Tyler Cowen: belief

Transcript context

…Yeah. Untouchables are . . . the main features are segregation and the inheritance of caste. Caste is by birth. You cannot acquire caste. You’re untouchable if you’re born to untouchable family. This is maintained by endogamy, that is, marriage within one’s own caste. Marriage outside of the caste is very, very stigmatized and not allowed. It’s not allowed to the extent that parents themselves can kill the girl for marrying outside of the caste. If I think back in time a bit, people in the United States, they’re very familiar with the apartheid system of South Africa. There was here a very strong protest movement against that. There were boycotts. People talked about it quite frequently. With respect to the caste system in India, you have many millions of people existing in a segregated existence, segregated setup, and hardly anyone here talks about it at all. Hardly anyone complains. Why is there this difference? Why do we as outsiders have such an apparently indifferent attitude toward Indian caste? First of all, America is a big country, the most influential country in the world, militarily and industrially, the most advanced country. Whatever happens here, it’s telecast and broadcast everywhere in the world. So we come to know what happens in America, not so much the other way around. What happens in India doesn’t get necessarily around. The second thing is, while practicing caste, Indian castes and rulers are very secretive, very, very secretive about caste. They’d like to tell people that there is no such thing as caste. One of the reactions to my book is “Why is she washing the dirty linen in the public? Why is she telling everybody there is caste system?”…

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