Template talk:Infobox caste

Do we need the India flag on this template. Might suggest some sort of official sanction for the caste system to someone who doesn't know much about India. deeptrivia (talk) 06:28, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
 * No, well pointed out.  Noble eagle  [TALK] [C] 06:40, 2 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Infobox should just be renamed caste since there are multiple caste systems in multiple countries.--D-Boy 10:20, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Proposal to remove some fields
This infobox is a magnet for trouble over a lot of India caste articles. This is not necessarily because of the design of the template itself but it is open to abuse/misuse. Some examples:


 * classification/varna/disputed varna fields: these are widely abused in so far as they are rarely all used
 * classification itself can be difficult to summarise because a group can be classified, for example, as OBC in one area but ST/SC in another. The field can rapidly burgeon in size and is better dealt with in the article body. Furthermore, classification changes and often people seem to be attracted to changing the content of the box but leave the article body alone, thus creating contradictions.
 * varna is, well, a hotbed: the number of caste articles making unsubstantiated claims to kshatriya status is staggering and often the situation is more complex than this. Since the situation is complex, the field cannot do it justice and, again, it is an issue better dealt with in the body of the article
 * disputed varna is dependent on the previously mentioned varna field. For example, if some people believe Kurmi to be kshatriya then shudra would go here, but those who believe the opposite would reverse the information. It becomes a game of ping-pong and there is insufficient space to do the subject justice
 * population is totally unsustainable. There has been no census of caste in India since 1931 and no generally accepted reliable survey since 1961. The censuses themselves are known to be unreliable and the 1961 survey used projections. Whatever number is entered here also takes no account of those caste members living outside India, being the diaspora. Any figure entered here is either (a) massively out of date, or (b) impossible to verify reliably
 * gotra and jati - the lists for these are endless in many cases, and often rely on flimsy evidence
 * religions can again be an endless list. Even if traditionally a community was allegedly all Hindu or all Christian etc, there would have been some exceptions. There are certainly loads of exceptions nowadays, including members who are irreligious
 * original state and populated state are meaningless for many Indian castes, since the former is often disputed and the later cannot be verified (per reasons noted regarding population). Furthermore, the states do not correspond to the ancient regions. As an example of the former issue, where should Namudiri Brhamins be placed? Yes, the ended up in the Kerala-Travancore etc area but it appears to be generally recognised that this is not their place of origin ... but no-one knows with certainty where that is, and so it needs a more full discussion than can be provided in the box.
 * subdivisions is almost always a lengthy list and often difficult to cite. They are also subject to numerous issues of transliteration, ambiguity and contradiction
 * related groups is, well, weird. Where does one draw the line?
 * ethnicity is awkward because genetic studies relating to this are really quite a new field and historic opinions differed widely. It is a topic better discussed in the body of the article where the in's and out's can be examined. Simple statements in a box do not do the job.

I could carry on ... but let's see what people think of the above first. My proposal is that at least the above entries should be removed from the template, or not used in any article related to an India caste (in which case, a sub-template which omits these might be a way forward). - Sitush (talk) 13:47, 29 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Overall supporting Sitush's points above. I would submit that the key things to have in an infobox would be a name in both Latin script and the group's preferred script, and then some photo/image, modern or historical, of one representative member or group of members. I would be curious to hear if the Indian editors find the latter to be too anthropological/othering, but I submit that the current "mosaic of movie stars and politicians" doesn't really give much of a feel for what the castes are like. Personally, I wouldn't object if Irish American had a late-1900s engraved sketch of an immigrant, or a 1920s photograph of an Irish-American family in Chicago, so is the image at Maratha, for example, objectionable?


 * Speaking of Maratha, I was BOLD and removed the infobox as essentially non-standard and deprecated (it was a hand-made affair, not this template). Barring objection, I plan to do the same with other infoboxes I encounter, except those containing footnoted info not appearing in the main body. MatthewVanitas (talk) 18:41, 29 July 2011 (UTC)


 * As discussed earlier since Classification/varna is so contentious and prone to disputes, I removed it from Reddy infobox and described traditional social roles. I am going to stick with this. so that way there is no controversy or any tall claims regarding classification or varna in infobox. I am working on summarising and introducing a new section for Varna debate in the body of the article. Foodie 377 (talk) 19:20, 29 July 2011 (UTC)


 * While that may work for Reddy (I have no idea, but presume that you do!), it will not work across all castes and therefore is not a solution to the problem in the infobox. Some castes had many "traditional occupations" and the infobox cannot realistically deal with large numbers. Also, the traditional occupations are often disputed themselves (I think Ezhava may be one particular hotbed for this, and the subject of a fair amount of warring). If this is not enough reason, there is also the point that these articles are covering a vast time period and stating traditional occupations is misleading to an uninformed reader. The infobox box is an eyecatcher and should not display anything that requires further elucidation in the body of the article. Indeed, this is one reason why my preferred option would be not to use the boxes at all, but I realise that this would be pushing my luck a bit! - Sitush (talk) 19:28, 29 July 2011 (UTC)


 * To make it easier...what's left if you take out all of that? Qwyrxian (talk) 01:54, 3 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Not a lot. Well, certainly not a lot that appears to be much used aside from the images. I am not too keen on those, either! The montages of people look messy to me and give those people selected undue weight, while MatthewVanitas's suggestion above could be difficult to achieve consensus on at article level. The cartoon-type images that are sometimes used look a bit silly in my opinion and I do worry about copyvios on those. - Sitush (talk) 07:34, 3 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Okay, so basically nothing. MV, you mention that you like the use of pictures, and you want the words in two scripts; but pictures can be added to articles without an infobox, and the lead should have the naming information in the very first line anyway.  Given that that's the case, and that I see 4 editors (including myself) agreeing that its best to just strip out almost everything, is it possible that the best solution is just to delete the whole thing?  I mean, if there's basic agreement that there's only 2 or 3 fields worth keeping, it seems like there won't really be any "information" in the "Infobox".  Qwyrxian (talk) 00:30, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Well, the infobox does seem very detailed from an ethnographic viewpoint. But Kurmi, it seems is the only one of the dozen or so articles that I examined that even uses "Varna" in its infobox. Also, of the 70 or so "castes" that have it in their Wikipedia pages, there is only one untouchable caste, Chandala (that I noticed). The rest are mostly upper castes that constitute 10% of the Indian population and a tiny handful of middling castes, such as Kurmi and Yadav. Fowler&amp;fowler «Talk»  02:22, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
 * PS Question: I am assuming that we are not talking about the "infoboxes with montages," as in Saryupareen Brahmins and Kanyakubja Brahmins. Right?  Fowler&amp;fowler  «Talk»  02:42, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
 * PPS The lower caste pages are there. See for example Category:Scheduled_Castes_of_Uttar_Pradesh.  But they are mostly stubs.  Contrast them with the two Brahmin pages in the PS.   Fowler&amp;fowler  «Talk»  02:50, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
 * PPPS User:WALTHAM2 it seems has done stellar work in creating Indian caste-related pages (i.e. of the lower castes). It might be worth including him in this discussion.  I'll leave a post on his page.   Fowler&amp;fowler  «Talk»  02:57, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
 * PPPPS Well Matthew has already beaten me to it by a few months! Matthew, is Waltham2 interested in these issues?   Fowler&amp;fowler  «Talk»  03:01, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Fowler, the probable reason why few articles use the varna field is because it has been cleaned out by the likes of myself & MV, eg: at Paravar. If it does not exist then there is no need to keep going round cleaning the thing out. As long as it exists, the temptation is there. Regarding montages, they give undue weight to the images selected, the images are in fact often poor (or at least appear so when sized to fit the box) and quite often they look "tatty" in terms of how they are placed within the box. - Sitush (talk) 08:40, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

I think the template should be simple, include reference to language and geographic distribution.

--WALTHAM2 (talk) 14:42, 5 August 2011 (UTC)


 * How would we determine the geographic distribution, bearing in mind WP:V ? - Sitush (talk) 18:29, 5 August 2011 (UTC)


 * No further comments have been received since 5 August, although the issue was been raised on several talk pages. Although only tangential to this discussion, I'll just point out that the figure of 70 or so pages that use it is in part because a fair few use Template:Infobox Ethnic group instead, and this is itself problematic at least in the India-related sphere. Where do we go from here? - Sitush (talk) 00:14, 23 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Does anyone object to just removing the parameters that are guaranteed to cause problems? Specifically, that would be (in my opinion) everything from "varna" to "devak", "Lineage" to "endogamous", and "related" through "other kingdom". My opinion is that every one of those, as far as I understand them (though I admit to not even knowing what all of those fields mean) is going to require more subtlety and detail than can be covered in an infobox.  Varna, of course, is the best example--as we all know, the varna status of any given caste is often highly disputed, and, as such, cannot be explained in the 3-6 words that fit nicely in the infobox.  We could through in a few "blank" parameters so that at individual articles relevant additional lines can be added (like, if there is a caste that is universally classified as OBC, a classification line could be added to just that article). Removing all of these parameters has the effect of forcing disputed information into the body of the article (or not including it if it cannot be spoken about in depth and with good references).  It's fine to have parameters like languages that will be easy for most but hard for some castes, but things like varna are essentially guaranteed to be hard for all but the smallest number of castes.  The nice thing about removing just those parameters is that it doesn't really hurt the articles (if an article has a filled in parameter that doesn't actually exist in the template, it just gets ignored upon rendering), and it avoids an MfD (which is probably good since there is at least some info here that is useful in some cases).  Qwyrxian (talk) 00:23, 23 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Sorry, add population to my list above based on Sitush's opening argument. I do support keeping religion and language, because the infobox doesn't have to capture every single person in the group; people can even write in "Primarily Hindu" or some such.  Qwyrxian (talk) 00:34, 23 August 2011 (UTC)
 * That's fine by me, Q. Just a brief note regarding Fowler&fowler's analysis that there are 70 or so articles using this template: there are many others that use an ethnic group template and even mark-up specifically for the article, which may go some way to explaining the disparity between usage of this one and the overall number of Indian caste/community articles (which run into the hundreds & perhaps even thousands, depending on which category one looks at).
 * Back on this particular template, it might be useful if we could obtain some sort of consensus regarding what constitutes a suitable usage of the image parameter. - Sitush (talk) 23:11, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Clan vs Caste
I admit here that I'm coming from a position of ignorance here, but looking at a lot of the articles relating to clans and caste, I'm wondering in the South Asian context, what do those terms exactly mean? It also seems like there's a lot of technical terms involved here, I'm wondering if a glossary list might be useful, especially since these terms might require some context and elaboration for full understanding. Jztinfinity (talk) 00:55, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

A useful work on this topic is Kin, clan, raja, and rule : state-hinterland relations in preindustrial India by Richard G. Fox which looks into the issue of clan and caste. In the South Asian context clan can refer to a sub-caste, like for example a Jat clan or in tribal and Muslim communities, generally refers a group of people claiming descent from a common ancestor. Local terms include words such as biradari, got or gotra. Most North Indian Hindus and Sikhs, as well as some Muslim groups practice clan exogamy, the practice of not marrying within the clan. While caste can cover a large number of groupings, who often are quite distinct.It is more of an umbrella term. Hope that helps.

--WALTHAM2 (talk) 21:35, 11 September 2011 (UTC)


 * That is a very nice explanation. In my experience, "subdivision" is another word sometimes used & in particular by anthropologists. And in the last day or so I have seen a "People of India" citation where the author(s) talked of "segments", although in that case the meaning seems somewhat ambiguous. - Sitush (talk) 23:14, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Resistence to the usage of this template
See Reddy, it appears some editors think a special handcrafted infobox is preferable to this one. Frietjes (talk) 15:39, 13 September 2011 (UTC)


 * That is quite common - see my note above on 11 September. - Sitush (talk) 15:51, 13 September 2011 (UTC)


 * It appears as though this one has resolved itself with the last edit not being a revert. Definitely drop a note here if there are more problems.  The old handcrafted one was a mess.  Thanks! Plastikspork ―Œ (talk)  02:03, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Classification parameter, etc
Hi all, I'm not familiar with the world of castes. Can there be some expansion to the documentation for these parameters, please? I recently noticed this edit where an editor added a ton of prose to classification. The content was clearly unsuitable for the parameter, but when I looked up the docs, there was no indication of how to properly use this or many other parameters. I do notice that in 2011, Sitush recommended the removal of a number of parameters above including classification. Thanks. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 20:36, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

Infobox markup broken?
I got to this page by investigating what looks like broken markup on the Rajput page. On that page, and in the Usage section of this template page, the infobox/sidebar appears to me as having only a lone "{", and following the infobox, outside the infobox, is a the markup of fields.

However, Template:Infobox caste/sandbox looks correct, to me. Going back in history, everything appears broken, also. Other infobox templates render fine. AnmAtAnm (talk) 21:36, 5 April 2017 (UTC)