Ambedkar's Children: Annihilating Caste In Western Academia

Claiming their rights, reclaiming identities, occupying spaces, and taking charge of their own leadership, Outlook speaks with three Dalit scholars studying abroad, who shared how caste operates in the western educational spaces and talk about their journey in a casteist society.

Supporters and opponents of a proposed ordinance to add caste to Seattle's anti-discrimination laws.

 AP
UPDATED: 04 MAR 2023 

In September 2022, the US embassy in Delhi stated that it issued more than 82,000 student visas to Indians, a record-breaking number even surpassing that of China. However, Dalit, Adivasi, and OBC students comprise a minuscule percentage of these Indian students studying abroad.

As Seattle became the first city in the United States to ban all forms of caste-based discrimination on February 21, 2023, a global Ambedkarite movement caused ripples across India and overseas. A new generation of Dalit academicians and scholars have broken the glass ceilings and entered the western academia space, making the 'abroad return' tag no longer exclusive to the Indian upper caste and brahmins.

Caste and class have operated in alliance and shaped the dynamics of socio-economic-political dynamics in India. An ancient birth-based hierarchy system in India, often defended by its proponents as an occupation-based hierarchy, caste is an evil social practice, embedded in the ancient Hindu texts like Manusmriti, Vedas, Ramayana, Mahabharata, Dharma Shastra etc.

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Claiming their rights, reclaiming identities, occupying spaces, and taking charge of their own leadership, Outlook speaks with three Dalit scholars studying abroad, who shared how caste operates in the western educational spaces and talk about their journey in a casteist society.

A Young Dalit Feminist And A Seasoned Ambedkarite

Referring to frequent caste and sect-based battles across India in the recent past, 22-year-old Nidhi Kanaujia says that the Seattle caste discrimination ban plays a poignant role in the western context as it gives more legal visibility to the issue of caste. A student at the University of Goettingen, Germany, Kanaujia is pursuing her master's in Modern Indian Studies.

"I feel there is no mechanism in my University to address the experiences of caste discrimination, unlike India where you have redressal cells or some system into place." She, however, makes it a point to add that these systems obviously fail in their purpose in India but have largely been missing altogether in the west.

She calls herself a 'first generation learner', a young Dalit woman, who wouldn't ever dream of pursuing higher studies abroad, given her caste and class position in India, had it not been for the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung Foundation Scholarship. Nidhi says that the degrees of caste discrimination in a first-world country vary from her horrific encounters in the Indian academic spaces. She shares episodes of sheer caste blindness with her fellow mates in their regular conversations, who come from upper-caste upper-class backgrounds.

Nidhi adds that a lot of students at the university and even outside are resistant to the idea of talking and discussing caste, something that does not concern or affect them. At one point, speaking of caste practices she says, "The comfort of some comes with the discomfort of many." Nidhi also highlights how students living abroad work as daily wage earners in order to support themselves, yet they would never do the same in India as their caste and class entitlement does not allow them to work as a cleaner, labourers, caregivers; etc.

Lastly, she mentions that the Centre for Modern Indian Studies in her university is currently planning to come up with certain caste guidelines, which she hopes would prove effective in combatting caste discrimination.

Academician and a student at the Teachers' College (TC) at Columbia University, Vikas Tatad is the only Dalit student in his school which comprises around 7,000 students including around 40 to 50 per cent of South and East Asian students. "When I first came to the university, I looked for Dalit Adivasi and OBC students, only to find that there were none at TC," Tatad says. He feels no sense of belongingness with his fellow Asians and Indians who celebrate Holi, Diwali, and other popular Hindu festivals but take no cognizance of Ambedkar Jayanti, a day that marks the foundation of Dalit and non-Savarna pride. "We the rejected people of India was a movement that began with Ambedkar who will continue to stay relevant for another thousand years."

Caste is not "our" problem but that of the Brahmins and the UCs (Upper Castes), he says emphasizing that it is time that the non-Savarnas should now be in power. Tatad was elected the chairperson for the University Policy and Rules Committee which recently was asked to formulate and review a policy on harassment and discrimination. "There were multiple categories enlisted in the policy but caste." Upon his suggestion, two days ago, the committee is in the process to adopt caste as a protected category.

Tatad does not mince his words when he talks about Indians who have migrated abroad and carry their caste identities with them. The young scholar, whose journey entails from the slums of Siddharthnagar in Amravati to Columbia University, also the alma mater of his ideal, Ambedkar, calls the upper caste Indian diaspora in the US and abroad protesting against the Seattle Caste discrimination ban a "sick" lot. "They can only be cured with the medicine of Ambedkar's ideals," he says. For him, Ambedkar is a humanist, liberal, and democrat whose position must be advanced internationally as an academician, responsible for the conscious liberation of the marginalized.

Caste And Queerness

Based in Germany at present, Aroh Akunth is a Dalit transfeminine writer-performer and student at the Centre for Modern Indian Studies at the University of Göttingen. Speaking with Outlook, Aroh says that India constitutes around 17 per cent of the world population, while the Dalits are about 17-20 per cent of the Indian population, which makes the Dalits one of the world's largest segregated populations. However, the recognition of this aspect is bleak and the reparations are slow.

The politics of caste is entrenched in the politics of identities, associated with one's birth and essentialism of it. In sense of the 'intersectionality' of caste and queer identities in academic disciplines and pedagogy, Aroh observes that the possibilities it brings are yet to be explored and are very much based on what a lot of Dalit activists have already done. "It's going to be exciting to change the way we see the world and experience it."

Acknowledging that the scope of caste and queerness, through the Dalit queer lens, is quite unexplored and unlimited as far as its potential is concerned. They believe that the mainstream academic spaces in some time will begin to operate from the perspective of critical caste studies. Aroh also notes that, unlike the critical race theory, critical caste studies are still developing. They also added that this late development is the possible result of where it is located and because of how cruel probably the system is, hence taking much more time to be addressed.

"But there is hope in the western academia that once political caste studies take the centre stage, especially in studies dealing with South Asia or the human condition. This will give us a better engagement, or better shift in academia, which is how one can tell the academia has progressed so far," Aroh says.

Explained: What's Seattle Caste Discrimination Ban, What Are The Implications And What Led To It?

The Seattle City Council in Washington state of the United States became the first in the country last month to specifically ban caste-based discrimination. Here is all you need to know about the law.

Kshama Sawant speaks at abortion rights rally Photo by AP/PTI

UPDATED: 03 MAR 2023 

Last month, Seattle became the first city in the United States to ban caste discrimination.

The Seattle City Council passed an ordinance by a vote of 6:1. After the vote, caste became one of the categories along with others like race and gender which cannot be the basis of discrimination in Seattle city in Washington state of the United States.

Caste is a social system in which people are put into a social hierarchy on the basis of their birth. Certain castes classified as lower have been historically marginalised and discriminated against in the caste system. The caste system traces its roots to South Asia and has reached the West with migration.

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Here we explain what the Seattle law is, why the law was made, and what led to its making.

 
What’s the Seattle caste discrimination law?

The Seattle City Council passed an ordinance banning caste discrimination in the city on February 21. The law includes caste in the list of protected categories, which refer to the grounds on which persons cannot be discriminated against in Seattle.

The law addresses caste discrimination in workplaces and public spaces such as in housing and transportation sectors, as per a statement by Kshama Sawant, the Seattle Councilmember behind the law.

“The legislation will prohibit businesses from discriminating based on caste with respect to hiring, tenure, promotion, workplace conditions, or wages. It will ban discrimination based on caste in places of public accommodation, such as hotels, public transportation, public restrooms, or retail establishments. The law will also prohibit housing discrimination based on caste in rental housing leases, property sales, and mortgage loans,” said Sawant in a statement before the bill was passed into law.

The law also gives a formal definition of caste. The law defines caste as “a system of rigid social stratification characterized by hereditary status, endogamy, and social barriers sanctioned by custom, law, or religion”, according to a document on the Seattle Council’s website.

Besides making caste a protected category in Seattle, the law also makes provision for sensitivity training and outreach programs that are aimed towards increasing awareness of caste discrimination with the idea of preventing it. The law also makes provisions for recruiting consultants to train the Council’s staff.

“To prevent discrimination, appropriate communication and education about the new protected class are important. Appropriate media and public information regarding caste discrimination will increase public support, and compliance, and will inform the public of their rights regarding this new law…We want to ensure that community members – and business
owners in particular — are adequately informed and provided the education to prevent possible law violations,” said a memo circulated by a Council official.

While making a case for further allocation of resources for the implementation of the law, the Council official in the memo said that without education, they would be bogged down by investigation instead of carrying out prevention.

“Without adequate resources, businesses will not be aware of this new protection. As the law requires, we will investigate every claim of discrimination we receive. However, since prevention through education, training and outreach would not be possible, we may incur an increase in investigation cases resulting in longer case processing times,” said the memo.
What’s the idea behind the Seattle caste ban law?

Even though caste discrimination has roots in South Asia, it has been exported to the West with the large diaspora and persons of South Asian heritage there.

There are around 5.4 million South Asians in the United States, according to the group South Asian Americans Leading Together. At around 4 million, Indian Americans are the second-largest ethnic minority in the United States. In such conditions, the issues plaguing the Indian and South Asian societies are bound to be carried to the United States.

The Seattle law acknowledges caste discrimination in Seattle and elsewhere. Council member Sawant has also spoken about the prevalent caste discrimination in the United States.

“With over 167,000 people from South Asia living in Washington, largely concentrated in the Greater Seattle area, the region must address caste discrimination, and not allow it to remain invisible and unaddressed…Caste discrimination doesn’t only take place in other countries. It is faced by South Asian American and other immigrant working people in their workplaces, including in the tech sector, in Seattle and in cities around the country,” said Sawant in a statement.

Explaining the uniqueness of caste discrimination, a legislative document notes, “Unlike some other groups subject to oppression from dominant identities where the marginalised identity is clear from visible markers (ie. race or gender), caste does not have visible markers (analogous to sexual orientation), so exposing discrimination may require self-identification that can itself expose those individuals to further discrimination.”

Another document noted that the existing legal or anti-discrimination provisions might not cover caste discrimination.

“Lower caste individuals and communities can suffer discrimination based on their caste identity, and it is not clear that existing protections against discrimination based on characteristics like race, religion, national origin, or ancestry are sufficient…This legislation will allow those subject to discrimination on the basis of caste a legal avenue to pursue a remedy against alleged discrimination,” said the document.
The force behind the Seattle law

While the main driver behind the Seattle caste discrimination law was Councilmember Sawant, a number of organisations working in the field of Dalit and minority rights were also included in the making and promotion of the bill made into law last month.

Sawant described the Seattle caste discrimination law as an “extraordinarily historic victory” of the oppressed castes across the world. She is an Indian-American economist and a socialist politician. She is 49.

Sawant migrated to the United States in the late 1990s. Her profile on the Seattle Council's website notes she is part of the international socialist movement.

Sawant alleged to PTI that caste discrimination is prevalent in some of the major tech giants.

Sawant told PTI that she was able to achieve this historic feat despite tough opposition mounted by a group of Indian-Americans, whom she described as “right-wing Hindus”, resistance from the tech companies, and almost no cooperation from the Democrats.

She said, “So this is an absolutely earth-shattering victory because this is the first time outside South Asia that the law has decided that caste discrimination is not going to be invisible eyes, but instead it's going to be codified in the law that it is illegal.”

Organisations such as Equality Labs, Ambedkar International Center, and Ambedkar King Study Circle, were part of the drafting process. Equity Labs noted that several organisations like the Indian American Muslim Council, National Academic Coalition for Caste Equity, and Ravidassia and Sikh gurdwaras from throughout the Northwest USA helped bring the law.

“The ratification of the ordinance to ban caste-based discrimination in Seattle is a first in history and a culmination of years of Dalit feminist research and organizing that has broken the silence about caste oppression in our communities. We have finally found ways to initiate healing from this violent caste system in our diasporic networks and in our homelands — through the protection of this powerful ordinance,” noted Equity Labs in a statement.

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Seattle considers historic law barring caste discrimination

By DEEPA BHARATH

yesterday

1 of 7
New Seattle City Councilmember Kshama Sawant speaks, in Seattle. One of Sawant’s earliest memories of the caste system was hearing her grandfather – a man she “otherwise loved very much” – utter a slur to summon their lower-caste maid. Now an elected official in a city thousands of miles from India, she has proposed an ordinance to add caste to Seattle’s anti-discrimination laws. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson, File)

One of Kshama Sawant’s earliest memories of the caste system was hearing her grandfather — a man she “otherwise loved very much” — utter a slur to summon their lower-caste maid.

The Seattle City Council member, raised in an upper-caste Hindu Brahmin household in India, was 6 when she asked her grandfather why he used that derogatory word when he knew the girl’s name. He responded that his granddaughter “talked too much.”

Now 50, and an elected official in a city far from India, Sawant has proposed an ordinance to add caste to Seattle’s anti-discrimination laws. If her fellow council members approve it Tuesday, Seattle will become the first city in the United States to specifically outlaw caste discrimination.

In India, the origins of the caste system can be traced back 3,000 years as a social hierarchy based on one’s birth. While the definition of caste has evolved over the centuries, under both Muslim and British rule, the suffering of those at the bottom of the caste pyramid – known as Dalits, which in Sanskrit means “broken” — has continued.

In 1948, a year after independence from British rule, India banned discrimination on the basis of caste, a law that became enshrined in the nation’s constitution in 1950. Yet the undercurrents of caste continue to swirl in India’s politics, education, employment and even in everyday social interactions. Caste-based violence, including sexual violence against Dalit women, is still rampant.

What is India's caste system? Is it contentious in U.S.?

The national debate in the United States around caste has been centered in the South Asian community, causing deep divisions within the diaspora. Dalit activist-led organizations such as Oakland, California-based Equality Labs, say caste discrimination is prevalent in diaspora communities, surfacing in the form of social alienation and discrimination in housing, education and the tech sector where South Asians hold key roles.

The U.S. is the second most popular destination for Indians living abroad, according to the Migration Policy Institute, which estimates the U.S. diaspora grew from about 206,000 in 1980 to about 2.7 million in 2021. The group South Asian Americans Leading Together reports that nearly 5.4 million South Asians live in the U.S. — up from the 3.5 million counted in the 2010 census. Most trace their roots to Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

There has been strong pushback to anti-discrimination laws and policies that target caste from groups such as the Hindu American Foundation and the Coalition of Hindus of North America. They say such legislation will hurt a community whose members are viewed as “people of color” and already face hate and discrimination.

But over the past decade, Dalit activism has garnered support from several corners of the diaspora, including from groups like Hindus for Human Rights. The last three years in particular have seen more people identify as Dalits and publicly tell their stories, energizing this movement.

Prem Pariyar, a Dalit Hindu from Nepal, gets emotional as he talks about escaping caste violence in his native village. His family was brutally attacked for taking water from a community tap, said Pariyar, who is now a social worker in California and serves on Alameda County’s Human Relations Commission. He moved to the U.S. in 2015, but says he couldn’t escape stereotyping and discrimination because of his caste-identifying last name, even as he tried to make a new far from his homeland.

Pariyar, motivated by the overt caste discrimination he faced in his social and academic circles, was a driving force behind it becoming a protected category in the 23-campus California State University system in January 2022.

“I’m fighting so Dalits can be recognized as human beings,” he said.

In December 2019, Brandeis University near Boston became the first U.S. college to include caste in its nondiscrimination policy. Colby College, Brown University and the University of California, Davis, have adopted similar measures. Harvard University instituted caste protections for student workers in 2021 as part of its contract with its graduate student union.

Laurence Simon, international development professor at Brandeis, said a university task force made the decision based “on the feelings and fears of students from marginalized communities.”

“To us, that was enough, even though we did not hear of any serious allegations of caste discrimination,” he said. “Why do we have to wait for there to be a horrendous problem?”

Among the most striking findings in a survey of 1,500 South Asians in the U.S. by Equality Labs: 67% of Dalits who responded reported being treated unfairly at their workplace because of their caste and 40% of Dalit students who were surveyed reported facing discrimination in educational institutions compared to only 3% of upper-caste respondents. Also, 40% of Dalit respondents said they felt unwelcome at their place of worship because of their caste.

Caste needs to be a protected category under the law because Dalits and others negatively affected by it do not have a legal way to address it, said Thenmozhi Soundararajan, founder and executive director of Equality Labs. Soundararajan’s parents, natives of Tamil Nadu in southern India, fled caste oppression in the 1970s and immigrated to Los Angeles, where she was born.

“We South Asians have so many difficult historical traumas,” she said. “But when we come to this country, we shove all that under the rug and try to be a model minority. The shadow of caste is still there. It still destabilizes lives, families and communities.”

The trauma is intergenerational, she said. In her book “The Trauma of Caste,” Soundararajan writes of being devastated when she learned that her family members were considered “untouchables” in India. She recounts the hurt she felt when a friend’s mother who was upper caste, gave her a separate plate to eat from after learning about her Dalit identity.

“This battle around caste is a battle for our souls,” she said.

The Dalit American community is not monolithic on this issue. Aldrin Deepak, a gay, Dalit resident of the San Francisco Bay area, said he has never faced caste discrimination in his 35 years in the U.S. He has decorated deities in local Hindu temples and has an array of community members over to his house for Diwali celebrations.

“No one’s asked me about my caste,” he said. “Making an issue where there is none is only creating more fractures in our community.”

Nikunj Trivedi, president of the Coalition of Hindus of North America, views the narrative around caste as “completely twisted.” Caste-based laws that single out Indian Americans and Hindu Americans are unacceptable, he said.

“The understanding of Hinduism is poor in this country,” Trivedi said. “Many people believe caste equals Hinduism, which is simply not true. There is diversity of thought, belief and practice within Hinduism.”

Trivedi said Seattle’s proposed policy is dangerous because it is not based on reliable data.

“There is a heavy reliance on anecdotal reports,” he said, suggesting it would be difficult to verify someone’s caste. “How can people who know very little or nothing about caste adjudicate issues stemming from it?”

Suhag Shukla, executive director of the Hindu American Foundation, called Seattle’s proposed ordinance unconstitutional because “it singles out and targets an ethnic minority and seeks to institutionalize implicit bias toward a community.”

“It sends that message that we are an inherently bigoted community that must be monitored,” Shukla said.

Caste is already covered under the current set of anti-discrimination laws, which provide protections for race, ethnicity and religion, she said.

Legislation pertaining to caste is not about targeting any community, said Nikhil Mandalaparthy, deputy executive director of Hindus for Human Rights. The Washington, D.C.-based group supports the proposed caste ordinance.

“Caste needs to be a protected category because we want South Asians to have similar access to opportunities and not face discrimination in workplaces and educational settings,” he said. “Sometimes, that means airing the dirty laundry of the community in public to make it known that caste-based discrimination is not acceptable.”

Council member Sawant said legal recourse is needed because current anti-discrimination laws are not enough. Sawant, who is a socialist, said the ordinance is backed by several groups including Amnesty International and Alphabet Workers Union that represents workers employed by Google’s parent company.

More than 150,000 South Asians live in Washington state, with many employed in the tech sector where Dalit activists say caste-based discrimination has gone unaddressed. The issue was in the spotlight in 2020 when California regulators sued Cisco Systems saying a Dalit Indian engineer faced caste discrimination at the company’s Silicon Valley headquarters.

Sawant said the ordinance does not single out one community, but accounts for how caste discrimination crosses national and religious boundaries. A United Nations report in 2016 said at least 250 million people worldwide still face caste discrimination in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Pacific regions, as well as in various diaspora communities. Caste systems are found among Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, Jains, Muslims and Sikhs.

Among the diaspora, many Dalits pushing to end caste discrimination are not Hindu. Nor are they all from India.

D.B. Sagar faced caste oppression growing up in the 1990s in northern Nepal, not far from the Buddha’s birthplace. He fled it, emigrating to the U.S. in 2007. Sagar says he still bears physical and emotional scars from the oppression. His family was Dalit and practicing elements of both Hinduism and Buddhism, and felt shunned by both faiths.

“We were not allowed to participate in village festivals or enter temples,” he said. “Buddhists did not allow anyone from the Dalit community to become monks. You could change your religion, but you still cannot escape your caste identity. If converting to another religion was a solution, people would be free from caste discrimination by now.”

In school, Sagar was made to sit on a separate bench. He was once caned by the school’s principal for drinking from a water pot in the classroom that Dalits were barred from using. They believed his touch would pollute the water.

Sagar said he was shocked to see similar attitudes arise in social settings among the U.S. diaspora. His experiences motivated him to start the International Commission for Dalit Rights. In 2014, he organized a march from the White House to Capitol Hill demanding that caste discrimination be recognized under the U.S. Civil Rights Act.

His organization is currently looking into about 150 complaints of housing discrimination from Dalit Americans, he said. In one case, a Dalit man in Virginia said his landlord rented out a basement, but prevented him from using the kitchen because of his caste.

“Caste is a social justice issue, period,” he said.

Like Sagar, Arizona resident Shahira Bangar is Dalit. But she is a practicing Sikh and her parents fled caste oppression in Punjab, India. Her parents never discussed caste when she was young, but she learned the truth in her teens as she attended high school in Silicon Valley surrounded by high-caste Punjabi friends who belonged to the higher, land-owning Jat caste.

She felt left out when her friends played “Jat pride” music and when a friend’s mother used her caste identity as a slur.

“I felt this deep sadness of not being accepted by my own community,” Bangar said. “I felt betrayed.”

___

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

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Discrimination based on caste is pervasive in South Asian communities around the world – now Seattle has banned it

Two social scientists explain how caste-identities are pervasive in not just Hinduism but other South Asian faith groups as well.

Speakers discussing the proposed ordinance to add caste to Seattle’s anti-discrimination laws at Seattle City Hall, on Feb. 21, 2023. (AP Photo/John Froschauer)

March 8, 2023

By 

Aseem Hasnain, Abhilasha Srivastav

(The Conversation) — Seattle became the first city in the U.S. to outlaw caste-based discrimination against immigrants from stigmatized groups in South Asia’s traditional social hierarchy.

The ordinance, adding caste to Seattle’s existing anti-discrimination policies, was proposed by Kshama Sawant, the only Indian American councilwoman in the city, which is home to an estimated 75,000 Indian Americans. Sawant, herself from a privileged caste background, has been a vocal critic of the discriminatory caste system. Sawant said the ordinance – which was approved on Feb. 21, 2023 – would help put an end to an “invisible and unaddressed” form of discrimination in Seattle

A year ago, in January 2022, the California State University, America’s largest public higher education system, also added caste to its anti-discrimination policy, allowing students, staff and faculty across its 23 campuses to report caste bias and discrimination.

Influential interest groups advocating for the Hindu community in the U.S. have opposed the Seattle decision. The Coalition of Hindus in North America, a Hindu advocacy group, has called it “nothing but bigotry against the South Asian community by using racist, colonial tropes of caste.”

While the caste system is often conflated in Western media with the Hindu religion and India alone, that is far from the truth. As social scientists specializing in South Asian studies, we assert that the caste system neither is exclusive to the Hindu religion nor is it restricted to India and Indians.

Caste in South Asia

While the caste system originated in Hindu scriptures, it crystallized in its current form during British colonial rule and has stratified society in every South Asian religious community. In addition to India, it is present in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Maldives and Bhutan.

Social, economic and political status in this pernicious system is tied to traditional occupations fixed by birth. Brahmins, for example, who were traditionally assigned priestly work, are at the top, and Dalits, relegated to the bottom, are forced into occupations that are considered abject in South Asia. These include janitorial work, maintaining sewage systems, skinning dead animals, and leather tanning. Strict rules of caste-based marriages maintain these boundaries firmly.

Caste organizes social life not only among Hindus but also in Muslim, Christian, Sikh and Buddhist communities in the region. It is an intergenerational system based on birth into a caste group. Caste identities stay even generations after someone converts out of Hinduism and into any of these faiths.

Among South Asian Christians, Anglo-Indians – of mixed descent from Indian and British parents – are parallel to Brahmins, who remain at the top of the hierarchy. Middle-level Hindu castes come next, followed by those from Indigenous backgrounds. Those who converted to Christianity from Dalit groups are placed at the bottom. In other words, the system remains unchanged.

Muslims across the region are organized with the minority Ashraf communities at the top. The Ashraf community claims noble status as the “original” Muslims in South Asia because of their descent from Central Asian, Iranian and Arab ethnic groups. The middle in this social hierarchy is composed of Ajlaf, considered to be “low-born” communities that converted from Hindu artisanal castes. The group at the bottom includes converts from Dalit communities who are identified with the demeaning term Arzal, which means vile or vulgar.

In the Sikh community, the powerful landowning caste, Jat-Sikhs, are at the top, followed by converts from Hindu trading communities in the middle and converts from lower-caste Hindu communities, Mazhabi Sikhs, at the bottom.

Dalit Sikhs gather for a protest in New Delhi.
AP Photo/ R S Iyer

While Buddhism in India is close to being casteless, its dominant versions in Sri Lanka and Nepal have caste-based hierarchies.

Caste carries over after conversion

While many of the so-called lower-caste groups converted to escape their persecution in Hinduism, their new religions did not treat them as fully equal.

South Asian Christians, Muslims, Sikhs and Buddhists with Dalit family histories continue to face prejudice from their new co-religionists. They are excluded from or experience segregation at shared places of worship and sites of burial or cremation across all these regions.

Social scientists have shown that strict caste-based rules continue to regulate social organization and everyday interactions. Intercaste marriages are rare: for example in India, they have stagnated at about 5% of all marriages over the past several decades. When they take place, rule-breaking individuals risk violent retribution.

While urbanization and education have normalized everyday interactions across caste groups in shared urban spaces, entertaining lower-caste individuals in upper-caste households is still taboo in many families. A 2014 survey found one in every four Indians to be practicing untouchability, a dehumanizing practice in which people from Dalit castes are not to be touched or allowed to come in contact with upper-caste individuals. Untouchability was prohibited in India in 1950 when its egalitarian constitution came into force.

However, homeownership is segregated by caste, and religion and caste discrimination is pervasive in the rental market, where residential associations use flimsy procedural excuses for keeping lower-caste individuals out.

Lower castes are expected to defer to the higher status of upper castes, refrain from expressing themselves in shared spaces and avoid displaying material affluence. They risk being punished by socioeconomic boycotts, which could include ostracizing the Dalits or keeping them out of employment.

It may even include assault or murder. In Pakistan, anti-blasphemy laws are used as a pretext for caste violence against Dalits, many of whom have converted to Christianity.

Caste and life outcomes

Studies show that caste-based identity is a major determinant of overall success in South Asia. Upper-caste individuals have better literacy and greater representation in higher education. They tend to be wealthier and dominate private-sector employment, as well as entrepreneurship.

While affirmative action programs initiated by the British and continued in independent India have made improvements in the educational levels of lower-caste groups, employment opportunities for them have been limited.

Studies also demonstrate how caste identity affects nutrition and health through purchasing power and access to health services.

Most socioeconomic elites in South Asia, regardless of religion, are affiliated with upper-caste groups, and the vast majority of the poor come from lower-caste groups.

Caste in the diaspora

Scholars have documented similar discriminatory practices in the diaspora in the U.K., Australia, Canada and the African continent.

Caste has started getting recognition as a discriminatory category, especially in the U.S., in recent years. A 2016 survey, “Caste in the USA,”
the first formal documentation of caste discrimination within the U.S. diaspora, found that caste discrimination is pervasive across workplaces, educational institutions, places of worship and even in romantic partnerships.

In 2020, the state of California sued Cisco Systems, a technology company in the Silicon Valley, on a complaint against caste-based discrimination. Harvard University, Colby College, University of California, Davis, and Brandeis University have recognized caste as a protected status and have included it in their nondiscrimination policies.

Seattle’s new ordinance may trigger similar moves across other U.S. cities where South Asian Americans from nonelite caste backgrounds are settling down and address caste-based discrimination among other South Asian faith communities as well. For now, this ordinance will help put the spotlight on this centuries-old system that denies equality to a substantive section of the population on the basis of an oppressive ideology.

This is an updated version of a piece first published on April 27, 2022.

(Aseem Hasnain, Assistant Professor of Sociology, California State University, Fresno. Abhilasha Srivastava, Assistant Professor of Economics, California State University, Fresno. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)

Hindus debate the legacy of caste in America

(RNS) — As more institutions adopt policies against caste discrimination, disagreements about caste's prevalence among those in the Hindu diaspora are stronger than ever.

Supporters and opponents of a proposed ordinance to add caste to Seattle’s anti-discrimination laws attempt to out-voice each other during a rally at Seattle City Hall, Feb. 21, 2023, in Seattle. (AP Photo/John Froschauer)

Richa Karmarkar
December 10, 2024

(RNS) — Nearly a decade ago, a newly migrated Karthikeyan Shanmugam, an IT engineer from Tamil Nadu, in southern India, was puzzled, to say the least, at the caste conversations among the Hindus he met in the Bay Area.

As they discussed the California Department of Education’s 2016 battle with Hindu advocacy organizations over mentions of India’s hierarchy of hereditary social classes in the state’s social studies textbooks, Shanmugam realized, he said in a recent interview, that some of his fellow Hindus were unconvinced that the caste system needed to be addressed at all.

Shanmugam is among those American Hindus who believe that the Indian diaspora has grown to the point that caste needs to be addressed out of its context in India. “Caste is something very apparent as part of the Indian perspective,” Shanmugam told RNS. “It has to be taught, and it has to be taught properly, the right way. If you try to hide caste, then there is no solution to it.”

Disagreements about whether caste originated from the Hindu religion or South Asian history more generally came to a fever pitch in California last year, when a landmark bill designating caste as an official category of discrimination was vetoed by Gov. Gavin Newsom after intense lobbying.

More than a dozen universities, colleges and companies have adopted caste as a protected category in their discrimination policies, opposed by similar groups that argued the inclusion would only mischaracterize all in the micro-minority for following discriminatory practices that had long been disavowed in their homeland.


Thenmozhi Soundararajan, front center, leads demonstrators marching in favor of SB 403 near the California Capitol building in Sacramento, Sept. 11, 2023. (Photo courtesy of Equality Labs)

As these institutions implement anti-caste policies, Hindu Americans feel it imperative to discuss the unintended consequences, and hidden complexities, of “the caste problem.”

RELATED: Rutgers task force report urges university to add caste discrimination ban

The problem, said Shanmugam, is that those Hindus living in the United States who don’t see caste often miss it because they haven’t suffered caste discrimination, likely because they themselves are higher on the “caste ladder.” These upper-caste Hindus, or Brahmins, he said, make up the majority of Hindus who initially had the access and money to build a life in the U.S.

“They have to understand what social justice is, and how they benefit from their caste privilege,” said Shanmugam. “They first have to acknowledge it.”


Shanmugam, who is not a Brahmin, knew from his own experience that caste divisions persist in the U.S. He has known co-workers to try to “sniff out” his caste with pointed religious questions, and seen blatant shaming of meat eaters in his social circles, as it could indicate a lower caste.

So why, asked Shanmugam, did it feel as if many Hindu Americans were denying this reality?

In part to raise awareness about caste frictions, Shamugan co-founded the Ambedkar King Study Circle, a support group for other recent immigrants who followed the teachings of caste abolitionist Bhimrao Ambedkar, who is said to have influenced the thinking of Martin Luther King Jr., whose son Martin Luther King III once called them “brother revolutionaries.”


People demonstrate against Senate Bill 403 during a rally near the California state Capitol in Sacramento, Sept. 9, 2023. (Photo courtesy of Sangeetha Shankar/HAF)

But some Hindus maintain that even talking about the caste system outside its native contexts not only unnecessarily extends its power but paints Hinduism as essentially discriminatory. The argument against California’s caste discrimination bill and other institutional caste policies from these advocates held that they were being pushed by campus or corporate DEI officials.

Last week, a new report from the Network Contagion Research Institute, a nonprofit center at Rutgers University that studies misinformation and hate ideology, found that caste education can actually increase bias, saying, “anti-oppressive pedagogy increases hostility, distrust, and punitive attitudes — escalating tensions instead of fostering inclusion.”

In other words, those exposed to a DEI curriculum about caste equity written by Equality Labs, a Dalit, or lower-caste civil rights group, were more likely to perceive Brahmins as an inherently oppressive group, or perceive discrimination when there isn’t any evidence of it, said Indu Viswanathan, a researcher who helped produce the report.

Many Americans’ introduction to the caste system, she said, begins as early as middle school, when they find plastered in their social studies textbook a four-section pyramid, with Brahmins at the top and Shudras, or untouchables, at the bottom. The chart has become infamous among Indian American students, who are often faced with uncomfortable questions as a result.


The Caste System pyramid, as seen in many textbooks. (Image courtesy Wikimedia/Creative Commons)

“Categorical discrimination exists in every society,” said Viswanathan, “but when it’s represented as the bulk of what you need to know about a group of people, that’s when things begin to get skewed, and your concepts of that group of people and the purpose of their tradition start to become skewed.”

The versions of caste that come from the Hindu Scriptures, said Viswanathan, can’t be explained in a single diagram, nor can Western frameworks of the “food chain” articulate the nuances of caste, including the checks historically placed on those of a higher status, the role of regional and linguistic communities in caste designations, and the years of reparations put forth for those born in so-called backward castes.

DEI circles in schools and offices, then, she said, leave little room for progressive-minded individuals like herself to push back against the dominant narrative, which she sees as turning increasingly “anti-Brahmin.”

“We are a community like no other,” she said. “We’re a small group in the United States, but we maintain the incredible, sort of unimaginable diversity of India, even amongst the diaspora. But the story that is being peddled is that whatever is happening in India is also happening here.”

Pushpita Prasad, of the advocacy organization Coalition of Hindus of North America, said the fight against institutional caste policies has been pulled off-track by a “feel-good ignorance” that exists among well-meaning, but uninformed, lawmakers. She said that though she has lived in the U.S. for 25 years, she never heard caste being discussed until Equality Labs released its first survey in 2016 — which has since been criticized by other researchers for its methodology.

“It’s interesting that DEI, a concept that should have been about teaching pluralism, has become fundamentally so linear that it divides the world into black and white, good and evil, and it can’t see beyond that,” said Prasad.

Raju Rajagopal. (Courtesy photo)

But Raju Rajagopal, a self-described “caste-privileged” Hindu who sits on the board of Hindus for Human Rights, a social justice advocacy group, said those who say they see no evidence of caste discrimination are “missing the point.”

“You may think that you’re being falsely accused, but until you’re able to put yourself in the shoes of the discriminated, at least show some understanding of why they feel this perception. Unless you can give some safe space for Dalits to openly talk about what they’ve gone through, you’re not going to have the data to say that.”

In Rajagopal’s eyes, mentions of caste will only increase as more Indians immigrate to this country. The difficult conversations that will result are unavoidable and require the participation of all Hindus, regardless of their views on its origins. It is thus the responsibility of Hindus, he says, to “educate the mainstream American community, not to distance ourselves from something that our ancestors have contributed heavily to, similar to racism.”

Talking about caste gives teachers and parents the chance to highlight how Indians have tried to mitigate its effects, Rajugopal said, such as India’s affirmative action effort known as the reservation system. “There’s plenty that we can highlight to the children to say, ‘This is a problem, but look at all the things that we have done now.’ We have to do our bit in America.”

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Hinduism Is Fascism

Rutgers decides not to adopt caste policy, but both sides laud decision as a win

(RNS) — ‘Rutgers, in their announcement, has outlined the most robust response to caste discrimination by any university in the United States,’ said Audrey Truschke, professor of South Asian history at New Jersey’s Rutgers University.

People mingle on the Rutgers University campus in New Brunswick, N.J.

 (Photo by Tomwsulcer/Wikimedia/Creative Commons)

Richa Karmarkar
January 15, 2025


(RNS) — Despite a report finding that caste-based discrimination was a problem on campus, Rutgers University decided this week not to update its anti-discrimination policies — saying that policies already in place address the issue.

“Because caste is already covered by the Policy Prohibiting Discrimination and Harassment, the university will not be taking steps to amend this policy at this time,” Rutgers officials said in an official announcement Monday (Jan. 13).

Rutgers officials had been asked to respond to the 2024 report from the University Task Force on Caste Discrimination, which recommended adding caste as a protected category to its anti-discrimination policies, something that more than 20 other colleges and universities have done.

The university said its announcement “does not reflect the university’s agreement with, or adoption of, the findings and conclusions set forth in the report.”

The issue of caste discrimination has made headlines nationwide in recent years — most notably this past fall, when California Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill that would have banned caste discrimination in that state.

While not all of their recommendations were adopted, members of the Rutgers task force see the university’s announcement as an “unmitigated victory.”

Audrey Truschke, Rutgers professor of South Asian history and co-chair of the task force, said the university has committed to training staff members on identifying casteism and will include caste discrimination-related questions in the next campus climate survey. That shows the “most robust response to caste discrimination by any university in the United States,” she said.

Discrimination based on the caste group one is born into, say activists who work with caste in the Indian context, can take various forms, from social ostracization to blatant stereotyping about worship or eating patterns.

In their announcement, Rutgers officials cited the intersectional nature of caste, which means that discrimination can fall under religion, national origin, ancestry, race or a combination of those things, all of which are already covered.

“The report generated important discussion and review around how our policies address potential cases of discrimination based on caste and around how the university collects – and responds to – information in this area,” said Dory Devlin, spokesperson for Rutgers University.

According to its administration, Rutgers is among some of the most ethnically diverse universities in America. Almost 30% of its students identify as Asian American, and more than 80% come from areas of New Jersey, which has the highest population of South Asians in the country.

Though caste is not limited to any one community, its association with India and Hindus in mainstream culture had made caste a contentious issue for Hindus the world over.

RELATED: Rutgers task force report urges university to add caste discrimination ban

For Hindus for Human Rights, an anti-caste advocacy organization that launched an email campaign to urge Rutgers administrators to adopt the policy, the decision is both disappointing and encouraging.

“I think the difference between a case like SB 403 being vetoed (by Newsom) and Rutgers not adopting caste protections is that you do have this more fleshed-out and explicit acknowledgment of caste discrimination as an issue that needs to be combated,” said Pranay Somayajula, director of organizing and advocacy for HFHR. “And I think that we’ve seen in the statement from Rutgers a more comprehensive explanation of: ‘Here’s what we’re going to do to address the issue of caste at Rutgers.'”

Hedges spelling Rutgers at the Rutgers University campus in New Brunswick, N.J. 

(Photo by Tomwsulcer/Wikimedia/Creative Commons)

Not having an explicit protected category for caste in institutional policies makes it harder for people who are experiencing discrimination to make their concerns known, Somayajula said.

“We just shouldn’t be creating barriers to this,” he said.

Thus far, the Harvard Graduate Student Union, the University of Minnesota, the entire California State University system and the city of Seattle have been among the institutions that have adopted anti-caste policies.

Though its origins are contested, caste can be sometimes be identified through someone’s family surname, birthplace or religion. Yet many activists argue that the social hierarchy of caste, and any prejudice attached to it, was left behind years ago in India and did not travel along with its immigrants to America.

To Hindu organizations that have long been opposing the widespread adoption of caste-discrimination policies, Rutgers’ decision also seen as a win.

The legal counsel of the Hindu American Foundation, the largest group of its kind, sent a letter to Rutgers’ Office of General Counsel in August after the task force’s initial report, “strongly advising” the university not to implement any programmatic changes.

“The inclusion of ‘caste’ in your policies will necessarily and unconstitutionally single out and stigmatize students, faculty and staff of Indian origin as a matter of policy, and require ethno-racial profiling and disparate legal scrutiny on the basis of their race, national origin, ancestry, and religion,” read the letter.

To other Hindus in this camp, naming caste outside of existing discrimination “perpetuates negative misinformation” that associates people of Indian origin with a specific form of bigotry, and therefore promotes the idea that students of Indian origin are either perpetrators or victims of caste discrimination. The letter also noted that the report used the words “India” or “Indian” 38 times, “South Asian” 25 times and only singularly mentioned other communities.

“I am glad that the Rutgers University Labor Relations office recognized that caste is already covered under their current policy and did not fall for the report by the task force, which singled out Hindu students and faculty,” said Hitesh Trivedi, associate Hindu chaplain at Rutgers University, in a press statement from the Coalition of Hindus of North America. “In a recent study, Rutgers University’s Social Perception Lab confirmed that adding caste to its policy would increase suspicion and hate towards Hindu and Indian Americans.”

The study he refers to, a November report from a nonprofit center at Rutgers University that studies misinformation and hate ideology, found that caste education can increase bias, saying, “anti-oppressive pedagogy increases hostility, distrust, and punitive attitudes — escalating tensions instead of fostering inclusion.”

Other groups, such as Caste Files, a think tank that focuses primarily on the perception of caste in the United States, applauded the new development, yet remained measured in their celebration.

“CasteFiles urges Rutgers University to reconsider the inclusion of caste-related questions in its campus climate surveys,” it said in a statement. “These surveys must avoid the pitfalls of anonymity breaches, biased incentives, and discriminatory implications for participants.”

Truschke, whose extensive research on the history of India and caste and outspokenness have made her a target of online vitriol and Rutgers the subject of international attention, said that Rutgers’ statement is a “promising beginning” that her educational efforts are working.

“We have already seen, especially this year, an increase in on-the-ground activity at Rutgers: more groups, more events talking about caste, and trying to get this more into the conversation,” she said. “So to me, the announcement by Rutgers, this is step one, maybe step two. But we’ve got 100 more steps to go.”

RELATED: Hindus debate the legacy of caste in America

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for DALIT

INDIA

A Comradely Reply to Manoj Jha’s Letter to Communists

Amulya Anita , Aman Azad |

 07 Jan 2026

Communists are the only force who address the question of land distribution seriously, aware of its implications for caste and social justice.

Representational image.( File Image)

Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Manoj Jha’s “imaginary letter from Karl Marx to Indian Communist Parties”,

written in a spirit of solidarity and comradeship, however, carries significant elisions and misrepresentations. The letter, published in the form of an article in a national daily, reiterates criticisms that have traditionally been levied against communists, but merits a response given not just the commonality of this criticism but also because addressing such a critique can pave the way for a united and robust attack against the Hindutva forces that govern us today.

A historical and contemporaneous overview on communists and the caste question is hence critical in clarifying the theoretical weaknesses in Jha’s arguments, as it is in strengthening our praxis against the violence of caste.

Jha argues that Indian communists have failed to imbue their theory with “realities around it”. This marks the tone of the article, written in sweeping generalisations, peppered with strawman assertions, and alluding to debates and positions that have long been settled and thoroughly debunked.

Indian communists and their allied organisations have acted decisively against the social reality of caste, with the All India Democratic Women’s Association providing shelter to inter-caste couples in Haryana, under the threat of immediate physical violence; with communist parties in Tamil Nadu leading temple entry movements and with communist-led Kerala being the first state to utilise technology in cleaning manholes and sewers, signalling an end to the degrading practice of manual scavenging.

This praxis of communists is also a product of the democratic structure of communist parties themselves, which ensures that at all levels of the party structure, cadres are educated regarding the criticality of participating proactively in social movements against caste. Thus, communists view the annihilation of caste as axiomatic and antecedent to their project of emancipation.

Further, Jha argues that communists merely view caste as a “cultural residue” and he also points to the prevalence of caste since pre-capitalist society. To understand Jha's point, one must consider pre-capitalist societies, where labourers were bound to their lords through custom, law, and force.

In India, the Brahminical ideology functioned as such a custom, rationalising why specific occupations were assigned to particular castes, while Dalits were barred from owning land and confined to toiling in upper-caste fields. As Ambedkar described it, this created "caste as an enclosed class," where dominant castes profited from the labour of exploited ones, degrading them as second-class citizens under the guise of religion.

Karl Marx viewed capitalism as a relatively progressive mode of production, which in Europe emerged after overthrowing feudal forces and their ideology. Unlike pre-capitalist systems, capitalism exploited labourers directly, through paltry wages, without relying on customs or religious justifications. This is why Marx and Engels write in the Communist Manifesto: "The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations".

On similar lines, old-guard communists like S.A. Dange argued that machine-based industrial production would erode caste distinctions. Since capitalism exploits labour without needing feudal ideologies like Brahminism, they believed the advent of capitalism would naturally dissolve caste-based exploitation. These ideas ultimately imply that there is no need to fight the caste system separately, as capitalism alone would eradicate it.

Does this view represent mainstream Indian communist thought? To that one can only respond with a resounding no. Most Indian communists argue that capitalism's progression in India was neither organic nor revolutionary; it was superimposed by British colonialism.

Post-Independence, unlike the West—where capitalism overthrew feudalism—India's weak capitalist class allied with feudal landlords rather than dismantling them. Consequently, capitalists preserved semi-feudal relations that sustain caste and its ideology. This materialist lens rejects caste as mere cultural residue, instead rooting it in the bourgeoisie-landlord alliance.

The Communist Party of India (Marxist) Party Programme captures this precisely: “The problem of caste oppression and discrimination has a long history and is deeply rooted in the pre-capitalist social system. The society under capitalist development has compromised with the existing caste system…To fight for the abolition of the caste system and all forms of social oppression through a social reform movement is an important part of the democratic revolution. The fight against caste oppression is interlinked with the struggle against class exploitation.”

The CPI(M) programme thus many years earlier captured exactly what Jha is arguing today. Jha’s deliberate elision of such literature then is also revelatory of how such critiques often stem from vested political interests that knowingly misrepresent communists to malign them.

The refrain that caste is consigned to a post-revolutionary future yet again constitutes a stale criticism levied on Indian communists that Jha merely regurgitates. While Indian communists are internally diverse, there is overwhelming unity in decoding the struggle against caste as immediate and enduring rather than as an afterthought.

Communists adhering to dialectical materialism, view change as constant, and hence understand it as imperative to address casteism in the here and now, through a concrete analysis of the concrete conditions.

Further, since caste does not gain significance only through culture and instead has a material base, communist assertions against capitalism, toward land reform and against feudal remnants and landed elites, also means a direct assault against the caste system. The praxis of parties replicates this theoretical framework, with one-third of the Tamil Nadu unit of the CPI(M) specifically belonging to Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe communities, and with the party regarding anti-caste struggle as key to class struggle with Indian characteristics.

In their struggle against caste, communists place at the centre the necessity of cultivating class consciousness in place of caste consciousness, given how the latter fragments and divides the working class, and thus plays into the interests of the ruling classes. This privileging of class consciousness does not mean a negation of caste, instead indicating a battle to eradicate it.

Jha lectures communists that “to defend constitutional rights is not to abandon class politics,” conveniently erasing the fact that those martyred in defence of democracy and the Constitution, have overwhelmingly been working-classes organised under the banner of the red flag. Before sermonising communist parties on the necessity of defending the Constitution, Jha should have acquainted himself with the rich history in defence of parliamentary democracy that communists have fought for across India.

Even before India had achieved Independence, communists remained the only force that fought without compromises for the demand of universal adult franchise, with political outfits, such as Congress, reconciling themselves to limited franchise. Moreover, in states such as Bihar, communists have led movements against village elites who have prevented, with force, working classes from casting their right to vote.

In realising the secular promise of the Preamble of our Constitution, the communists have the most spotless of records, with the Kerala government passing a resolution against the divisive Citizenship Amendment Act and with the Jyoti Basu’s government in West Bengal undertaking rallies for communal unity in the aftermath of the destruction of the Babri Masjid. The Constitution’s truest allies have been none other than the communists.

Jha makes a compelling point: class formation in India bears the indelible imprint of caste hierarchy. Thus, the fight against caste cannot be confined to self-respect alone; it must target material bases like land, which underpins upper-caste power in the countryside.

Landlessness enforces dependence on upper-caste holdings, perpetuating subservience. However, RJD’s own history reveals a sketchy record on land reforms. Karpoori Thakur—a leader from an oppressed caste—ruled Bihar contemporaneously with Jyoti Basu, yet Thakur's contributions barely touched land redistribution. In stark contrast, Basu, a communist Chief Minister, spearheaded massive reforms in West Bengal.

The Ministry of Rural Development's 2006-07 Annual Report reveals that of 2.1 million SC beneficiaries nationwide had received land, out of which almost 50% SCs who obtained land were from West Bengal. Dalits in Left-governed Bengal, Kerala, and Tripura gained not just land but dignity—stripping upper castes of dominance. However, no comparable land struggle erupted in Bihar either under Karpoori Thakur or RJD’s Lalu Prasad, who positioned himself as an oppressed-caste champion. The record visibly reveals that communists are the only force who address the question of land distribution seriously, aware of its implications for caste and social justice.

We extend Jha our comradely greetings in the New Year, and agree that the evil of caste must be banished to the dustbin of history. In this struggle against caste, it is critical to transcend caste as merely an identity and also the utilisation of caste as merely a metric to toy with during elections. Instead, we hope to see Jha and his party further land struggles and struggles for dignity across Bihar.

Amulya Anita is a student of history and a graduate of law, interested in questions of labour, legality and people's movements.  Aman is a PhD scholar in history at the University of Delhi, with research interests in caste dynamics, agrarian relations, and social movements. The views are personal.