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This isn't about caste though, usually it's about self preservation

1. Indian Hindus have had a caste system since it was introduced in the Vedas 3500 years ago. It was initially intended as means of organizing society and not necessarily hierarchical.

2. It wasn't necessarily systemized until it was legally codified by the British during the colonial era. Indian historians have debated the fluidity of caste prior to this time and concluded that while caste endogamy was clearly the norm, caste was much more fluid historically.

3. There are thousands of castes in India. When the British came across this system, for the purposes of census administration, they limited self identification to only one of the four castes as described in the Vedas, legally codifying it as a hierarchy.

4. The idea of one group of people seeing itself as superior to others is a common theme throughout human history. The US had a race based caste system for most of its history with the addition of legally codified chattel slavery and segregation of African Americans.

5. Pulitzer prize winning author Isabel Wilkerson argues that America still has an invisible caste system to this day.

6. America utilizes DEI to remedy past and present caste discrimination. India outlawed caste discrimination at its inception in article 17 of it's constitution.

7. Some regressive Indians bring a casteist worldview with them. The government of the United States and its supporters are currently working at establishing a caste system where those of European heritage are high caste and those of other races or heritages are low caste. Both are wrong.

I say this mainly because I come across many people that see caste as a uniquely regressive institution the likes of which has not existed in other societies. Every hierarchical system based on race or ancestry is casteist and essentially every human society in civilizational history has had and likely currently continues to have that bigotry deeply ingrained within.

Nothing you said is wrong. Just adding context for a better understanding.

Am an immigrant, not true.

Sectarianism will always exist. One can argue that the resurgence in white supremacy here is a manifestation of that (a group of Europeans and their descendants thinking their sect is superior / innately worthy of more resources).

I think one would be hard pressed to defend the argument that racism is a "white export" but what is undeniably true is that colonial Europeans were obsessed with race and saw the world through the lens of a race based caste system.

They assumed that all human progress could be distilled to lighter skin people being more advanced and darker skin people being more primitive.

They created entire scientific fields around this and interpreted their religion in a way to support this.

In India, they interpreted indigineous systems of social hierarchy such as caste and took them a step further, defining those that were darker skinned and lower caste as inherently criminal, keeping them under the watchful eye of their surveillance state.

They perceived lighter skin Muslims and upper caste Hindus as more "civilized" than darker skin low caste Hindus and gave the former administrative opportunities because of this perceived superiority.

They had an explicit policy of divide and conquer, promoting hateful and divisive rhetoric that resulted in communal violence so that people would be distracted from fighting against them.

Then when Nazi Germany destroyed their infrastructure in WW2 such that they could no longer financially maintain their institutions of colonialism, they drew an arbitrary border which cut through incredibly culturally and linguistically diverse communities and left.

In summary: Would there be animosity between Pakistan and India without the mismanagement of partition and the empire going out of its way to promote hate? Probably.

Would racism and sectarian violence not exist in the absence of the European world view being spread globally through colonialism? No we would still have that.

Were these made substantially worse by colonial powers promoting those divisions around the world over centuries? I think absolutely yes.

So while I take your point that such divisions didn't originate in the West, it very much was a core component of their worldview and they stoked and exacerbated those divisions everywhere they went. I find it difficult to let colonists off the hook for that.

But to your general point on human nature, I agree. The reason why I hold America toa different standard is it calls itself the land of oppurunity and takes pride in that.

From the regressive perspective, if you're nonwhite and poor you're a leech on society and if you are well off you must have took it from them by gaming the system. The core is not seeing others as equally human.

Being financially secure is a multiplier to their bigotry as they feel it challenges 1) their collective power and 2) their worldview that anyone that shares their melanin level is innately superior in every way.

They are damn good spices and put my American cooking to shame. Share your secrets to Vindaloo or GTFO.

I mean, racism against brown people ranges pretty far and wide on the internet and I’d frankly be shocked if lemmy proved to be an exception