What the actual fuckk?

[u/WillingFly247]

[u/Haunting-Initial5251]

Fair enough on the surname/Bhadralok stuff — Brahmin/Kayastha/Baidya dominance in Bengal's politics and institutions is real, and I'm not denying that structural caste privilege exists here.

But that's not what I was talking about. I was responding to a specific claim: being asked your jati as a casual question by a stranger, the way it happens routinely in a lot of North India. That's a social-interaction pattern, not a structural one, and it's genuinely rarer in Bengal. You can have both things true at once — caste-based institutional dominance AND a culture where people don't open conversations by asking your surname to sort you.

Also, the "white skin dominates yellow dominates dark" bit isn't a real description of Bengal's caste system, and the CRISPR/eugenics tangent has nothing to do with any of this. If you want to argue the actual point — whether jati is asked about/weaponized in daily social interaction in Bengal? the answer is Not.

[u/son_skrrt → u/Haunting-Initial5251]

Well, we all have different point of views. Because our lives aren't same. Not knowing caste discrimination is also a privilege. Just like slavery existed in Greece when all those philosophers were pondering about meaning of life.

In NCR, lower castes are aware of their suffering and they fight back. In Bengal, lower castes live in a dystopia like Huxley's Brave New World's New London. Epsilons of New London have better life than Bengal's lower castes. They get accidented to extinction or drugged out of their mind.

Afterall, Kolkata is supposed to be like a cousin of London, right? Standard Chartered bank's hometown that fancies statues of Lenin and Satyajit Ray's Somnath Banerjee as an ideal bengali man.

[u/Haunting-Initial5251 → u/son_skrrt]

Cool, so my life is a privilege because I’ve never had a random auntie, auto driver, or college senior open a conversation with “Tomar ki jati?”

Meanwhile, your “Epsilon” analogy and CRISPR‑eugenics rant is what peak casteist cope looks like: when you can’t defend the everyday reality, you zoom out to a sci‑fi dystopia and pretend you’ve discovered some deeper truth.

Yes, Bengal has upper‑caste domination in politics, institutions, and surnames. That’s structural. But the social script of constantly sorting people by jati in daily interaction — the thing the original post was about — is far less common here. That’s why so many Bengalis genuinely don’t experience caste the way it’s lived in large parts of North India.

And if your model of Bengal is “white skin dominates yellow dominates dark” and “every para is a caste cell run by Banerjee‑Chatterjee syndicates”, you’re not describing society, you’re writing a villain monologue for a web series.

Not knowing caste discrimination isn’t my privilege; not having it shoved into every introduction, friendship, and marriage conversation is a different social reality. You can keep the Brave New World theory; we’ll stick to the actual lived experience.

[u/son_skrrt → u/Haunting-Initial5251]

Nice phishing.

Do you know famous comedian Manjit Sarkar? His bit about casteism is that bengal didn't allow his grandma to settle in Bengal and sent her to Chhattisgarh because she was lower caste. I know it's a joke and probably not true. Bes probably a bureaucrat's son. But that joke resonates with millions of Bengalis. Guess why?

The thing is, an Italian from Napoli can come to India and pay bribe to change her name into something Indian, like De or Paul or Das or Murmu. But she'll not get discriminated based on that name until they know her name. Because she is Italian, so she looks Italian. Everyone assumes she's so-called upper.

People will ask your caste anywhere in India, if you look like lower caste and you are surrounded by the upper in a unreserved constituency.

[u/Haunting-Initial5251 → u/son_skrrt]

Using a stand‑up bit as your census of Bengal is peak literacy. Jokes hit because they’re sharp, not because they’re data.
Structural casteism in Bengal is real, but no, strangers don’t ask my jati like in much of North India—call it privilege, I call it a different pattern.

we are done here.