India’s Intricate Caste System

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/22/opinion/indias-intricate-caste-system.html

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To the Editor:

While I appreciate Aatish Taseer’s conscientious opinion piece, “India’s eternal inequality” (Opinion, Oct. 13), it does not really explain the juggernaut of the Indian caste system. For example, the Yadav “peasant” caste form one of the most powerful political dynasties in the populous North Indian states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. With their “other backward caste” status, many Yadavs have prospered. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has benefited by claiming his own “low caste” status. Indeed, caste-based quotas in education and government jobs are so tempting that some “low” castes like Patels want to be officially recognized as a backward caste.

One of India’s multimillionaire spiritual yoga gurus and businessman, Baba Ramdev, is a Yadav. Clearly, one does not have to be a Brahmin to be a superstar Hindu in today’s India.

India’s eternally deprived are the Dalits, or untouchables, who form more than 12 percent of the Indian population. The Dalits have never had a strong, educated and progressive leader after B.R. Ambedkar, who was educated at Columbia and the London School of Economics. Perhaps, merit-based scholarships for Dalits in Western universities could help produce new Ambedkars for the 21st century.

Rajiv Thind

BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA