>> I can now ignore anything you say about caste since it shows you don't know anything about it.
Basically, your mind is not capable of tolerating anything that goes against your worldview. The Telugu coworker will know about their fellow Telugu coworker's caste and can easily inform the Punjabi.
That still doesn't solve the issue of surnames being an imperfect signal of caste. Many surnames are shared between castes.
Plus there is no common naming system in India. In the same region within the same caste you can have
- Surnames based on ancestral village
- patronymic surname (Take name of father as your surname)
- "Normal" surnames
You have folks from my caste that follow each of these. How will you now find their caste from their Father's name in Delhi or Mumbai?
It is not easy to narrow down on the caste of the person unless it's a common surname like Iyer, Iyengar, Agarwal, etc. And India has a hell lot of surnames across multiple regions.
Even if I tried, I would fail to recognise the caste of a majority of my neighbours from my hometown.
Forget my coworkers who come from all over the country.
It would only work for families that have lived in the same village for multiple generations.
Basically, your mind is not capable of tolerating anything that goes against your worldview. The Telugu coworker will know about their fellow Telugu coworker's caste and can easily inform the Punjabi.