Casteism is an elaborated form of Classism, which the West will not ban because the whole society depends on that discrimination to decide who’s “smart”
You or your children or your grandchildren atleast have a chance on moving up in class in a capitalistic society like West.
In Casteist society you neither your descendants can ever leave your caste and will always face discrimination does not matter how much money you have.
Arguably, the US still has a system like this. Redlining didn't end until what, 1980ish?
Getting rid of the explicit, codified practices of discrimination doesn't remove the discrimination itself. And until we've paid back the damages to the families injured by practices like redlining, we've inflicted financial and social wounds across generations of people descended from those we harmed.
You can just change your surname. Nobody will be able to tell your caste. Upward mobility in castes is a lot given the world has moved a lot from the traditional four profession system of priest, warrior, trader and labourer. People work in professions different than their so called caste. This is especially true of immigrants coming to US.
Why not tell all higher castes to change their names to that of lower castes to accomplish the same flattening, except that you'd prefer to leave it to the powerless to solve their own subjugation
You can not have any arbitrary surname because each surname belong to a caste. So if you take a higher caste surname then you will have to pretend like you belong to higher caste.
Also there are other factors which can tell which caste you actually belong to.
Your birthplace. Your parent's birthplace. Which part of the city you were born in. The accent you speak your mother tongue in.
These are benign questions that your indian colleague might ask or notice.
I dont think the current form in which casteism is practiced in India is related to profession.
Right now in India, lower caste people are mostly free to pursue any profession (unless you go to rural areas).
Discrimination comes from the fact that higer caste people simply despise/hate/consider lower caste people impure or inferior.
