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Comment by toohotatopic | Hacker News Reader

Does this have a racial background like the lower castes in India?

As far as I am informed, Islam not only spread by sword in India but also because it overcame the caste system. I don't understand how people united in their rejection of castes are willing to maintain slavery.

Could it be that Pakistan has many former lower castes members and even after centuries of leaving the caste system behind them, they are unable to overcome their victimhood?

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This part of Punjab had lower castes but also many clans that didn’t fit neatly into caste system. It’s not clear which is the case here. In India lower caste Muslims are still often endogamous. Christians in Pakistan more often tend to have a lower caste background.

That is not correct. Caste system never existed in India, at least not in the same or anti-humane form as in Islam - like Sunni, Shia, Ahmediyas etc. Caste system was an invention of the British & magnified to exponential proportions.

Shia and Ahmadiyya are treated badly, but they are not castes (not yet anyway). All British did was freeze what they saw in place.

The British thought that India suffered from the same casteism as Christianity (& Abrahamic religions) in other places, so they tried their best to retrofit Indian society into that model. But they could find no evidence of casteism, so they were forced to artificially make up many "castes" & grouped people based on occupation etc. The people who could not be fitted into any castes were called a tribes, which are now known as scheduled tribes & castes. Otherwise there should have been just 4 castes according to every tenet of Hinduism. Unfortunately, Indians & the GOI have formalized that artificiality & that is the genesis of the caste system. Caste system is nothing but an invention of the British. Caste itself is a Portuguese word, nothing that correlates to Indian / Hinduism.

Pray tell, what casteism does Abrahamic religions suffer from? Sectarianism?

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