My Son Learned He Was ‘Low Caste’ From a Textbook

It was a beautiful sunny afternoon on a verdant Ivy League campus when the "C" word was thrown at me, casually, over greasy takeout noodles. "You are a Hindoo!!! What is your caste?" asked my chirpy, white colleague with the excitement of a contestant on "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire," confident he was onto an easy million-dollar question. After all, since he knew about "caste," he knew everything about my religion and me.