I've learned it is normally pretty easy to tell what caste someone is from.
But watching a Brahmin who really believes they are vastly better than Dalits act like as arrogant as the Goa'uld from Stargate SG1 was really something.
> I've learned it is normally pretty easy to tell what caste someone is from
With all due respect, you’ve fooled yourself into ignorance.
Many Indians haven’t had a relationship with caste for generations, particularly in the cities or upper and middle classes. (Intermarriage and wealth have rendered it indiscernible.)
There are also something like 25,000 castes and subcastes. It’s not a system designed for anyone to get right. That convolutedness is almost the point. Moreover, there are tens of millions of Indians who have never had a caste because they belong to a different religion or sect of Hinduism.
> There are also something like 25,000 castes and subcastes.
That makes it sound like castes are professions (which IIRC used to be somewhat inherited in the UK, hence names like Smith and Cooper), but where people then tried to assign ranks to those professions (like the family names Bishop and King)?
I am almost totally ignorant of how it really works, but I'm an omni-curious nerd, if you want to enlighten me :)
Yup. In the West one of the Byzantine emperors calcified the economy by making trades heritable (Justinian?). We don't know the historic source of the same in India, just that it happened earlier and was allowed to develop for much, much longer.
With respect, it is you who has fooled themselves into ignorance.
If you are open to having your views challenged (and proven wrong), please listen to The Seen And the Unseen podcast, specifically the episode with Chandra Bhan Prasad.
But watching a Brahmin who really believes they are vastly better than Dalits act like as arrogant as the Goa'uld from Stargate SG1 was really something.