The US has an awkward classification of ethnic groups. Even if your ancestors are 75% Irish and 25% Sub-Saharan African, you can be African-American.
Victimisation is a common feature among upper-castes that suddenly find out they are not upper enough in certain societies.
If I’m not mistaken, Mohandas Ghandi was a happy member of the British Empire until he was treated as a colour man in South Africa.
Babasahib Ambedkar realised, as a Dalit, that he should convert to another religion. As Muslims and Sikhs treated women as inferior, so he chose none of them. Perhaps, being at the bottom of the caste system, Ambedkar was more keen to work for other victims without claiming victimhood.

Seems like desi culture is seeping in despite the nativistic upsurge around us. This may be limited to urban and college educated in the US……

I know that Razib asserted that we are looked upon as “brown people” and most Americans are oblivious to national origin, religion, and caste. I am not so sure. I think desis are starting to carve out a cultural niche in the US.

a world level practically free undergraduate education from India

This is a very skewed perspective. Those who get this practically free yet high quality education in India are the cream of the cream (as one of my old IIT professors was fond of saying) who went through a highly meritocratic system that filtered out all but less than 1% or so of high school graduates (which itself describes less than a majority of Indian minors, I’d think). Sure, the winners of that system (like Pichai or Nadella, or heck, someone like me) might like it, but we can’t make a case that it’s a good system for the masses. And there’s no point in being grateful to such a system. It is designed to exclude people, and those of us who “won” more than played our part in getting on top.

Jati/Varna calculus is very much part of the immigrant Indian life in England. Partly to do with the profile of the immigrant (which is broad based) and also with the mediation of the colonial experience where Britishers were part of jati/Varna administration.

A majority of Indian Americans (50%) are from South India where the Kshatriya & Vaishya varnas did not develop into fully grown trees. Another 20% are from Western India.

As a result, what you see today in the US is a backwash of conditions in the old country.

Cant agree with you here. India has no strong geopolitical interests beyond securing oil and preventing Pakistani terrorism.

The way we like to spread influence is through culture and religion, not politics.

Caste politics and excessive implementation of reservations in India are simply a product of the realities of electoral democracy in a polity with a highly stratified and divided populace. What upper castes who complain about this don’t realize is that they are observing the symptoms but not its root pathology, a root pathology that they themselves are all too happy to perpetuate.
If you are hanging around in the “TamBrahm sangam” and posting ads in the newspaper for Iyer/Iyengar brides, you should not be shocked that others are organizing around the same variable themselves lest they be left out of the horse-trading.
Upper castes have the institutional, economic, and cultural power. If they want a less caste-conscious India, they should take the lead themselves by forgoing their own caste identities. Asking the plebeians to let go of their basic identity and whatever limited benefits it provides them while sparing upper-caste elites just because their casteism is a little more polished is cruel, cynical, and disingenuous.

Dont think next gen Indian Americans developing strong ties to India is against the American national interest. In fact, they can be a critical link for American access to a growing economy.

US tends to have very good relations with English speaking countries, and India’s strategic interests are quite benign.