So, tell me if I am reading this correctly, please? You are born, you have certain karma. This is irrefutable and inflexible? You can never advance through hard work or any other means. You MUST accept your lot in life?
You are expected to make the best of it as you may, but with no promise of EVER evolving upward in status, respect, income and so on? You are supposed to be happy on the bottom?
You can't change your destiny, because it's either happened (you can't change who your parents were, or their material circumstances, or where and when you were born and so on) or it's happening or is going to happen (a pandemic breaks out, you live somewhere it's easy to get vaccinated or you don't , you catch Covid-19 or you don't).
And yes, you are supposed to evolve upwards, but in the next incarnation -- if following the Gitas brings you good things in this life, then that's great, but it's not the real reason. And if you behave like Donald Trump and his large adult children, then you're bringing shame and dishonour on the whole family (it's not Barron's fault his parents are who they are).
ETA: I'm hesitant to try to explain caste because I'm very conscious I don't understand it, and that the one thing every Indian I talked to agreed on was that you can't understand it unless you're Hindu, and it's pointless trying to, but from what I observed, in practical terms it was all very familiar -- no one had any difficult accepting me, because apart from not having been born a Hindu, I ticked all the right caste boxes -- from a middle-class professional family background, good school and education, good manners, well-read, particular cultural and intellectual interests, respectable professional career, and so on.
The details differ, but status and privilege are very real everywhere, and it's mostly hereditary, wherever you go.
