Why Brahmins Lead Western firms But Rarely Indian Ones
1st January 2022
WHAT DO THE chief executives of Adobe, Alphabet, IBM, Match Group (which owns Tinder), Microsoft, OnlyFans (a subscription service featuring content creators in various stages of undress) and Twitter have in common? All seven happen to be of Indian origin. That is not surprising considering the abundance of subcontinental talent drifting into Western companies: in recent years Indians have been granted well over two-thirds of America’s H-1B visas for highly skilled workers.
But these particular bosses share something else, too. They are all top-caste Hindus. Four are Brahmins. Traditionally associated with the priesthood and learning, this pinnacle of the caste pyramid’s 25,000-plus sub-groups makes up just 50m or so of India’s 1.4bn people. The other three CEOs come from castes traditionally associated with commerce or “scribal” professions such as book-keeping. These groups account for a similarly slim section of the pyramid’s capstone: the 30% of Hindus that the government classes as “forward” castes, as opposed to the 70% who fall among such categories as “backward” or “scheduled” castes (Dalits, formerly known as untouchables) and “scheduled tribes”.
And that is surprising, because across India’s own boardrooms it is not Brahmins who predominate. Members of the former priestly caste tend to excel less in business than in fields such as academia, science and the law. A quarter of Supreme Court judges in the past 15 years have been Brahmins, and three of India’s four Nobel prizes in science have been won not just by Brahmins, but by a smaller subset of Tamil Brahmins.
Funny how nobody talks about ‘systemic racisn’ and mentions India.