[1] As an Indian who does not come from an upper caste and has worked in Seattle, I have yet to experience any instance of caste even being mentioned in Indian circles, let alone experience any semblance of discrimination or see it happen near me.

I'd believe it if someone told me IITians didn't eat with those from other universities. Or that 2nd gen Indian-Americans didn't eat with 1st gen immigrants. But this sort of thing is practically unheard of. Our Indian circle is pretty huge, and I haven't ever even so much as heard a whisper about this.

I find that Americans have some bizarre views and opinions about India. Like they read some colonial era British report about the nation, watched slum dog millionaire and that's it. India has changed an insane amount since independence, and it has changed even more than that just in the last 20 years.

I consistently find that HN threads about India are among the lowest quality of discourse on this forum. Highly opinionated while still being misinformed. The worst combination.

________

Hot take, but Americans have an internalized hubris about their civilizational understanding of anything past their own borders. They seem incapable of understanding social dynamics from a non-white-vs-black-American racialized lens.

I am not just generalizing, I am actively calling this out as universal. You see it at even the highest level of intellectual discourse, and the so-called 'woke' might be the worst of them all.

India is a civilizational nation with a population base & internal diversity that has matched or exceeded Europe over multiple millennia. (not just after our population explosion). Americans will demand a PhD before believing whether Mary Antoinette asked people to eat cake, but will readily accept any loud mouth's opinion on an entire subcontinent & parallel civilization. Take a seat. It's complicated, nuanced, and will take at least a few hours to even scratch the surface of. Yes, that's just how it is when you try to understand a nation as vast and alien from an outsider's lens.

I'm feel like bickering today, so I will use some choice words. The worst of them all are the 'coconuts'. It is a derogatory term for those who are 'brown on the outside, white on the inside'. More specifically, people who have limited their interactions with India and Indians to merely their filter bubble, yet they feel entitled to an opinion about India, just by the virtue of the color of their skin. To each their own, but to then stand on a pedestal and claim to be the authoritative voice on 'what Indians are like' is preposterous. This is 1.5 billion people we are talking about here. I can find an anecdote to support anything I'd like.

I specifically call out America (and Anglo-nations), because EU-Europeans have more humility. There is a certain rage that they too feel, when stereotypes bleed across national borders, and that's when both countries speak the same language, eat the same food and are genetically identical. They see the same distances on an Indian map and intuitively understand the implications for diversity & mutual differences. Even Mercator's best efforts can't hide how vast this land is. Americans seem to have no muscles for that kind of nuance. And yes, I am claiming this is a universal experience among Americans. [2]

[1] Copying part of my comment from the other thread yesterday.

[2] This is not to say that Americans are worse people. I have in fact repeatedly defended the US as the least racist country in the world. But cultural exchange is hard, and every culture has their own blind spot. 'The interweaving of identity, caste & class dynamics among Indian diaspora' is the perfect collision of these blind spots and the struggles of cultural exchange.