Caste discrimination in the United States

Caste is a birth-based social stratification system.

Historically, the dominant caste Hindus and Sikhs have been the ones to acquire citizenship in America. In 1923, A.K. Mozumdar and Bhagat Singh Thind argued that they passed the whiteness test because they were caste Hindus and had pure "Aryan" blood.^{[page needed]}

In 1910, the Asiatic Exclusion League argued that Asian Indians should be denied citizenship through naturalization. The league described Hindu ancestry as "enslaved, effeminate, caste ridden, and degraded" and Hindus as the "slaves of Creation".^{[page needed]} Such racist rhetoric formed the idea of the "Hindoo invasion", an iteration of the "Yellow Peril."^{[page needed]} In 1953, W. Norman Brown, founder of the Department of South Asian Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, wrote that "a large number of Americans...have a picture of India ... where everyone is a beggar and caste is more important than life".

In recent times, caste discrimination has followed the immigrants to the US from India, Nepal and other south Asian countries. There are more than five million South Asians living in the US.[5] Despite being one of the fastest growing immigrant groups, it has been mostly underreported despite its influence on job opportunities and marriage prospects among south Asian immigrants. Indian migrants account for a large number of high-skilled workers in STEM fields, leading to an issue of caste discrimination in the workplace in areas such as Silicon Valley. Thenmozhi Soundararajan, executive director of Equality Labs, says, “Caste has been here (in the US) for a long time. Wherever South Asians go, they bring caste."[6]

Several observers see parallels between the issues of race in the United States and the issues of caste. When Martin Luther King, Jr. visited India in 1959, he was introduced by the principal of a school with Dalit students (then called "untouchables") as a "fellow untouchable from the United States of America". Though taken aback with this description, King agreed with it after reflection, thinking, "Yes, I am an untouchable, and every negro in the United States of America is an untouchable."[7]

More recently, Isabel Wilkerson wrote Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which argues that racial stratification in the United States is best understood as a caste system, akin to those in India and in Nazi Germany.[8] The New York Times calling it "an instant American classic",[8] and Publishers Weekly calling it a “powerful and extraordinarily timely social history.”[9] The book reached the number one spot in The New York Times nonfiction best-seller list.[10]

Lower caste activists in India have found common ground with the struggles of African Americans in the US.[11] The lower caste activist body Dalit Panthers was formed taking inspiration from Black Panther Party.[3][12]

Caste is not officially recognized by law as a category of discrimination in the United States.[13][14] The reason is that caste discrimination was not a known phenomenon when the laws were written.[2] It has come to light only in recent times due to recent reports of discrimination.[15][16]

The California law bars discrimination on the basis on ancestry. Dalit lawyers believe that caste discrimination is covered under it.[17] Legal scholars have also argued that caste discrimination is cognizable as race discrimination, religious discrimination and national origin discrimination.[18]

In August 2002, the UN Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination approved a resolution condemning caste or descent-based discrimination.[19]

In February 2023, Seattle became the first city in the United States to explicitly ban discrimination based on caste.[20] In March 2023, the state of California began to consider a bill in the senate for a similar ban.[21] The bill was vetoed by Governor Gavin Newsom in October 2023.[22]

In September 2023, the California state senate passed a bill banning discrimination based on caste. SB403, authored by Democratic Senator Aisha Wahab, is a legislative initiative in California that aims to make the state the first in the nation to include caste discrimination in the list of protected rights.[23] The bill defines caste as “an individual’s perceived position in a system of social stratification on the basis of inherited status”, which can be determined by several factors including the “inability or restricted ability to alter inherited status; socially enforced restrictions on marriage, private and public segregation, and discrimination; and social exclusion on the basis of perceived status.”[24] SB403 proposes amendments to California's housing, labor, and education codes to explicitly prohibit discrimination based on one's ancestry, which notably includes caste.

Nirmal Singh, a physician from Bakersfield, California, touches on the impact of SB403 for South Asians: "“It has become psychological trauma that carries over, one generation to the other generation. “This was a very important bill for us.”[25]

An image of Dalit women.

Caste-based discrimination imposes psychological distress on its victims, especially from lower castes. Dalits suffer at the hand of discrimination, being referred to as "untouchable" and "dirty".[35] Dalits are often bullied by upper-caste classmates and treated differently by teachers, which is trauma that translates from one generation to the next.[25] South Asians report experiencing diminished self-esteem, feelings of isolation, and enduring anxiety and fear. The first extensive study of caste and its effects in the US found that those from lower castes "fear retaliation and worry about being "outed" and hence "hide their caste."[36] This fear of being outed can manifest in several ways; for example, some families opt to change their surnames to one considered more "caste neutral" (i.e. "Kumar", "Singh", "Khan") in order to avoid ridicule and isolation.[37] The long-term impact on mental health can be severe. However, psychological intervention from the lens of casteism has lagged behind. Research of the Dalit community in Nepal demonstrates that social inequality by way of economic, social, cultural, and psychological stress all contribute to their experience of diabetes; Dalits used diabetes to relay "psychosocial stress through somatic symptoms." Diabetes and other illnesses disproportionately affect those of lower castes, and the causes linked to intergenerational poverty, lack of access to healthcare and education, and other stressors which prolong diabetes impact the mental health of these individuals.[38]

The existence of caste discrimination in the US tech sector was acknowledged by group of Dalit female engineers from Microsoft, Google, Apple and other tech companies.[39][40]

Ambedkar King Study Circle (AKSC), a US based activists group, along with 15 other organizations sent an appeal to top American companies including Google, Apple, Microsoft demanding that the CEOs intervene immediately to address the issue of caste discrimination. The AKSC wanted the companies to bring in caste sensitivity training similar to the gender, race, sexuality training practices. AKSC emphasized the fair and equal opportunity recruitment, retention and appraisal policies.[41][42][43]

In May 2021, the Federal Bureau of Investigation raided Akshardham in Robbinsville Township, New Jersey to investigate forced labor of lower caste Indian workers.[44][45][16] The workers were brought on religious visa and the FBI removed about 90 workers from the site.[46]

In April 2022, Google cancelled a planned talk by Thenmozhi Soundararajan as part of its Diversity Equity and Inclusivity programme. It was allegedly done under pressure from employees who accused her of being "Hindu-phobic" and "anti-Hindu". Some felt their lives would be endangered if the talk went ahead. Rather than bringing their community together, it caused "division and rancor", according to the Google spokesperson. The senior Google manager who invited Soundararajan resigned over the incident.[47][48][49]

In 2020, caste-based discrimination issues in Silicon Valley came to the surface with a lawsuit by the State of California against Cisco Systems filed by the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH, later named Civil Rights Department).[50] The Department sued Cisco and two of its senior engineers for discrimination against a Dalit engineer (identified as "John Doe"), who had alleged that he received lower wages and fewer opportunities because of his caste.[51][52] After an initial filing in a United States District Court, the department refiled it in Santa Clara County Superior Court in October 2021[53] Cisco filed a demurrer asking for dismissal on the grounds that caste and ethnicity were not protected categories under the Fair Employment and Housing Act of California. The Ambedkar International Center and other Dalit organizations filed an amicus curiae brief, arguing that the California law does in fact prohibit caste discrimination.[50] The Hindu advocacy group Hindu American Foundation (HAF) filed a claim in a United States District Court stating that the California department infringed on the civil rights of Hindus by asserting that Hinduism mandates caste discrimination.[54]

In April 2023, the California Civil Rights Department dismissed (withdrew) its case against the two engineers accused of discrimination, followng an order from the Santa Clara Superior County Court, though it continued with the case against the Cisco corporation.[55] According to court filings, the accused CEO of the division had actively recruited "John Doe", offering him a generous starting package and stock grants, knowing all along his caste background. He had also recruited other Dalits, including the one that was eventually chosen for the leadership role that John Doe was denied.[54][56] HAF reviewed the case files and alleged that the California department's narrative in the case was "full of lies".[57]

In 2015, California State Board of Education initiated a regular ten-year public review of the school curriculum framework.[58] The Hindu American Foundation (HAF) and a coalition of other Hindu activists sought to literally erase the word "dalit" from the syllabus,[59][60] which was contested by a coalition of interfaith, multi-racial, inter-caste groups called "South Asian Histories for All".[58][61]

In 2021, the student body of California State University system, representing half a million students, passed a resolution seeking a ban on caste-based discrimination.[62] The campaign was spearheaded by Prem Pariyar, a Nepali origin Dalit student, who came to the US in 2015 escaping persecution in his home country, and claimed that he faced discrimination in the US as well.[62] For the affected students, casteism is manifested through slurs, microaggressions and social exclusion.[63] The resolution cited the survey by Equality Labs where 25 percent of Dalits reported having faced verbal or physical assaults.[62] Al Jazeera noted that the resolution was authored by a higher caste student and backed by other students from other racial and religious groups.[62]

In January 2022, the Board of Trustees of the California State University responded, announcing that they added "caste" as a protected category in the university's anti-discrimination policy.[64] The change was subtle, according to CNN. The word "caste" was added in parentheses after the term "race and ethnicity".[63] A group of faculty in the university had written to the Board of Trustees citing lack of "due diligence" in instituting the measure. They said that the existing policy of the university, which covers national origin, ethnicity and ancestry, already provided adequate protection, and claimed that the new measure would result in singling out and targeting the Hindu faculty.[65][66] But for the advocates and student leaders who campaigned for it for over two years, it was a civil rights victory.[63]

In December 2022, Brown University became the first Ivy League institution to add caste to its nondiscrimination policy. Brown's vice president for Institutional Equity and Diversity noted that caste was covered under existing nondiscrimination policies, "but we felt it was important to lift this up and explicitly express a position on caste equity.”[67]