...Whatever be the sphere of...literary, scientific, bureaucratic or whatever, the Brahmin remains the top dog. It may be ethnic; or it may be the result of several generations of learning of which they held the monopoly till the last century, or both combined...Brahmins form no more than 3.5 per cent of the population of our country.

...Brother Stanny, of St. Anne's Church, Dhule, Maharashtra has compiled figures of different castes in government employment during British rule in 1935 and as they were 35 years after Independence in 1982. During British rule, the largest proportion of government jobs (40 per cent) were held by Kayasthas. Today their figure has dropped to 7 per cent. Next came the Muslims who were given special privileges by the British. They had 35 per cent jobs in 1935; in free India their representation has dropped to 3.5 per cent. Christians likewise favoured by the English had 15 per cent; their figure has dropped to 1 per cent.

Scheduled castes, tribes and backward classes, who had hardly any government jobs, have achieved a representation of 9 per cent. But the most striking contrast is in the employment of Brahmins. Under the British they had 3 per cent - fractionally less than the proportion of their population; today they hold as much as 70 per cent of government jobs - I presume the figure refers only to gazetted posts. In the senior echelons of the civil service from the rank of deputy secretaries upwards, out of 500 there are 310 Brahmins, i.e. 63 per cent; of the 26 state chief secretaries, 19 are Brahmins; of the 27 Governors and Lt. Governors; 13 are Brahmins; of the 16 Supreme Court judges, 9 are Brahmins; of the 330 judges of the High Courts, 166 are Brahmins; of 140 ambassadors, 58 are Brahmins; of 98 vice-chancellors 50 are Brahmins; of 438 district magistrates, 250 are Brahmins; of the total of 3,300 IAS officers, 2,376 are Brahmins. They do equally well in electoral posts; of the 530 Lok Sabha members, 190 are Brahmins; of 244 in the Rajya Sabha, 89 are Brahmins. These statistics clearly prove that this 3.5 per cent of Brahmin community of India holds between 36 per cent of 63 per cent of all the plum jobs available in the country... I can scarcely believe that it is entirely due to the Brahmins' higher I.Q.

(Source: The Sunday, 23 December, 1990)