An article on C.R. Rao

by Julian Champnik in Significance,Dec2011, Vol. 8 Issue 4, p175-178
C.R. Rao (behind a firewall)
The article is based on an interview last year. At the age of 91, he still remembers the slights at the homes of his brahmin friends in his school days: "I would not be allowed into Brahmin homes. Some would allow me into courtyard, or to the front steps. If I was thirsty on the way home my friends were allowed to pout water into my cupped hands outside, but not into a cup..."
This must have been in the thirties. The situation changed, at least in some places. In the fifties, I actually stayed in the house of a brahmin friend of my father. But I stayed in the verandah and had access to some outer rooms and ate in the verandah. A professor in the Indian Statisticl Institute ( where Rao had several brahmin Ph.D. students) told me last year that he still observes caste 'rules' when he visits his father in the village.