Engineers and advocates of the lowest-ranked castes say that tech companies don’t understand caste bias and haven’t explicitly prohibited caste-based discriminationIn more than 100 job interviews for contract work over the past 20 years, Kaila said he got only one job offer when another Indian interviewed him in person. When members of the interview panel have been Indian, Kaila says, he has faced personal questions that seem to be used to suss out whether he’s a member of an upper caste, like most of the Indians working in the tech industry.
This is particularly weird:
Other tests include patting an Indian man on the back to see whether he is wearing a “sacred thread” worn by some Brahmins, the highest-ranked caste. (This gesture is sometimes referred to as the “Tam-Bram pat,” in reference to Tamil-speaking Brahmins.)
My kneejerk reaction was "that's just completely incredibly ridiculous." But that's bigotry, whether or not a particular kind of bigotry seems alien or personal depends on how much of it you've seen.