I can attest to this…I work with many many Indians (in the IT industry), and one in particular I’d grown very friendly with. She and I were talking about her upbringing in India, and I asked about caste – whether it was still relevant, etc (but didn’t ask about hers specifically). She grew very uncomfortable and made it plain she didn’t really want to talk about it.
As an aside – the travel section of our local paper had a column on letters from readers describing bad houseguests. An Indian woman wrote about her in-laws…they never want to eat in restaurants, “because you never know what caste the chef is.” Interesting.
Someone needs to tell her in-laws that no matter what caste the chef is, it’s damn likely everyone else in the kitchen is Mexican. See what that does for their snooty little appetites. :rolleyes:
I worked with a Indian man who was (presumably) from a low class, but because he worked very, very hard and made great money he was able to have quite a mansion back home in India. However, other Indian employees here still looked down upon this man with utter contempt because he was of a lower caste. From the way they acted towards him I can only guess that his caste was one rung up from the untoucheable caste.
I don’t know if I am right in this but it seems to me that the whole caste system is…kind of racist?
