find that map and see how prevalent this abhorrent practice is in the beginning of this video

- What Hathras tells us about Casteism in India - https://youtu.be/ELbdGh0-4T4.

Both videos are mostly in Hindi, with English subtitles. I hope that’s ok.

[ajonit]

ThePrint , thewire are all part of the propoganda outlets that have popped up in the last few years.

I am not saying casteism isn’t present in India but the way you are projecting is way over the top , especially in urban areas.

Do you know anything about the stringent SC/ST act.? It has now been abused so much against the upper caste , that few years back Supreme Court had to intervene and direct the Govt to not immediately arrest in case of an FIR. There was a huge protest by the SC/ST community over this order and within few weeks Govt had to bow down and pass an ordinance to repeal the order by Supreme Court.

Just Google about “misuse of SC/ST act India” it is mind boggling.

[nindalf]

Hahahaha, there’s always a few of you. The ones that speak about the difficulties faced by the groups of highest socioeconomic status.

What you lack is perspective. Any action you take to stop a crime will lead to false positives.

Try and imagine any crime that happens. Let’s take a crime you feel less strongly about, dowry harassment. Every year thousands of women face mental harassment and physical and assault from their husbands and in-laws demanding dowry. Should we do something about this? It doesn’t affect you or me, after all. Let’s say we do anyway. Now we criminalise harassment related to dowry demands. What we find is that this new law makes no difference. No woman actually charges her in laws because she knows she’ll bear the brunt of their immediate fury. Ok, let’s try again, let’s make the crime non-bailable. Now more women come forward, which is presumably good.

But now we have a non bailable offence that requires minimal evidence before filing charges. Will this be abused? Almost certainly. There are at least a few cases every year.

How do we balance the two? If the standards of evidence are raised or if “false” accusations are penalised, we’ll have more false negatives. If the standards are lowered, we’ll have more false positives. There’s no way around this.

I don’t know the solution here, but I will point this out - people only complain about one side of it. They complain about whatever they can empathise with the most. Each side only thinks that either true harassment cases or false accusations is the worst thing, and we should eradicate them asap. There’s no acknowledgement there’s a trade off between reducing one and increasing the other. There’s no discussion about the total number of each, the number of unreported cases and so on.

That’s how you are. You worry about what will affect you and your family, which is false accusations.

I can’t make you care about other people. Nothing I say will make that happen. All I ask is look at the data and ask yourself - which is more prevalent? Discrimination against other castes or false cases against upper castes? Which has been more prevalent historically?

[ajonit]

> Hahahaha, there’s always a few of you.

Looks like a template attack against those who doesn’t agree with you.

Anything I would say, you would attack it in a long winded response without trying to absorb other’s pov.

That you have touched the topic of dowry harassment, go and meet some good criminal lawyers in India from HC/SC. Don’t just read propaganda. They will clear all your misconceptions about just “few false cases” etc. (More than 90% of dowry cases turn out to be false)

[srean]

> I grew up in rural India all my life and this cartoonish casteism is no longer part of the mainstream Indian society

All I will say is that extrapolation and generalization from personal experiences leads to biased perspectives. Your experience does not invalidates other's and vice versa. My recent experience in Rajasthan has been that caste dynamics is still in a healthy full flourish.

[Dharmakirti]

> extrapolation and generalization from personal experiences leads to biased perspectives.

I agree, biases should be avoided. My point is that GP had a biased view of casteism which doesn’t help in eradicating it from the roots. He seems to be pasting the same links that confirm his bias and seeking internet validation in an article that has nothing to do with casteism. The real need is to bring the change on the ground by understanding the problem better.

[srean]

> My point is that GP had a biased view of casteism

That's your opinion and personal experience against his.

I have been in contemporary situations steeped in casteism as well as where it has played no role. Absence or weakening of caste dynamics in certain states does not make it a non-existent or irrelevant in others.

That national politics in many Indian states are campaigned along caste lines is proof enough that caste is well entrenched even today in many of the Indian states. Observing election campaigns and their results is in my view a good indicator where caste is a dominant force and where it isnt.