I personally don’t mind any amount of criticism and scrutiny if it means an end to the evil scourge that is casteism.
However what I do mind is when this criticism is mixed with religion and culture bashing (in this case Hinduism) by ill-informed people who read hot takes on the news.
Case in hand, the Seattle ordinance. The councilwoman proposing the ordinance went to great lengths to assure people that it doesn’t target a single religion and yet here’s a BBC article[0] that manages to convey an extraordinary amount of misinformation in one line on the third paragraph. This is exactly what people were concerned about and exactly what is playing out.
Edit: Text from the article “ The caste system in India dates back over 3,000 years and divides Hindu society into rigid hierarchical groups.” There are many flaws with this statement but Hacker News is probably not the best place for history lessons.
The caste system exists outside India. In Japan, people who were falconers, butchers, leather workers and other "ignoble" or "cruel" professions under Buddhism were branded as untouchables, burakumin in Japanese, sometimes also eta or hinin, literally meaning "subhuman". Somehow the lord who employed the falconer was not cruel or ignoble, funny how things work out...
The issue is that Americans with half-baked knowledge think that all Indians have a caste assigned to them, or that India has a national level caste allocation policy. For Americans who hate India, this gives them more ammo to hate us.
However what I do mind is when this criticism is mixed with religion and culture bashing (in this case Hinduism) by ill-informed people who read hot takes on the news.
Case in hand, the Seattle ordinance. The councilwoman proposing the ordinance went to great lengths to assure people that it doesn’t target a single religion and yet here’s a BBC article[0] that manages to convey an extraordinary amount of misinformation in one line on the third paragraph. This is exactly what people were concerned about and exactly what is playing out.
[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-64727735
Edit: Text from the article “ The caste system in India dates back over 3,000 years and divides Hindu society into rigid hierarchical groups.” There are many flaws with this statement but Hacker News is probably not the best place for history lessons.