How does the Indian cast system work?
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It’s similar to racism, but instead of skin colour or race you have categories based on ancient professions and cultural practices. So you can have folks with very different appearances belonging to the same caste. However it’s still similar to racism in that professions were supposed to be inherited. So children inherit the caste of their parents.
Priests, Warriors, Traders, and Farmers/ Workers are the ones mentioned in the old scripts, but below those you also have the untouchables – the toilet cleaners, funeral workers, tribals etc.
You can change your name, but you can’t change your caste (even today). Caste based negative discrimination was abolished long ago, but informally it has of course continued e.g. Inter-caste marriages in villages can still lead to “honour killings”. Caste bias also resulted in informal economic exclusion of lower castes, which is especially relevant given the dependence on informal community financing and social contracts in business.
Affirmative action towards people of lower caste is a point of contention and both sides of the debate have been politicized. Anecdotally lower castes do seem under-represented and relegated to nominal or symbolic roles in business, politics, media etc. At the same time the folks benefiting from caste based affirmative action often seem to be from affluent families, i.e. they might not “need” the affirmative action.
Do note that reddit ELI5 is not a great place to ask this question. The current political climate in India is right-wing, and most Indian redditors are affluent Indians who have limited direct exposure to caste based issues. It’s better to depend on organizations and experts doing development work in Indian villages for a more nunced understanding of caste.
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