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Two new, large-scale surveys — one from Pew Research and a joint study led by Carnegie with Johns Hopkins and the University of Pennsylvania — offer fresh, sometimes surprising detail about how caste shapes everyday life in India and among the diaspora. The findings challenge common narratives circulating in newsrooms and courtrooms, and have immediate relevance for debates about discrimination in workplaces, public policy, and community life both in India and the United States.
Most people report not experiencing caste-based mistreatment in the past year
Both studies find that a clear majority of respondents did not report recent personal encounters with caste bias. In India, roughly four out of five people said they had not experienced caste-based discrimination in the year before the survey, though the proportion who did varies sharply by region.
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That regional spread matters: the share reporting discrimination is small in parts of western India but rises to well over a quarter in some southern and northeastern states. Those differences point to local social dynamics rather than a single, uniform national condition.
Among Indian Americans, the Carnegie-led survey found that nearly all respondents — about 95% — said they had not faced caste discrimination in the prior year. While the remaining minority who reported such experiences cannot be dismissed, the overall picture is of rare, not pervasive, incidents in the diaspora. The Carnegie team also questions the reliability of some earlier U.S.-based studies that have been widely cited in media and legal filings.
Opposition to inter-caste marriage is widespread across communities
Strikingly, resistance to marriage across caste lines appears across religious and social groups. Roughly two-thirds of adults in India told Pew they would prefer to stop inter-caste marriages, and that sentiment is not confined to one religion or one end of the social ladder.
The pattern is stronger among older adults and those without college degrees, and it is notably high in several religious groups. Yet other attitudes reveal a more pragmatic tolerance: a large majority of people — including many from so-called “general” castes — say they would accept neighbors from other castes.
Religion shapes social circles more than caste in many places
Both surveys show that faith communities often organize everyday social life. In India, a large share of respondents say most of their close friends come from the same caste. In the United States, that dynamic flips: only about one in five Indian Americans report that most of their friends are from the same caste, while religion remains a stronger organizing force for social networks.
Caste identity crosses religious boundaries
The data make clear that caste is not an exclusively Hindu phenomenon. Significant proportions of Christians, Buddhists, Muslims and Sikhs in India identify with categories such as Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe or Other Backward Classes. That helps explain why caste-based social norms and preferences appear across religious lines and why the problem cannot be reduced to a single faith or community.
In some northeastern states — where Christian communities are a majority and where reported rates of caste discrimination are among the highest — the overlap between religion and caste identity complicates simple explanations that treat caste as synonymous with Hindu orthodoxy.
- India — personal experience: About 80% report no caste discrimination in the past year; roughly 20% report some experience (wide regional variation).
- Indian Americans — personal experience: Around 95% report no caste discrimination in the past year; ~5% report some experience.
- Inter-caste marriage: About two-thirds of Indians oppose marriages across caste lines.
- Social networks: ~80% of Indians say most close friends are of the same caste; only ~21% of Indian Americans say the same.
What do these findings mean in practice? For journalists, advocates and policymakers they demand a more nuanced approach. Blanket assertions that caste discrimination is uniformly widespread — especially in the U.S. diaspora — are inconsistent with the new survey evidence. At the same time, regional hotspots and the nontrivial minority who do report harm point to real problems that require targeted interventions.
Finally, the studies highlight the importance of methodology. Reliable, transparent data should guide workplace policies, legal claims, and public conversations. Simplified narratives gain traction quickly, but the surveys emphasize complexity: caste is a social structure woven into many communities and religions, its effects vary by place and context, and addressing it effectively means paying attention to local patterns as much as national headlines.
