While many scholars contend that the caste system became more inflexible under the British, who transformed it into a rigid, more easily governable structure that privileged Brahmans even more, others say this narrative is just an attempt by upper-caste Indian Americans to rewrite history books and erase any mention of Dalit oppression. If a person is born as a Dalit, they will die a Dalit, and their children are almost certainly destined to a life with no upward mobility.
Their woman and children are physically and sexually abused on a serial scale. Dalit children are either denied education or cannot study with UC peers their villages are separate and hence, they are forbidden from walking through upper caste ones they cannot eat where UCs eat they cannot pray where UCs pray and God help them if they marry out of their caste. Violaters would be beaten, often to death, and incredulously, they still are today.Īll across India, Dalits - who comprise at least 25% of the population, or a staggering 400 million people - are barred from drawing water from the wells of UCs. Not so long ago, if a Dalit saw a higher caste walking down the road, they would have to flung themselves to the ground to not contaminate the upper caste (UC) person with their shadow. Dalits have historically been involved in occupations such as working with leather, cleaning sewers, or killing rats and were therefore considered "spiritually impure". Self-named, Dalit means "oppressed", but they are also referred to by Indian society as "achoot", or, "untouchable". These people that are deemed to be on the lowest rung are the Dalits. What is homogenous across the country, however, is another category that exists completely outside of the caste system, on a rung so low that if you were forced to come up with the worst moral and physical degradations that you could think of, they would in all likelihood pale in comparison to what has transpired in India over centuries and continues to do so today. Of course, it's not so simple - in reality, there are over 5,000 castes and over 25,000 sub-castes in India, spawned by sheer geographical, cultural, and religious diversity. In this stratification, the priests - or the "Brahman" class - were at the top, the warriors or "Kshatriyas" came next, the merchants or "Vaishyas" formed the third tier, while labourers, artisans, and servants, known as "Shudras", came last and essentially served the other three castes. It has illuminated how the Indian caste system has terrorised one of the most marginalised groups in India.Įxcept, this time, it is happening in the US tech industry, a place that people normally associate with egalitarianism and a thirst for talent regardless of colour, race, religion, or any other creed.Ĭaste is a 2,000 year-old system for classifying society in the Indian subcontinent - or whatever other definition that can be used for the geographic spread that was depleted and then amputated by British colonial rule. It may seem bizarre that the caste system, a centuries-old system that organises and stratifies human society, continues to play a heavy role in deciding which Indians prosper and which don't within a space many consider to be an uber-meritocracy - the US tech landscape.Ī recent lawsuit against two Indians, filed by California's Department of Fair Employment and Housing on behalf of another Indian, has made waves over the past few months for all the wrong reasons.