Can I change my caste?

[Tadpolesinponds]

I've just come across this interesting piece of legal advice on whether it's possible for someone in India to change their caste. There are apparently "caste certificates", and the authorities carry out stringent checks when issuing a certificate. They don't accept self-declaration. There is nothing you can do to change your caste. Being a member of a disadvantaged caste can give you access to government aid, for instance, and for this reason lying about your caste or falsifying a caste certificate can lead to dismissal and even prosecution. But apparently in the UK we can't manage to have a single document which accurately says what sex someone is.
Can I Change My Caste?

It's very clear that the OP is saying "the Indian govt manages to issue accurate certificates about something much harder to prove than sex and refuses to lie about it, so what's the British govt's excuse for lying on passports and birth certificates about sex?"

Yes this thread is realy obvious, not sure where all the arguments have come from

Even if I am misinformed about the Indian govt's motives for issuing the certificates, which I doubt because Dalits have won court cases based on the laws and constitution that gave been written to try to protect them, that doesn't undermine the point, which is that govts can insist on identity documents being factual when they really really want to.

Quite.

This was very obvious to me too. I don’t know why so many people thought OP was lobbying for the caste system to be implemented in the uk

The point is that some people are claiming that they are changing their sex. Sex, like caste, is immutable.

It seemed confected to me.

Sex is immutable, Caste is a patriarchal, hierarchical, man made, bullshit construct designed to keep people down.

I agree with the PP who think this thread was contrived to make the posters here look ridiculous. And it worked. Feminists arguing the "benefits" of on of the most destructive systems for women in the world.

What next, What the UK Government should learn from the Taliban about single sex spaces?

This is just it.

We see the exact same thing in other places and other contexts where there are benefits conferred to individuals for memberships in groups deemed to be opressed - not class (ecoomic) groups, but racial, caste, ethnic, sexuality related, or other groups.

This what has diven a lot of recent controversy in North American First Nations communities about who counts as indiginous. It'a actually really hard to define - is it like citizenship (this is how the Cherokee treat it.) It is DNA, and if so, how much. Is it about living or growing up on the rez? Something else?

These questions used to be somewhat academic, fakers weren't looked upon positively, but they didn't get much in the way of concrete benefits for it. If anything people felt the benefits of indigenous heritage were subject to too much gatekeeping, so for example children adopted out wouldn't have access. So there was an effort in various contexts to expand.

But now what we see are all kind of people trying to dig up tenuous connections, or even fake ones, for access to things like jobs, internships, and so on. And the more lax the criteria put in place the more people do take advantage, it's a huge issue in academia.

All of which has ignited a huge debate within and between indigenous communities about how they decide who is indigenous.

This is the reason that if you have a place like India, where they want to try and create concrete benefits to help low caste individuals, they need to have considerable safeguarding in place to make sure others are not fraudulently claiming them. And trying to nail down caste is not simple, much like trying to decide who counts as indigenous.

The comparison to sex is interesting in that we have people trying to claim that it is too complicated, and not worth trying, when we see other examples of attempts to do this kind of thing that are far more complex. Not just in India either, left wing progressives in the west are all for this kind of thing in every area except sex. Because they want to push things like race based benefits and affirmative action, and that requires defining the categories. They know this.

I'd question whether some posters are really pushing back on this because they "don;t understand." I suspect that they want to continue to support these kinds of programs but don't want them compared to things like government benefits based on caste, because it's a little too close to the bone in terms of how it rarefies these socially created categories.

Nobody on this thread has said that caste is a good thing.

They have said that it is a good thing to stop privileged members of society from identifying as disadvantaged members of society in order to claim benefits intended for the disadvantaged.

I understand the point. If India can manage the caste system (which is a hateful system, but that's not relevant here) and check which caste anyone belongs to (surnames are a dead giveaway btw) then it is inconceivable that the UK cannot manage a document that makes it clear what sex a person is.
Conclusion: the UK can but won't.

I'm not even sure there is that much of a value being stated.

More, pointing out that where there is a benefit being provided to a group, it's seen as necessary to define and protect who counts as a group member.

This is a nice example of why that's necessary, it really doesn't matter whether anyone thinks providing AA type benefits to low caste people, or to any other group, is a good idea.

I really don't know why people think comparing things means somehow thinking that the thing in itself is good or should be emulated or whatever. I can compare heavy metal with bluegrass, that doesn't say anything about whether I like or dislike either. It certainly doesn't mean I think everyone should start playing bluegrass music.

I'd be curious though how they deal with people with mixed backgrounds. Or what about someone who is low caste but rich, or politically powerful? Here in the west we do of course see people who are rich and well connected get benefits on account of certain characteristics, but is that how they are managing these things in India?

In the Indian context, caste might as well be immutable for practical purposes. As I have said repeatedly, Indian ex-pats brought caste with them to the UK, the USA, and anywhere else where two or more Indians interact. They move to live in casteless societies and nonetheless the other castes impose caste on the Dalits.

If Gandhi had said "caste is now abolished" and got that written into the Constitution of India, do you honestly think that the rest of Indian society would have actually abolished it in practice? Or do you think that the Dalits would still be discriminated against, with the added problem of having no affirmative action policies, no legal protection, and no recourse to law?

I am at the stage where I have difficulty believing that your misunderstanding isn't wilful. I wonder what you get out of misrepresenting the posters on this thread?

There are certainly some deeply odd takes on the OP’s post.

now what we see are all kind of people trying to dig up tenuous connections, or even fake ones, for access to things like jobs, internships, and so on.

Benjamin Butterworth, Rachel Dolezal, all those US college and university applicants I linked to upthread...

The entirely justified response to Butterworth and Dolezal show that "progressives" understand fully well the consequences of not gatekeeping the affirmative action measures.

I suspect that they want to continue to support these kinds of programs but don't want them compared to things like government benefits based on caste, because it's a little too close to the bone in terms of how it rarefies these socially created categories.

I think your autocarrot didn't like "reifies".

Yup. No one likes the caste system apart from the upper caste people. The lower caste people don't like it and the people living in (ostensiably or genuinely) casteless societies don't like it. Yet, to try to meaningfully tackle it, you have to acknowledge in law that it exists and gatekeep the affirmative action provisions.

Race is arguably also a social construct. Granted, there are minor physiological differences between people with different ancestral homelands, which can manifest as differing prevalence of some medical conditions and minor differences in skeletal structure and body tissue distribution, as well as the obvious differences in skin colour and hair texture, but none of that is a barrier to treating all people as "equal in dignity and rights". Yet Black and brown people are often not treated as equal in dignity and rights.

In a racist society, race can be thought of as being like an immediately-visible version of caste. There are clear parallels between how the Dalits were treated by the State in pre-independance India (including how the British Raj treated them) and the State's treatment of Black people in the slavery era and Jim Crow era Deep South and apartheid era South Africa. When Guy Bailey was denied a job interview for a bus conducting job in Bristol because of his race, how did that differ in practical terms from an Indian event management company refusing to employ a Dalit?

The Race Relations Act 1965 gave Black people in the UK legal recourse against racial discrimination, but reifies race in law to do so. The Indian Constitution gives Dalits legal recourse, but reifies caste in law to do so. When a social construct is used to discriminate against people and is believed in by a large enough proportion of a society for that discrimination to be significant, the law should recognise that social construct in order to outlaw discrimination on the basis of it.

And it's just hit me that this is why TRAs are pushing the "(nearly) everyone has a gender identity" myth, especially in schools, alongside declaring that "I don't have a GI" is heresy a terven dogwhistle unless couched in the othering and ideologically submissive special identity language of "agender"/"gendervoid"/etc: if they can manufacture enough belief, they can claim a need to reify GI in law. They have to manufacture this belief because no child is born believing it.

Usually, a child inherits its father's caste.

I can foresee India having a phenomenon of rich Dalits getting the reserved internships whilst the poor Dalits clean toilets, just as we see rich Black and brown people getting the BAME-only internships whilst the poor Black and brown people clean toilets.

I don't understand the usefulness of comparing countries with vastly differing histories and traditions. It also feels kind of disrespectful to trying to (at least) understand the origins of the caste system.

Comparing apples and oranges...

It's useful to look at the forms that social constructs take in different societies. It's useful to see different societies with differing social constructs end up with similar outcomes, such as discrimination and and State attempts to prevent discrimination. Am I detecting a variant of Rule Twelve? Are women not allowed to recognise patterns?

It's not disrespectful to examine another society from a distance. It's not like we are turning up and treating people like zoo exhibits, which is something that field anthropologists run the risk of doing. Your post reads a lot like "white women, stay in your lane".

I need to find an alternate word, my autocorrect always buggers it up. I thought I'd defeated it this time but clearly not.

Anyway, yes, you may be correct about the goal with gender identity, certainly I think that is their own internal logic.

And yes, I think race as we use it in the west has in the past functioned almost identically like caste. Personally I think as a strategy, concretizing (autocotrrect seems to not like that either or I've fucked up the spelling) race etc is a terrible idea and will only lead to problems, and in fact it is already doing so, particularly in places like the US. It will inevitably make these damaging concepts harder to root out, will reinforce every negative form of race essentialism and supremacy, and it's also completely unnecessary because we can help people on the basis of actual need.

However, ' really irrelevant to the OPs point,it doesn't negate the that where there needs to be definitions to support a particular section of society, be it women, the disabled, veterans, or any other group, who is in the group requires clarity. Sex should be just about the easiest example possible of all of them.

Although I don't think Benjamin Butterworth was really the same kind of thing, if I understand correctly he was making a political point, not trying to make a serious fake claim to be black. Rachael D was possible a bit of a nutter, but someone liek Thomas King fits the bill pretty clearly.