How does the Indian cast system work?
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In the Ancient times, there were 4 Varnas/Castes: Brahmins(priests), Kshatriyas(Warriors) , Vaishyas(Traders) and Shudras(Workers/Labourers) and the basis of assigning caste was their profession. Also at that time it was quite flexible.
But later on this varna system became rigid and formed today’s so called caste system. Mobility from one caste to another was not possible. And this was the order of superiority: Brahmin> Kshatriya> Vaishya> Shudra.
This led to attrocities upon lower caste people. Like if a lower caste person draws water from a village well, then upper caste people will consider it as polluted. Lower caste people were not allowed to sit together or eat together with upper caste people.
And to overcome this, the govt started categorising every caste/ethnicity into certain categories like Unreserved(UR), OBC, SC, ST and gave them reservation benefits. And this system is still prevailing now.
In order to get a seat in a government college or in order to get a government job, different categories have different cutoff marks. Like an ST person would get the same job as an Unreserved(UR) person at a lesser marks.
(I will give a real life example. I am from Unreserved Category and I got 128 marks in an entrance exam for a job and I could not get the job at that marks. One of my senior who is from ST category got 108 marks and he got the job).
This is one factor which has led to increase in immigration to the west mostly by upper caste people of India.
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