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Comment by malshe | Hacker News Reader

> most important their treatment of the dalit and lower castes.

Dalit are people from lower caste. Also, Indians have been actively engaged in removing the caste-based discrimination for decades now. It will take time. Do you know that at least 50% of all the jobs in the government sector are reserved from people in the lower caste? The same applied to college education as well. This percentage may be higher in some Indian states. Show me another country that has taken such drastic steps to correct historical wrongs.

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The US civil war was a pretty impressive display of desire to right historical wrongs.

The US Civil War war never achieved its stated aims for black / previously-ensalved people. Even though the North won the US Civil War, because of Andrew Johnson (edit: not Jackson) and the ultra-conservative SCOTUS, the people of the US South were able to put into effect Jim Crow laws, and the South essentially won the war over whether non-white people should be treated as equal citizens – there's a book on this subject: https://www.amazon.ca/How-South-Won-Civil-War/dp/0190900903

There’s a gap between ‘did not achieve its stated aims’ and ‘did not win any actual rights’ that is big enough to drive a truck through…

Also, Andrew Jackson wasn’t a very nice guy, but he’d been dead for 28 years when the Civil War ended. Can’t really blame him for how things worked out at that point.

The civil war did achieve its stated goal.

Here is Lincoln on his goal for the war:

>My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that

He saved the Union so he accomplished his goal for the war.

Do you mean Rutherford B Hayes? Andrew Jackson died in 1845, 16 years before the civil war began.

Sorry, I meant Andrew Johnson. He kept vetoing progressive bills, opposed the 14th amendment, etc.

Rutherford B. Hayes was horrible too, since he was the one who pulled federal troops out of the South (who were there to protect non-white people's voting rights).

Honestly, the Southern states should never have been admitted back into the Union _as states_, but should rather have been annexed back as territories (with no federal representation). Abolitionists admitted those states back under the theory that blacks voting would result in progressive folks being elected.

But we're still paying the price of that foresight today. If the southern states were territories, Trump & Bush would never have won, the Congress would have been a highly-progressive for the past two decades, etc. Honestly, even today it might be an improvement if these southern states just formed their own country, but with a free-trade and currency-sharing treaty with the rest of the US.

The issues are the electoral college, two senators per state regardless of population and gerrymandering. If we truly had “one person one vote”, most of these problems would be solved

1) multiple member constituencies for minority districts might actually solve a lot of problems

2) there is an section in the 14th amendment which allows states’ electoral votes and their Congressional representation to be zeroed out if they don’t play nice (basically the same as territories)

Re: 2)

The amendment says: “the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.”

Not zero out, but rather reduce.

Regardless, the conservative SCOTUS would never enforce this anyways.

Yes, and you can consider steps taken by India to have had equal amount of impact if not more in the betterment of oppressed. It may not have been a Big Bang improvement like with American civil war but instead slowly over a few decades it has worked quite well

I'm always in favor of less bloodshed. On that front the UK and India (I think) have done a much better job than the US did.

India caste-based discrimination is as strong as before. All this jobs reservations are created by politicians who want to get the votes of the lower caste but this is just a show. The real test of the pudding is that the dalits fare better when the British was running the show.

I'm not sure about the last sentence. India had a literacy rate of 16% when the British left and education was monopolized by non-Dalits/SC/STs AFAIK. Do you have numbers?

Violence against the dalits is much worst than when the British was running the show. At least during the Raj times, a dalit can reasonably count on the British to deliver justice when the higher caste rape or kill their family members. Nowadays if a dalit dare to speak up or go to a police more violence will descend upon them. Passing a law here or there for show or having a tribal as president is nothing when the culture is caste ridden. You can't legislate morality is what I am saying.

I avoid speaking here since this is an American website and I don't expect them to be educated about non American things. But you are just making shit up and I would like to know your motives behind it.

The leaps and bounds of improvement in lives of lower caste people is one of the primary reason why casteism is not going away. Unlike racism, anyone can claim to be of any caste and there is literal riots happening to be classified as lower caste so that people can claim the benefit. As I said, I don't plan to start an argument here but you are lying and you should tell us why.

Citation needed. You can't just make claims without any supporting evidence.

India's HDI (Human Development Index) is worse than half of sub-Sahara African countries. Who bear the brunt of this dire statistics? The higher caste or the dalits and the adivasis? India should spend money on this vulnerable people but the Modi government is talking of spending money to dress up the capital or other vanity projects. When confront Indian will readily cite they have a dalit president or this or that to address Western sensibilities but the ground reality is that Indian's caste culture hasn't changed. And that is the problem.

Are Dalits better off today or under the Raj? Are they closer to parity with upper castes in terms of education and health outcomes?

This is just your opinion. The reservations have changed lives of millions of lower caste people.

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