[yutijke]

Which company this at? Is this discussion of castes among other Indian coworkers? They gain nothing from Caste signalling to you.

We should name and shame if a company doesn't act against discriminatory dog whistles.

I drink, eat meat, eat beef and do not bear any caste specific signifiers on my person. No other Indian expat has tried to enquire about my caste or treated me differently because it's ambiguous.

99% of Indian immigrants are Upper or Middle castes. The reason for this has not been studied. But a few causal factors can be.

- Wealth

India is a poor country. Most Indians upper or Lower caste are poor by first world standards. But the few Indians who are rich tend to be more upper caste (Scholarly, Mercantile or Landowning castes).

But this is also a bad explanation since most Indians who come to US for higher studies do so on a loan.

- Culture

Upper caste families even when dirt poor may have a higher emphasis on education which means they are overrepresented in employment based skilled immigration.

Edit: Vegetarianism often gets bandied around as an upper caste but most Urban Indians eat meat regardless of caste. So, except for a few cases caste is very much ambiguous since a caste that's upper caste in Western UP may be lower caste in Eastern UP.

[redmaverick]

>> and do not bear any caste specific signifiers on my person

Your last name is the biggest caste specific signifier.

[yutijke]

Thanks for pointing this out.

I can now ignore anything you say about caste since it shows you don't know anything about it.

Most last names are used by multiple castes.

Except for popular surnames like Iyer, Sharma or Agarwal the link between surname and Caste can be quite ambiguous.

Given how regional some castes are, in Geographically mixed work places it's really hard to narrow down the caste via surname.

What does a Punjabi know about the caste their Telugu coworker belongs to?