Caste Discrimination in the U.S. Shapeshifts Taking Different Forms Based On the Local Ecosystem

As April comes to an end and with it the festivities celebrating the Dalit History Month taper off I am reminded of the articles I have been reading and writing in the last four years discussing the unique version of caste discrimination witnessed in the U.S. 

The caste discrimination faced in the U.S. is a much more watered-down version of that faced in the Indian subcontinent, yet it appears, in covert forms, in codes and head nod. In the form of a seemingly innocuous refusal to date someone from a different caste on university and office campuses, missing invitations to social gatherings, or when a well-deserved promotion eludes some, casteism appears silently yet noticeably. That’s the unique feature of casteism. It shapeshifts and takes different forms based on the local ecosystem and at times even lies dormant waiting to be used sometime in the future. 

The caste movement in the U.S. gained momentum in 2020 when a lawsuit against Cisco and its two engineers was filed by the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing alleging that the company failed to prevent discrimination against a Dalit engineer in San Jose by two of his Indian-origin co-workers. The case prompted 30 women engineers to write an anonymous letter to the Washington Post describing their experiences with caste discrimination in the U.S. tech industry. The same year California-based civil rights group Equality Labs reported more than 250 unsolicited complaints involving discrimination based on caste in Silicon Valley. 

Around the same time, the publication of Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste: The Origins of our Discontent facilitated the entrance of ‘caste’ into the American lexicon. There now seemed to be a growing curiosity in understanding the nuances of caste, which made some Indians settled in the U.S. squirm with discomfort. 

In 2021 a lawsuit was filed against BAPS Swaminarayan Sanstha over allegations that the nonprofit Hindu organization had forced a group of Dalits into exploitative construction work on a Hindu temple in New Jersey. 

What followed was a wave of bans across the country. 

Colleges and universities in the U.S. amended their nondiscrimination policies to explicitly prohibit misconduct based on caste. Harvard, Brown, Brandeis, and the 23-campus California State University System created special caste-based protections for students and faculty. 

The movement didn’t stop there. Last year, Seattle became the first U.S. city to ban caste-based discrimination by incorporating it into its anti-discrimination laws. 

“Indian Americans are not synonymous to the broader South Asian diaspora in the U.S. I come from Nepal and I have faced discrimination from my fellow countrymen here. That’s my reality.” 

The intensity of discomfort among some Indian Americans grew so much that influential members of the community started having a tough word with California governor who ended up vetoing a bill that would have explicitly banned caste discrimination in the state. 

The California measure, SB 403, was opposed by groups of Indian origin who thought that the bill painted an entire community with a broad brush and the community they had in mind is primarily the Hindu Indian community. What they refused to acknowledge though is that the caste conundrum doesn’t exclusively belong to the Hindus or even only to Indians. 

Taking a careful look into the past will illuminate that the caste system might have originated from the Hindu scriptures but with time it percolated out to other faiths and stratified society in every South Asian religious community — among Muslim, Christian, Sikh, and Buddhist communities in the region. Caste identities stay even generations after someone converts out of Hinduism and into any of these faiths. 

While many of the so-called lower caste groups converted to escape their persecution in Hinduism, their new religions did not treat them as equal. South Asian Christians, Muslims, Sikhs, and Buddhists with Dalit family histories continued to face prejudice from their new co-religionists. So, though caste has generally been associated with India it is also present in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Maldives, and Bhutan.  

Those Indian Hindus and Hindu organizations in the U.S. who assume that bringing up the caste question and passing a bill to ban caste discrimination in the U.S. is about specifically maligning Hindus should bear in mind that they are not being inclusive of the lived experiences of other South Asian immigrants in the U.S. 

Prem Periyar, a Nepali Dalit scholar and activist who had an important part in starting the caste conversation at California State University said over a phone call, “Indian Americans are not synonymous to the broader South Asian diaspora in the U.S. I come from Nepal and I have faced discrimination from my fellow countrymen here. That’s my reality.” 

He made another interesting observation. “Not all South Asians in America are working in the Silicon Valley, not all are techies with high-paying jobs. Some work in restaurants and grocery stores. They are struggling and are facing discrimination when they go looking for housing or better jobs. That makes life more challenging for them. This movement is also for them and the activists will continue to fight for more legislations in future.” 

Though the state of California couldn’t outlaw caste-based discrimination, a smaller victory was attained by caste activists earlier in September last year when Fresno became the second U.S. city and the first in California to prohibit discrimination based on caste by adding caste and indigeneity to its municipal code. 

(Top photo, screen grab PBS News Hour)

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Sreya Sarkar is a public policy analyst based out of Boston. She is the author of the novel “Beneath the Veneer” published earlier this year.