A full 75 years after India first outlawed caste discrimination in its constitution, the state of California may soon follow suit. One would think that something that was banned so many decades ago would have died by now but caste, and caste discrimination by extension, exist in much the same way that racism exists even if segregation has been outlawed.
And much like racism, caste discrimination is fairly global. When the Human Rights Watch 2001 report called for protections against caste discrimination, it included the Buraku people of Japan, the Osu of Nigeria, and certain groups in Senegal and Mauritania, besides the Dalits in Nepal, Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan.
This week, The Global Tiller digs into the concept of caste and how it is used to discriminate against certain segments of the society. What makes it a global issue and what are some protections that the marginalised communities have managed to win?
The Human Rights Watch calls caste discrimination "a hidden apartheid of segregation, modern-day slavery". Equality Labs, a civil rights organisation looking specifically into Dalit issues in the United States, defines caste as a system of religiously codified exclusion that was established in Hindu scripture. At birth, every child inherits his or her ancestor’s caste, which determines social status and assigns “spiritual purity”. Equality Labs calls it "a structure of oppression that affects over 1 billion people across the world".
If you live in South Asia, caste is not something that should come as a surprise to you. Even if it is attributed to the Hindu religion where the lowest caste, or the Dalits, are considered the bottom rung of society, caste discrimination rears its ugly head even in those South Asian countries where Hinduism isn’t practiced by the majority, such as Pakistan and Bangladesh. This is the case not only because these regions have a significant Dalit population but because caste hierarchies are present in other ethnic groups as well.
While you won’t find any South Asian country now that embraces caste-based discrimination in its Constitution, the reality is starkly different. These lower caste groups have minimal access to education or economic opportunities, and are often restricted on the kind of jobs they are allowed to do, such as sweeping and gutter cleaning. Even affirmative action, such as guaranteed quotas at higher education institutions and government departments, has failed to bring about wider social acceptance for these groups.
And this belief perpetuates even outside the geographical boundaries of South Asia. A 2016 study by Equality Labs found that 41% of South-Asian Americans who identify as lower-caste reported facing caste discrimination in US schools and universities, compared with 3% of upper-caste respondents. The survey indicated that 67% of lower-caste respondents said they had suffered caste discrimination in the workplace, versus 1% of upper-caste individuals.
These numbers are not hard to believe if we consider the cases that have been brought forth. In July 2020, California regulators sued the tech company, Cisco Systems, over alleged discrimination toward an Indian engineer by his Indian colleagues. Then, in May 2021, a federal lawsuit alleged that a Hindu organisation lured more than 200 lower-caste workers to the US and forced them to work for as little as $1.20 an hour for several years to build a sprawling Hindu temple in New Jersey. Perhaps the most notorious cases of caste discrimination in California involves Lakireddy Bali Reddy, an upper-caste landlord who trafficked and sexually abused more than two dozen Dalit girls before he was caught.
All of this has led California lawmaker Aisha Wahab to introduce a bill that would make caste discrimination illegal in the state, following Seattle — the first city in the US to do so. Her bill has cleared the Senate and will go through the State Assembly before it lands on the table of the governor who will make it into law. This will be significant in the state that houses Silicon Valley, the tech hub that is dominated by Indian techies and where reports of caste discrimination are rampant.
It is worth noting, however, that most tech companies are not waiting for the bill to become law before taking action. Since 2022, companies such as Apple and IBM, have specifically included 'caste' as a protected category in their policies. Meanwhile Google, who’s CEO Sundar Pichai has chosen to stay silent on the issue of caste discrimination, found itself in hot waters last year when they cancelled a much-hyped talk by the founder of Equality Labs, which led a senior Google News employee to resign after facing repercussions for pushing back.
This wave of activism also sees a backlash from organisations, such as the Hindu American Foundation, who insist that such laws will “single out and target Indian Americans for scrutiny and discrimination" and that it targets the Hindu religion. It even claimed that caste is a 'colonial invention’ and can be used as a weapon of white supremacy, which belittles the fact that caste has long been a social fact in South Asian societies, long before it was ruled by the British.
Caste, especially outside South Asia, sits at a very unique intersection. As an Indian journalist describes: "The reality is that Indian immigrants in the US and Indian Americans are an oppressed minority group, as well as a community with immense power—both over other immigrant groups, as a result of their wealth, and over fellow Indians."
So why aren’t they using that power to ensure protection for all members of the community, regardless of their caste? Outlawing a system that creates social hierarchies of other human beings shouldn’t be complicated. We already managed to agree decades ago that this practice needs to end, what are we debating now?
Until next time, take care and stay safe!
Hira - Editor - The Global Tiller
Dig Deeper
In a male-dominated media landscape, the Dalit journalists of India’s all-female Khabar Lahariya newspaper risk it all, including their own safety, to cover the country’s political, social, and local news from a women-powered perspective. From underground network to independent media empire—now with 10 million views on their YouTube site—they defy the odds to redefine power.
…and now what?
When I talk about culture, my view is usually as follows: culture is an adaptation response to a specific environment, which means that no culture is superior to others. And if I deeply believe that we share common foundations among human beings, the way we express, prioritise and organise around those foundations depends on our context (climate, available resources, geography, history, demography…).
So what happens when one goes away from its original land? Should one take their culture with them? Or should they adopt the local culture, which should be more fitted to the context in which one finds themselves.
Now this becomes more complex when the land in which you end up living is itself a big mix of many other cultures. That’s the case in many former or still colonised lands.
If I had a clear answer to my own questions, I would share it with you. But obviously I don’t because the potential answers are themselves bound by our own cultures and how our own sense of identity is more or less attached to a specific culture.
So, should social structures be pursued once a community lives abroad? It seems that for some the answer is yes. But for others it seems to be going against their own system and thus becomes a conflict of values and perceptions. Not an easy conundrum to solve.
What usually happens in those situations, if one takes the time to take a step back from all of this, is that it does question cultures. It can lead to each and everyone of us to find a new perspective to our cultures and maybe find ways to help it evolve.
Because if culture is an adaptation answer to a specific context, then it comes logically to us that culture should constantly evolve and adjust to the times. Otherwise it will be a typical case of the Red Queen hypothesis.
When I started traveling outside the French context, I realised how annoying its negative and ‘grumpy’ culture is and that it definitely requires a mindset change. But I have come across people who, when a diverse context came to question their own cultures, dig deeper into their beliefs and turned against any form of change.
This is understandable. Culture is a big part of our identity and, as humans, we tend to develop our identity in opposition to others. The more I’m exposed to differences, the easier it can be for me to retrench within the strongest and more explicit elements of my culture.
I’m no judge about the necessity and the relevancy of caste systems around the world, I can only judge what I truly understand, i.e. my own context. But I do wonder if we sometimes don’t reach a paradox when people in a different context will act progressive towards others while relying on conservative attitudes under the identity affirmation argument for their own culture.
Culture and identity are constantly moving elements and if there’s one lesson that we can take out of this case is that we should always be willing to welcome new perspectives for the betterment, or simply the adaptability, of our own culture. Otherwise, you risk ending up in the history books or in a folklore show in a so-called “cultural center”.
I mean, I would put my head under the blade if I had to see the high science of protests been thrown into the archives of history. I would definitely have to complain to someone there!
Philippe - Founder & CEO - Pacific Ventury