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No Winners or Losers in Caste Discrimination Battle in the U.S.; Only Progress in Education

No Winners or Losers in Caste Discrimination Battle in the U.S.; Only Progress in Education

  • Despite failed attempts to explicitly add ‘caste’ as a ‘protected category’ in civil rights laws, more and more employers are taking cognizance of caste in their anti-discrimination policies.

Rutgers University has unwittingly reignited the battle on caste discrimination by publishing its response to the recommendations of its Office of Labor Relations: The university has chosen to not add caste as a separate protected category in its anti-discrimination policies, but underscored that: “…caste can and does fall within some, or all, of those [protected classes] depending on the factual circumstances.” 

This is similar to what California’s SB 403, “Discrimination on the basis of ancestry,” would have achieved, had it not been vetoed by Governor Newsom. SB 403 was approved by both houses in August 2023 but was vetoed by the governor in October 2023. The bill would have merely clarified that ‘caste’ is covered as a protected category under ‘ancestry,’ thus providing legal guidance to those dealing with caste discrimination cases.

The good news is that Rutgers goes well beyond linking ‘caste’ to ‘ancestry’ and says that caste could fall under any of the several already protected categories, namely, race, religion, ethnicity, ancestry, or national origin. Furthermore, it has promised a comprehensive training program on caste to the university community, something that proponents of caste protections have been seeking ever since the Cisco caste discrimination case made the headlines. 

This is a significant step forward and sets a model for other universities to follow.  

Ambedkar King Study Circle (AKSC), which is leading the fight against caste discrimination, says:  The Office of Labor Relations at Rutgers University is taking a significant step toward unleashing the potential of the caste-oppressed community.

Rutgers’ statement asserts four key points: 1. The university policy addresses caste-based discrimination; 2. The Office of Employment Equity will train specialists on caste discrimination; 3. caste-related questions will be included in regular campus surveys, and 4. staff training on caste issues will be implemented…Unlike the Cisco case, where HR claimed caste discrimination was not unlawful, Rutgers has taken a clear stance with its policy.

The next logical steps for the proponents of caste protections are to engage with Rutgers, as it implements the promised surveys and training programs and engage with the CA Civil Rights Department on how they plan to actualize the governor’s contention that caste is included under ancestry. 

Remember, Gov. Newsom’s veto letter had asserted that, “…California already prohibits discrimination based on sex, race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, and other characteristics. … discrimination based on caste is already prohibited under these existing categories…” However, his letter left many wondering why he didn’t offer this clarification when SB 403 was being hotly debated and why he chose to veto a bill that would have merely codified what he himself said in his veto letter. 

It’s important to note that at the time Cisco Human Resources received a caste discrimination complaint from a Dalit employee, had they known that caste is covered under ancestry as a protected category, their response may have been very different: The employee’s complaint would have most likely been addressed in-house and there would have been no lawsuit against Cisco. Nonetheless, thanks to all the conversations around the lawsuit, Cisco has now added caste as a protected category in its employment manual. 

This is another huge step forward and sets an example for other Silicon Valley companies.

To date, Apple, Microsoft, Dell, Amazon, Google, Meta, and IBM have all added caste in their anti-discrimination policies. Also, several university campuses have followed the pioneering example set by Brandeis University by adding caste to their anti-discrimination policies: e.g. Univ of CA, Davis; CA State University, Harvard University, Colby College, and Brown University. Notably, none of these employers has reported any instances of their caste discrimination policy prompting a frivolous caste discrimination allegation.

HAF’s Pyrrhic Victory

The Hindu American Foundation (HAF), which has been leading the fight against adding caste as a separate category in civil rights laws and employee manuals, lost no time in declaring victory after Rutgers’ decision. Not surprisingly, it downplayed the importance of Rutgers’ commitment to implement a comprehensive training program on caste, which is a major step forward in educating staff and students and preventing caste discrimination on campus.

This is a victory for Hindu and South Asian students and faculty and advocacy groups, such as the Hindu American Foundation, which explained in written communication with Rutgers’ Office of General Counsel that creating a separate category of caste would break with the longstanding principle of facial neutrality that underpins equal protection and non-discrimination and would thus unlawfully single out Hindu American and South Asian Indian American students and faculty for disparate treatment and additional legal scrutiny. 

In my view, HAF’s “facial neutrality” argument to oppose adding caste as a separate category is mere sophistry and will not stand scrutiny in the courts. 

I am no legal expert, but it is my understanding is that “a facially neutral decision with a disproportionate impact on a judicially defined minority group violates the Fourteenth Amendment only if the governmental actor has the intent or purpose to discriminate.” (See https://tinyurl.com/FacialNeutrality)  

In order for this legal challenge to prevail, say in the example of early drafts of SB 403, HAF would have had to first demonstrate that the law’s intent or purpose was to discriminate against a “judicially defined minority group,” which HAF defines as “Hindu American and South Asian Indian American students and faculty.” I seriously doubt if this amorphous formation would fit the definition of a ‘judicially defined minority group’ – especially as it would also include students and faculty who are Dalit Hindus, who are potential victims of caste discrimination.

Also, HAF would have had to produce real evidence to support the claim that adding caste as a separate category would ‘disproportionately’ impact this group, which it has failed to produce so far in the ongoing battle.  

In my view, what HAF has accomplished so far is to cynically place hurdles in other people’s fight for equality, by falsely claiming that it would target everyone in its privileged ‘upper caste’ support base. At best, HAF has partially and temporarily succeeded in portraying this fight as a zero-sum game. Only Hindu supremacists can see this as a ‘victory’ worthy of celebrations. 

Victimhood Glorified

To me, the Rutgers caste battle once again illustrates HAF’s three-step modus operandi: Indoctrination, Victimhood, and Fundraising (IVF, if you will): e.g. Mass indoctrination, riding on the coattails of its mentors in India, that privileged ‘upper caste’ Hindus bear no responsibility for the caste system, which is the creation of the Moghuls and the British; Claims of victimhood, that efforts to add legal protections on caste are designed to attack Hindu Americans; Fundraising, designed to portray HAF as the savior of Hindus that is being hounded by other Indian Americans.  

See Also

What HAF does not want to talk about is its own 180-degree turn on the matter of caste: In 2010 HAF published a report, “Hinduism: Not Cast in Caste,” acknowledging that “caste-based discrimination is a serious civil and human rights issue in India,” and insisting that “Hindus cannot ignore the subject of caste.” The report went on to list out – and reject – a series of bad-faith arguments that defend the existence of caste. Ironically, these are the very arguments HAF and its Hindu supremacist partners faithfully reproduce even today. See: https://tinyurl.com/HAFFlipFlopOnCaste

After a furious response from fellow members of the Hindu Far Right, HAF backtracked and republished the report six months later with major revisions that ceded to Hindu supremacist voices, including talking points such as the claim that caste is derived from a Portuguese word and therefore distinct from the “varna/jaati tradition.”

Such a huge swing from what was a reasonable and progressive position on caste to embracing an extremist viewpoint, calls into question HAF’s role as an arbiter on caste discrimination.  

The Way Forward

Supporters of caste discrimination protections are grateful for all the small achievements in the last three years, which add up to significant momentum towards recognizing that caste biases are a reality in the US. This is the first step towards assuring employees and students hailing from historically oppressed communities that their employers and the state have their backs.

That said, this is no time for complaisance just because all parties in the caste battle seem to agree that caste is covered under ancestry as a protected category. The real test will be whether the courts will accept a governor’s veto letter as a sufficient basis to adjudicate a complaint on caste discrimination. This is the fear and uncertainty that has been driving proponents of caste protections to continue their demand that ‘caste’ be explicitly added to civil rights statutes as a protected category. 

Many of those who have been fighting for caste discrimination protections came to the U.S.  with the expectation that they were leaving behind the trauma of generations of caste discrimination faced by their families. Little did they expect that caste would follow them to their workplace in the US. It is a shame that Hindu supremacist groups are building a movement on their backs, with little or no appreciation for the insidious role that caste plays every day in India.

As long as caste discrimination or perception of caste bias persists in the workplace, the battle to recognize caste as a category of discrimination in the workplace will continue…unless the Trump administration targets the Civil Rights Act itself, in which case we will all be losers.

(Top photo: Karthikeyan Shanmugam of Ambedkar King Study Circle at an SB 403 hearing in Sacramento, 2023.)


Raju Rajagopal is a cofounder of Hindus for Human Rights and the Savera Coalition. Views
here are personal. @Raju4Equality

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The viewpoints expressed by the authors do not necessarily reflect the opinions, viewpoints and editorial policies of American Kahani.
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