[quote name='h3llbring3r']I thought the caste system had for the most part, met it's social demise (with the warrior castes dietary liberties vs other hinuds being the only real vestigial remnants). I may be wrong, I have only slight exposure to their culture.[/QUOTE]
I thought that too, but I saw a story on reddit about a guy who had to manually remove blockage from india's sewer system because he was an untouchable.
If the caste system isn't around anymore I don't think it's a big deal that they had him go from typical indian to modern muslim dude. It never really suggested that he was a hindu. In fact, when the village was attacked at the beginning of the film the attackers were shouting kill the muslims.
I think they had to have him seem like an average hardworking muslim guy to counter his brother being the "bad guy" of the film.
IDK, I suck at understanding movies, and suck worse at writing about them.