site banner
PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   2223 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 29, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

3
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I have a lot of questions about India and the Indian diaspora (whether US, UK, or elsewhere) that I feel uncomfortable asking anyone I know in real life. I feel like I have no sense for the actual role caste plays in life, both in India itself and in its diasporas. I’m in a STEM field so naturally I interact with many 1st/2nd generation Indians. Over the years, conversations have on rare occasion drifted to these topics and people have mentioned things like sometimes when other Indians ask for surnames they’re really trying to figure out your caste, or how their parents are have a pretty low opinion of Indians from X region. I didn’t quite feel right asking for more detail, but it seems we have quite a few Indians here so I figure I’ll give it a shot. These are rather broad questions so shrink the scope as you see fit.

  1. How confidently could you guess someone’s ancestral state based just on a standardized passport headshot?

  2. How confidently could you guess someone’s ancestral state based just on their family and given names?

  3. How granular/significant does regional discrimination tend to get in India vs in diaspora communities? (North vs South, state by state, city by city?)

  4. How confidently could you guess someone’s caste based just on a standardized passport headshot?

  5. How confidently could you guess someone’s caste based just on their family and given names?

  6. How granular/significant does caste discrimination tend to get in India vs in diaspora communities? (North vs South, state by state, city by city?)

  7. Can you tell what Indian language is their native language based just on their accent while speaking English?

  8. Do social groups in diaspora communities tend to cut across regional/linguistic lines? As a point of comparison, being in a STEM field I naturally also interact with many 1st/2nd generation Chinese. Obviously caste isn’t really a factor there, but it seems they also make little distinction by ancestral province or Chinese dialect. I’m wondering if, when I walk by the large groups of Indians playing cricket at the park speaking a language I can’t identify, are these groups usually, say, the Hindi speakers hanging out amongst themselves while the Tamil speakers have their own group? Presumably they all speak English being in America so if they were a mixed-region group they’d be using English but I rarely see large groups of Indians speaking English with each other.

  9. Do social groups in diaspora communities also tend to cut across caste lines?

On 6) I can tell the difference between native Spanish and native Portuguese accents, and the difference between Mexican and South American accents, in English quite easily. For not-mutually intelligible languages the reason for not being able to tell would be ignorance.

  1. I can probably manage quadrants correctly. North, South and so on. Maybe a little more granular if pushed, but I can't tell a Punjabi from a Haryanvi or Tamil from Telugu.
  2. Same as above, but some are more obvious than others. Singh? Punjabi.
  3. Abroad, I've seen people throw into the same boat. At home, people aren't super clannish, but you do see states sticking together. When flung further afield, you'd be hard pressed to go further than quadrants, beggars can't be too choosy.
  4. Barely better than chance, but there are some tells like fairness being more correlated with the upper castes.
  5. I can identify stereotypical Brahmin, Kshatriya. I do poorly identifying Dalits except for a few surnames.
  6. Can't comment yet, don't know that many diaspora Indians due to being in the middle of nowhere.
  7. Yes. Quite easily.
  8. Same as 6.
  9. Same as above.

(I except I'm probably worse than the average Indian in India or in the diaspora at noticing these things.)

Not Indian, but I grew up around enough of them to observe and ask about such matters.

1. It's possible for someone to be light-skinned enough that they are almost certainly North Indian or dark-skinned enough that they are almost certainly South Indian, but in between it's difficult to tell.

2. If they are from one of the communities that tend to migrate to the US I can do this pretty well e.g. Seetharaman is Tamil, Ravi is Telugu, Bose is Bengali, Jagtap is Marathi, Portuguese names are from Goa, English Christian names indicate someone is from Kerala, the aforementioned Singh and Patel, etc.

3. Among recent migrants, language and religion are probably the two main barriers between communities. For the second generation, religious differences may persist and there is some inertia around food (which correlates very strongly with North vs South), but ancestral language is no longer relevant and most folks just identify as Brown.

4. Absent any other information, not well at all.

5. If they have a surname I am familiar with in the Indian-American community I would guess that they are Brahmin and be right the majority of the time. Otherwise I would have no idea.

6. Discrimination, at least for things like who you are supposed to marry, is not really by geography, but by Jati, which is basically your particular endogamous community. The part of the caste system that Westerners are usually familiar with is Varna e.g. Brahmin, Kshatriya, and so on, and this defines the role that your Jati is supposed to play in society (priest, warrior, merchant, etc.). As an example, Iyers and Iyengars are both Tamil Brahmins, but they are separate Jati. Discrimination along other axes includes "people darker-skinned than me are inferior," "people from [other state] talk funny and eat weird food," and "[other religion]'s men are coming to steal and forcibly convert our women." Basically none of these differences matter to second generation immigrants except for the rare few who let their parents arrange a marriage or are devoutly religious (usually Muslim).

7. I can tell if their native language is North or South Indian, but usually not more than that. I can probably distinguish North Indian languages like Gujarati, Hindi, and Bengali by hearing better than I could those same accents in English.

8. If it's a group of international students playing cricket on the college quad, they probably all came from the same state and are of similar caste backgrounds. Among the second generation this may still happen if it's a group of friends who all grew up together because their parents were in the former sort of group and moved to the same part of the US (I know a lot of Telugus from Northern Virginia, for instance), but they won't go out of their way to exclude others on those lines.

9. The communities I'm familiar with basically have no lower-caste people in them at all, at least if we're talking about Dalits and such, so it's hard to tell.

It's possible for someone to be light-skinned enough that they are almost certainly North Indian or dark-skinned enough that they are almost certainly South Indian, but in between it's difficult to tell.

Even this is not reliable. There are very dark northerners and very light southerners.

Can answer as a 2nd gen for good measure

  1. I couldn't, maybe very broadly North or South but tons of room for error
  2. Fairly confident with the more common last names (Patels are Gujurati, Singhs are from the Punjab region or around there) otherwise I couldn't
  3. Among 2nd gens I know, nonexistent. Among 1st gens (according to my father and some family friends who work in tech), Hindi speakers are sometimes a bit cliquey, though this really does seem to boil down to language more than any North/South enmity
  4. Basically couldn't
  5. My mom's family is Tamil so I know Iyer/Iyengars are Brahmin but that's about it (neither of my parents are Brahmin)
  6. Among 2nd gens, nonexistent. My father works in tech and is very dark skinned and has also never faced any caste-based discrimination in America. Mother is very lightskinned and other immigrants have never mentioned each other's caste to her either.
  7. I only speak English so N/A
  8. Among 2nd gens not at all, 1st gens yes some linguistic lines
  9. Among 2nd gens (and 1st according to my father), not at all

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats