Can’t you just lie?
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Short answer is you can’t with 100% certainty, but there are certain ways to gain enough information to make an educated guess about caste. You might see someone ask about your last name, what part of town you live in or your parent’s native land, parents/ancestors occupation/education to make inferences.
Additionally language is another way to tell – there are certain accents and vocabulary in each of the Indian languages associated with social class and caste. It is also gleaned based off diet – how dishes are made, what ingredients are used, and more importantly, what ingredients *aren’t* used. There are also certain religious holidays that only members of a certain caste would know to celebrate, additionally there are certain religious rituals and rites performed by certain castes. There are also some physical attributes stereotypically associated with certain castes, but this is not nearly as reliable as the other factors.
TL;DR It’s not 100% obvious, but you can usually get enough info to sus out an approximate guess after a bit of conversation/observation.
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the neighborhood/district you live in, the occupation you have. there is a slight difference in appearance, too. if you pulled up 1 kshatriya against 1 dalit you might not tell the difference but you will for sure know the difference if you had 100 kshatriyas and 100 dalits in the room.
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So, my experience is from the British class system which shares a lot of parallels, but you’ll get the gist:
There’s a ton of “tells” that people can use to figure out which class someone is from, and a lot of them are little tests that mostly only people from the higher classes know are going on.
So say you’re British (class system doesn’t really apply to foreigners, even Anglo ones) talking to someone at a social gathering who’s also British, from a high class they’re gonna scope you out.
First – your accent. Is it right? Are you using the right words? Etc. This isn’t surefire, but is a good screen. Next, are you dressed in a fashion that is currently in favor among the upper classes? Again, not surefire; but a hint.
Then in the getting to know you chat they’re gonna ask you “what school did you go to”. Now you’re a professional 15 years out of university, so you might think they’re talking about your university. Answer with where you went to university and you fail. They know you’re middle class. You’re supposed to say which Secondary School (High School) you went to, and it better be a Private school, and ideally one of the more prestigious Public Schools (these aren’r public, they’re private).
Then you’ll probably expect to have them raise vacations and so on, where did you go this summer? They’re looking for locations and activities that tell them you’re loaded – and you better have a story to tell about them.
These are just a handful of a hundred little tells and challenges. Someone could learn them all and fake it, ideally with a decent bank balance backing them up, but it’d take a LOT of prep work and lying, which would probably be uncovered when your new acquaintance introduces you to a friend of theirs who also went to the school you claimed to have gone to whereupon you’ll be drawn into a chat about when you attended which will be awkward when they don’t remember you from their small graduating year…
The gates are less guarded for middle class vs working class, but again if you want to fake it you better do a deep dive research and practice your accent and so on or you’ll be outed soon enough.
In Nepal, you usually can tell from their last name. Your caste is also your ethnicity, so you can sometimes tell just by looking at them.
The same way people in the UK can tell what class you’re from by your accent. There’s a big difference between an Eton accent and Cockney.
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Same way you can tell with people in your own countries, potentially with less specificity.
I worked with (and was friends with) the most amazingly driven woman once, she was like a force of nature, motivated, skilled and beautifully presented.
She pronounced ask as ‘arks’ and she couldn’t correct it because she couldn’t hear it herself.
Didn’t matter, didn’t change anything about her, but it gave you some insight into her family that you wouldn’t know from her presentation or career trajectory.
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