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.)

CASTEISM IS FASCISM

How India's caste system works, and why it's generating US controversy

Cities like Seattle have pursued bans on caste-based discrimination

Associated Press

Caste is an ancient system of social hierarchy based on one’s birth that is tied to concepts of purity and social status. Its history, evolution and current state are complicated.

A move to outlaw caste-based discrimination in Seattle has thrust this complex — and often misunderstood — system into the spotlight. If the Seattle City Council votes Tuesday to approve an ordinance that will include caste in its anti-discrimination laws, Seattle will become the first city in the United States to outlaw such discrimination.

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.

SEATTLE BECOMES FIRST US CITY TO BAN DISCRIMINATION BASED ON CASTE

The word "caste" has its origins in Latin (castus), which means chaste or pure. Caste made its way into the Indian lexicon with the arrival of the Portuguese in the 1700s who first used the word "casta" with reference to the social hierarchy in the Indian subcontinent.

How Did the Caste System Originate?

References to a societal hierarchy can be found in the millennia-old Rig Veda where a hymn describes the origin of all life from the Purusha or "supreme being." A verse states that the four categories (varnas) of Hindu society came from this infinite being. The Brahmins (priest class) appeared from the being’s head, the Kshatriyas (warriors) from his arms, the Vaishyas (business class) from his thighs and the Shudras (laborers) from his feet. The hymn does not go into details about these categories or which is superior or inferior.

The varna system initially served to classify individuals on the basis of their attributes and aptitude. However, with time, it evolved into the caste system where a person’s occupation and status in society became determined by birth. Those who were outside the system became known as the outcasts or untouchables, and later as the Dalits.

The term "jati" appears in almost all Indian languages and is closest to the word "caste" because it is related to the idea of lineage. There are more than 3,000 jatis in India. Each region in India has its own ranking of jatis. However, in every region, the Dalits are at the bottom of the hierarchy and over the centuries, have faced discrimination. Members of the Dalit community have also historically performed tasks such as manual scavenging, the dangerous and inhumane practice of removing human waste by hand from sewers. The practice continues in many parts of the country even though the Indian government banned it in 2013.

Jati also occupies a significant role within the arranged marriage system where parents look for partners for their children within their caste. This is common in diaspora communities where online matrimonial sites can be filtered by caste.

India's caste system has long been a decider of social status in the tremendous South Asian nation. (AP Photo/Gurinder Osan, File)

Is Caste Exclusive to India or Hinduism?

While the concepts of varna and jati are referenced in Hindu texts such as the Manu Smriti and the Bhagvad Gita, caste divisions are not exclusive to India or Hinduism. Caste can be found in other countries such as Bangladesh, Bhutan, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and in the diaspora worldwide, and in faith communities including Buddhists, Christians, Jains, Muslims and Sikhs. Dalits who have converted to Buddhism, Christianity, Islam or Sikhism still report experiencing segregation and exclusion from places of worship and burial or cremation sites across the region.

COURT: INDIAN CANDIDATES CAN'T USE FAITH, CASTE TO GET VOTES

Is Caste a British Construct?

Under British rule, the caste system, which had previously been more fluid, was made more rigid with use of the census, which classified the entire nation into categories and schedules, said Ananya Chakravarti, associate professor of history at Georgetown University who focuses on South Asia and Latin America.

"While the British by no means invented caste, they did play a part in fixing these caste identities in perpetuity," she said. "As an institution, caste has had a very long life, way before Europeans showed up."

The British also introduced elements of affirmative action in India, which has provided marginalized groups with representation in education, employment, government programs, scholarships and politics. Based on constitutional provisions, central and state governments are allowed to set "reserved quotas or seats" in colleges, workplaces and government agencies for disadvantaged groups such as Dalits. The system of reservations has been the source of animosity between castes, with upper-caste Indians claiming that such programs and policies are antithetical to a merit-based system.

Are Race and Caste the Same?

Chakravarti cautions against equating race and caste, particularly in the U.S. where both are present. She gives the example of BAPS, a prominent Hindu sect, which is facing a lawsuit in New Jersey accusing the organization of forcing hundreds of low-caste workers to labor at temple sites across the U.S. under dangerous conditions for as little as $450 a month.

"In this case, all those involved in the case are the same race," Chakravarti said. "So race does not adequately cover the question of caste."

Cornel West, professor of philosophy at Union Theological Seminary and scholar of African American studies, says he feels kinship with Dalit activists, calling casteism and racism "institutionalized forms of hatred."

"We have no other alternative but to fight both morally, intellectually and politically," he said.

‘Once we win California, the nation is next’: what a caste discrimination ban means for Americans

Mary Yang
Wed, September 27, 2023 

Photograph: John G Mabanglo/EPA

California could soon become the first state to ban discrimination on the basis of caste, propelling a growing civil rights movement to its biggest stage yet.

In recent years, efforts to ban caste discrimination have become increasingly widespread. Pending approval from Governor Gavin Newsom, the ban in California would follow the likes of Seattle and dozens of college campuses nationwide – including the 23-school California state university system – to explicitly define “caste” and add it to a list of protected identities.

Related: California poised to become first US state to ban caste discrimination

Earlier this month, state legislators voted 31-5 to approve SB403, which amends California’s housing, labor and education codes to cover discrimination based on one’s ancestry. According to the bill, that specifically includes “caste”, a system of social stratification based on one’s inherited status with roots in south Asia, which spans India, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka.

Anti-caste discrimination activists say the law in California would empower caste-oppressed people while educating both south Asians and non-south Asians on an issue they say remains prevalent on the Asian continent and in the diaspora abroad.

“It has become psychological trauma that carries over, one generation to the other generation,” said Nirmal Singh, a physician from Bakersfield, California, who was born into a historically oppressed caste in south Asia. “This was a very important bill for us.”

The California bill defines caste as “an individual’s perceived position in a system of social stratification on the basis of inherited status”, which can be characterized by a number of 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”, according to the text.

Introduced by the Democratic state senator Aisha Wahab, the first Afghan American elected to public office in the US, the bill would update the state’s housing and employment laws, as well as the state’s education codes, banning anti-caste bias at all public schools in California.

The impact of such a policy change on campus was immediate for Prem Pariyar, who is from Nepal and identifies as Dalit, the lowest caste in the Hindu social stratum and whose members were marginalized and referred to as “untouchables”.

You cannot imagine the mental health, the trauma associated with this caste

Prem Pariyar

“You cannot imagine the mental health, the trauma associated with this caste,” said Pariyar, who advocated for anti-caste discrimination as a graduate student studying social work at California State University East Bay.

Growing up Dalit in Nepal, Pariyar said he was bullied by upper-caste classmates at school and treated differently by his teachers. He said they punished him more harshly than they did the other students, claiming one of his teachers once spit out water after a classmate said he’d touched the glass.

One in three Dalit students said they experienced discrimination, according to a 2018 survey of just over 1,500 people who identified as south Asian by Dalit civil rights organization Equality Labs.

Pariyar moved to the US about a decade ago, expecting to be free of caste discrimination but encountering it first-hand after one of his professors invited him to speak about his experience of Nepal during class.

He said other Indian students’ attitudes toward him shifted after he revealed he was Dalit, and that they distanced themselves and excluded him from social events.

When the university announced the system-wide policy in January 2022, Pariyar called it his “new year’s gift”.

A handful of schools outside of California have also instituted policies identifying caste as a protected identity, which has elevated students’ awareness of the issue, according to faculty members involved with university policy changes.

In 2019, Brandeis University became the first US college to identify and define caste as a targeted identity after administrators amended the school’s non-discrimination policy.



Supporters of the bill staged a hunger strike outside the state capitol of Sacramento, California on 6 September 2023. Photograph: John G Mabanglo/EPA

“I often say caste is a hidden discrimination in America,” said Laurence Simon, a professor of international development who was part of administration-led conversations surrounding the policy change and whose research centers on social exclusion. “Most people not of south Asian heritage really don’t know anything about caste and wouldn’t see it in front of them because they’re not targets.”

Simon told the Guardian he believes it has “become visible on campus”, adding that all new students and faculty now learn about caste as its anti-discrimination policies are a part of orientation. “Visible in terms of why we have a policy of non-discrimination”.

At Brown University, which added a non-discrimination provision for caste in 2022, the push was student-led, according to Vincent Harris, an associate dean and director of the Brown center for students of color.

“Initially, I had to sharpen my own knowledge about the caste system,” said Harris, who received an email from a student asking about how they might cement caste as a protected class. “[Administrators] were able to play a pivotal role towards what the university did, but it was a student’s perspective that really galvanized this movement.”

Beyond college campuses, Seattle is so far the only government body in the US that has explicitly outlawed discrimination on the basis of one’s caste.

“There is a big, tangible shift where there is now a bold acknowledgment that caste discrimination not only exists but is actually quite pervasive,” said Kshama Sawant, the Seattle city councilmember who introduced the ordinance adding caste to the city’s anti-discrimination laws.

Sawant said that while discrimination “obviously” does not end overnight, the effort to pass the city ordinance, which garnered significant support among Dalit civil rights and south Asian advocacy groups, has already empowered caste-oppressed people.

“It’s actually the experience of fighting to win itself that starts bringing about that shift,” said Sawant.

It’s actually the experience of fighting to win itself that starts bringing about that shift

Kshama Sawant

Still, banning caste discrimination remains somewhat controversial. Opposition to anti-caste discrimination policies, including the pending bill in California, has been loud among Hindu Americans who say the bill is “racist” and unlawfully targets south Asians.

Suhag Shukla, the executive director of advocacy group Hindu American Foundation, said that the bill would give California businesses a “license to discriminate against South Asians”. The group has lobbied against the bill, saying its passage would trigger a rise in Hinduphobia.

“The bill, if signed into law, will deprive South Asians of their constitutional rights of equal protection and due process in the workplace, schools and in the housing sector. We’re hopeful that Governor Newsom will stand up for the rights of the South Asians minority and veto this bill,” said the Hindu American Foundation’s managing director, Samir Kalra, in a statement to the Guardian.

Proponents of the bill also point out that it bans all bias based on ancestry, protecting other marginalized groups outside of south Asia.

“Certainly one of the largest and casted communities is the south Asian community, which is why you’ve had so many south Asian people advocating for this bill,” said Thenmozhi Soundararajan, the founder of Dalit civil rights organization Equality Labs and who grew up in eastern Los Angeles. “But there are caste-oppressed communities in many countries with their own practices of discrimination based on work and descent.”

She listed, for example, the Roma people in Europe, Burakumin people in Japan, Midgan in Somalia and Indigenous peoples of Latin America.

“You see many people who suffer from this type of discrimination asking for remedy,” said Soundararajan.

Newsom has not yet confirmed that he will sign the bill into law. The Hindu American Foundation as of press time does not yet have an indication of the governor’s decision, according to Mat McDermott, the group’s senior communications director.

But Soundararajan and other advocates say they are confident they’ll have his signature.

“Once we win California, the nation is next,” said Soundararajan.

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Dalit Scientists Face Barriers in India’s Top Science Institutes

Despite decades-old inclusion policies, Dalits are systematically underrepresented in science institutes in India. Why?


Top: Dalit researcher Rajendra Sonkawade has advocated for the rights of lower-caste scientists like himself. But he believes his advocacy has hampered his career. “I paid the price for speaking up,” Sonkawade said.

Visual: Ankur Paliwal for Undark

BY ANKUR PALIWAL
07.26.2021

LONG READ


IN THE SUMMER OF 1976, 26-year-old Raosaheb Kale entered the School of Life Sciences at New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University, alongside about 34 other incoming doctoral students. At the time, a committee of teachers at the school would review the students’ records and assign each to a Ph.D. supervisor to mentor them through graduate school. When the school posted the list of assignments, Kale scanned the piece of paper: Every single student, he said, had been matched with a supervisor, except for him.

“Nobody wanted to take me,” recalled Kale, who is now 71, sitting on his apartment’s balcony in Pune, in western India.

Kale knew why his name was missing: In his class, he was the only one from the Dalit community — formerly known as the untouchables. The teachers didn’t want to supervise Dalits, Kale said, because they perceived that Dalits “won’t perform well.”

Historically, Dalits were considered so low that they fell outside the caste system, a rigid social hierarchy described in ancient Hindu legal texts. Brahmins (priests) occupied the top of the pyramid, followed by the Kshatriyas (warriors), Vaishyas (traders), and then Shudras (artisans) at the bottom. Today, caste, which is defined by family of origin, remains an ever-present reality in Indian culture, and functions somewhat similarly to race in America.

Growing up in the drought-prone Beed district of western India, Kale shared a mud-walled, tin-roofed house with his parents and four younger siblings. Like other Dalits, his parents were unable to own land and barred from entering temples. In his village, Dalits were assigned various jobs such as sweeping streets, supplying firewood, delivering messages, and picking cotton. In return, they received grains, leftover food, or, on very rare occasions, one rupee for a day’s labor — well below a livable wage.

When Raosaheb Kale, a member of the Dalit caste, entered graduate school in the 1970s, he was the only student the school did not match with a Ph.D. supervisor. “Nobody wanted to take me,” Kale said. In Indian culture today, caste, which is defined by family of origin, functions similarly to race in America. 

Visual: Ankur Paliwal for Undark

The village was peaceful as long as Dalits followed the Hindu caste hierarchy. “You know your limits,” Kale recalled. “The moment lower caste crosses the limit, ignorantly or otherwise,” anything can happen, he said. Once, when Kale was a kid, he recalled holding the hand of a higher-caste boy to cross a river in the village. A furor erupted. An older upper-caste person from the village warned parents of both boys that such close contact should never happen again.

Against staggering odds, Kale excelled in academic science. He fought his way through the upper-caste dominated School of Life Sciences, became its dean, and received a prestigious award for his contributions to radiation and cancer biology research. In 2014, he completed his tenure in one of the top academic posts — vice chancellor of a university — in India.

But his story remains rare. In 2011, around 17 percent of India’s population, which now totals over 1.3 billion people, were Dalits, who are officially referred to as “Scheduled Castes” in government records. Caste discrimination is illegal, and India’s reservation policy — a form of affirmative action that has been around since 1950 — currently mandates that 15 percent of students and staff at government research and education institutes, with some exceptions, come from the Dalit community. But records obtained by Undark under India’s Right to Information Act from some of the country’s flagship scientific institutions, along with data from government reports and student groups, reveal a different picture.

At the elite Indian Institutes of Technology in Delhi, Mumbai, Kanpur, Kharagpur, and Madras, the proportion of Dalit researchers admitted to doctoral programs ranged from 6 percent (at IIT Delhi) to 14 percent (at IIT Kharagpur) in 2019, the most recent year obtained by Undark. At the Indian Institute of Science, or IISc, in Bengaluru, 12 percent of researchers admitted to doctoral programs in 2020 were Dalits. And at the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research — a major government research institution — of the 33 laboratories that responded to Undark’s data requests, just 12 met the 15 percent threshold.

The numbers are even lower among senior academics. IIT Bombay, in Mumbai, and IIT Delhi had no Dalit professors at all in 2020 — compared with 324 and 218 professors, respectively, in the General Category, which includes upper-caste Hindus and some members of religious minorities, like Muslims. (In India, the term “professor” refers to senior-ranking positions and does not include assistant or associate professors.) IISc had two Dalit professors and 205 General Category professors in 2020. None of the department heads at IISc were Dalit last year. And five out of the seven science schools of Jawaharlal Nehru University did not have a single Dalit professor.


“You know your limits,” Kale recalled. “The moment lower caste crosses the limit, ignorantly or otherwise,” anything can happen, he said.

Similar disparities exist in other professions in India; Dalits face continued discrimination and violence from upper-caste people across the country. But researchers who study casteism in science say that even as Dalits have mobilized for their rights, they have encountered distinctive barriers in scientific institutions, which remain especially resistant to reservation policies and other reforms. At a time of growing attention to inequities in global science, those barriers leave Dalits systematically underrepresented in the major research and academic institutes of the world’s largest democracy.

Undark sent repeated interview requests to the directors of IISc and five leading IITs. Only one responded, but declined to comment. In interviews, some upper-caste researchers said that finding qualified Dalit researchers can be difficult. “When you’d sit in the interview board, you will find out yourself,” said Umesh Kulshrestha, the dean of Jawaharlal Nehru University’s School of Environmental Sciences, who is upper caste. Some Dalit candidates “can’t answer even easy questions,” he said, later adding that he has “some good quality Dalit researchers” in the school. Several other upper-caste researchers simply denied that caste prejudice was common in Indian science, saying that they didn’t believe in caste.

But interviews with Dalit scientists and scholars show a different picture — one in which systematic discrimination, institutional barriers, and frequent humiliation make it difficult to thrive at every step of their training.

KALE WAS BORN in 1950 — three years after India became free from British rule, and the same year India’s constitution came into force. That constitution abolished untouchability and declared caste discrimination illegal. It also introduced reservation policies in public sector jobs, politics, and education for marginalized communities, including Dalits and Indigenous groups known as Adivasis. By the 1970s, the government had settled on the 15 percent quota for Dalits that’s still in place today.

Caste discrimination, however, continued. Sitting on his balcony in Pune, Kale described how casteism followed him on his path to higher education. As a small child, he studied in a public school with only one teacher. When the teacher died of cholera, the school closed. Kale walked to a nearby village every other Sunday to meet the headmaster of a bigger school there and ask when he’d get a new instructor. Eventually, the headmaster, who was Dalit, invited Kale to join his school and stay with him. “He really treated me like his son,” said Kale. He would later dedicate his Ph.D. thesis to the headmaster.

When Kale was in the sixth grade, and attending a new school, a teacher invited him over to take special classes at his home. When Kale arrived, the teacher’s wife was going to offer him some food in a “tasla” — an iron pan that laborers use to carry mud — instead of a plate. Kale refused both the meal and the classes.

But he kept getting grades so good that he eventually won admission to Milind College of Science — part of a group of colleges founded by Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, a Dalit leader and lawyer who is sometimes compared to Martin Luther King Jr.


In the late 1940s, a couple of years before Milind College opened, the Indian government began planning to set up a network of exclusive technical institutes to train engineers and scientists who would help build a new India. The first branch of the Indian Institute of Technology, or IIT, opened in 1951 near Kharagpur, and the government soon termed the schools “institutions of national importance.” At the time, a government committee described advanced scientific research as the work of a “few men of high caliber,” the Harvard University anthropologist Ajantha Subramanian writes in “The Caste of Merit,” a study of caste and engineering education in India. IITs were highly selective, and upper-caste Indians quickly dominated their ranks, despite the official reservation policies.

In the early 1970s, when Kale was applying to graduate schools, he didn’t seriously consider IITs, which he said looked like “closed spaces.” Instead, he enrolled in Marathwada University, in Maharashtra state. Part of a wave of new, more democratic state institutions, the university had become a fertile ground for student movements. (It has since been renamed in honor of Ambedkar.) Kale decided to study chemistry, partly because he thought that could get him a job as a chemical engineer in the fast-industrializing country. As the eldest sibling, Kale wanted to support his family as soon as possible. But at same time, he said, “I had an internal desire to get as much education as I can and the highest honorable degree.” So instead of heading straight into the workforce, he began considering doctoral programs.

Kale used some of his saved-up scholarship money to buy a train ticket to New Delhi, where he would take the Ph.D. entrance exam for Jawaharlal Nehru University, or JNU, which attracted students for its interdisciplinary approach, and where Kale’s battle against institutional casteism would begin.

AFEW WEEKS after the JNU faculty failed to match Kale with a Ph.D. supervisor, they offered him a mentor in a different field from the one he hoped to study. He began contemplating what to do next. He learned that Araga Ramesha Rao, a radiation biology researcher, had worked at a cancer research institute in Mumbai, a field he wanted to pursue. Kale managed to arrange a meeting. After several discussions Rao, who has since died, agreed to supervise the aspiring scientist. He did so, Kale said, despite the advice of an upper-caste colleague who urged Rao to avoid mentoring a Dalit student. (Kale was careful to clarify that various upper-caste colleagues, like Rao, supported him throughout the years.)

Alok Bhattacharya, who later joined the school as an associate professor, and belongs to an upper caste, said experiences like Kale’s are not uncommon, and that the only form of discrimination he has observed in his career is that the “lower caste” students faced difficulty in getting a supervisor: “They are the last ones to be picked.”

Kale completed his Ph.D. in 1980, and the school hired him as an assistant professor the next year. But Kale had to wait 17 years to become a professor — much slower than some of his upper-caste peers.

RELATED For India’s Caste-Based Sewer Cleaners: Robots?

Kulshrestha, the dean of the School of Environmental Sciences at JNU, and Pawan Dhar, a professor and former dean of the School of Biotechnology, both said that delays in promotions are common for researchers, irrespective of caste. But Govardhan Wankhede, a Dalit sociologist and former dean of the School of Education at the Mumbai-based Tata Institute of Social Sciences, believes that Dalits tend to face more delays, something he said he has experienced firsthand. According to Dhar, there’s little data analysis on caste-based discrimination in promotions — a gap, he said, that he hopes future research will address.

As Kale was waiting on his promotion, he was also waiting to get a lab to advance his research on making radiation therapy more effective in cancer treatment. While administrators gave most of his upper-caste peers their own laboratory space, Kale said, he worked out of a small corner office with broken furniture. When a senior professor vacated his lab to move to a bigger one, Kale declared the space his own. The ploy worked. “You have to have decency for some time, but not beyond certain limit. If it is your right, you have to snatch it,” he said. “We cannot wait.”

Over the years, Kale held several positions, including dean of students and head of the equal opportunity office at JNU. He would invite Dalit students from his and nearby villages to stay with him, helping them navigate the admissions process for universities. Kale also became the chairperson of the Indian Institute of Dalit Studies in New Delhi, and served on a government committee on Dalit and Adivasi reservation in universities.

Despite his success, all through his career, Kale said, he has feared just one thing — making mistakes. He and several Dalit researchers described experiencing a constant internal pressure to prove themselves in institutions dominated by upper-caste researchers who think Dalits don’t deserve to be there. “If I do a mistake, it is not my mistake,” said Kale. Instead, he said, it would be labeled “the mistake of the community.”

IN THE LATE 1990s, when Kale became a professor at JNU, he sat on a committee to select junior researchers at the Nuclear Science Center, about a mile away from the university in New Delhi. Among the candidates was a Dalit researcher named Rajendra Sonkawade. “He was the best among the lot,” recalled Kale. Sonkawade got the job.

Like Kale, Sonkawade had grown up in the western state of Maharashtra and planned to become an engineer. After high school, he applied to some engineering colleges but couldn’t score high enough to gain admission. He enrolled instead at Marathwada University, where he excelled in physics.

As Sonkawade worked his way through graduate school, the Dalit movement gained momentum in Indian politics, and the Bahujan Samaj Party, a pro-Dalit political party, rose to power in India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh.


“You have to have decency for some time, but not beyond certain limit. If it is your right, you have to snatch it,” Kale said. “We cannot wait.”

During the same time, though, India witnessed new opposition by upper-caste Hindus against the reservation policies. In 1990, the Indian government announced that it would implement a commission’s recommendation to expand reservation policies to include Other Backward Classes, an official designation for various other marginalized castes. Adding to the existing quotas, the new policy meant that 49.5 percent of seats were now, at least officially, reserved for lower-caste candidates. “Merit in an elitist society is not something inherent,” the commission had argued in its report, “but is the consequence of environmental privileges enjoyed by the members of higher castes.”

That “ignited a firestorm,” Subramanian writes in “The Caste of Merit.” “Upper-caste students took to the streets, staging sit-ins; setting up road blockades; and masquerading as vendors, sweepers, and shoe shiners in a graphic depiction of their future reduction to lower-caste labor.” More than 60 upper-caste students, many of whom said they were protesting the new policy, died by suicide.

The tension was palpable in educational and research institutes. At the Nuclear Science Center — later renamed the Inter-University Accelerator Center, or IUAC — Sonkawade began to study radiation safety. Often, he said, he would hear some of his upper-caste colleagues say that Dalits were incompetent. Frustrated, he waited for the standard new-employee probationary period to end. Then Sonkawade worked with Dalit and Adivasi researchers in the institute to form an association to represent their rights.

“We became more active with our demands,” said Sonkawade, thumping his palm on the table in his office at Shivaji University, in the west Indian city of Kolhapur, where he now teaches physics. On the wall to his right were some photographs, including one of Ambedkar, whom Sonkawade calls his role model.

After forming the association, Sonkawade began to push IUAC to set up a special committee to tackle Dalit and Adivasi issues to ensure implementation of the reservation policy — something required of government-funded institutes, but which the school had not established. His group also asked for the representation of marginalized communities in the governing boards of the institute.

Described by Kale as “the best among the lot” of junior researcher candidates, Rajendra Sonkawade was hired in the 1990s at what is now called the Inter-University Accelerator Center, where he began advocating for the rights of lower-caste researchers. In his office at Shivaji University, a portrait of Dalit leader Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar hangs on the wall next to an image of Mahatma Gandhi. 

Visual: Ankur Paliwal for Undark

While Kale was tactful in navigating institutional casteism, Sonkawade was more confrontational. His advocacy soon brought him into conflict with the IUAC administration, several of his colleagues said. “He became very unpopular,” Debashish Sen, a scientist at IUAC, recalled. Others felt, Sen said, that Sonkawade was operating out of his own self-interest rather than for the betterment of his community.

In interviews, many of Sonkawade’s colleagues described him as hard working. But, around the mid-2000s, the scores on Sonkawade’s annual performance reports — essential for promotion — began to drop. Sonkawade was overlooking his responsibilities in the lab, said Devesh Kumar Avasthi, a senior scientist who was one of the evaluators of Sonkawade’s performance. But Satya Pal Lochab, who oversaw the lab in which Sonkawade worked and also participated in the evaluations, said that his “anti-establishment activities” affected his scores. Eventually, the lagging scores delayed a promotion.

Dinakar Kanjilal and Amit Roy, both former directors of IUAC, said the delay in promotion had nothing to do with caste. In national labs, “I don’t see anybody bother about caste,” said Kanjilal, who is upper-caste. “They see your contribution.”

Feeling harassed, Sonkawade left and joined Shivaji University. Even at his new post, he kept pushing IUAC to recognize that it had owed him a promotion. Although IUAC eventually yielded — and Sonkawade said he won partial backpay. By that point, he said, the promotion “wasn’t of any use” for his career. “The whole system was against me,” he said. “I paid the price for speaking up.” An IUAC employee who used to field discrimination complaints confirmed seeing many cases where Dalits received performance review scores just a few decimal points below the requirement for promotion. The person requested anonymity, fearing reprisal from the institute.

Between 2018 and 2020, Sonkawade was invited to interview for the position of vice chancellor at three universities in Maharashtra, and for the director’s position at IUAC. In at least three of those four cases, an upper-caste person was chosen.

After his promotion was delayed due to lower scores on his annual performance reports, Sonkawade joined Shivaji University, where he teaches physics today. A senior scientist who participated in the evaluations said that Sonkawade’s “anti-establishment activities” affected his scores. 

Visual: Ankur Paliwal for Undark

EVEN AS DALIT researchers like Sonkawade and Kale recount fighting against casteism, many upper-caste researchers describe themselves as caste-blind, or beyond caste — a phenomenon, critics say, that has made it more difficult to address ongoing disparities in top scientific institutions.

In 2012, social anthropologist Renny Thomas joined a chemistry laboratory at the Indian Institute of Sciences to study caste dynamics at the institute, arguably India’s most elite science university. That year, he interviewed 80 researchers, and later observed a cultural festival celebrated at the institute. Again and again, Thomas found, Brahmin researchers denied that caste existed in their lives or on the campus. “Caste!?? Oh, Please! I have nothing to do with caste,” one molecular biologist from a Brahmin family told Thomas, according to a paper he published last year. “It never registered in my mind.”

Such claims aren’t limited to academic science. In a 2013 paper, University of Delhi sociologist Satish Deshpande argued that for many upper-caste Indians, caste is “a ladder that can now be safely kicked away,” but only after they convert those high-caste privileges into other forms of status, such as “property, higher educational credentials, and strongholds in lucrative professions.” Many Dalits, Kale said, would also like to forget their caste. But upper-caste people, he added, “don’t let us.”

“The whole system was against me,” Sonkawade said. “I paid the price for speaking up.”

Interviews with young Dalit scientists, along with a growing body of academic work, detail the obstacles Dalits still face on their path through scientific training. Those barriers begin early: Just getting into science and engineering education has been a challenging and uncommon choice for Dalit students in the first place, according to Wankhede, the educational sociologist. “Science education is very expensive. Highly inaccessible,” he said. Students pay higher tuition rates for science courses than in other areas, because they are required to take additional classes to do experiments. And to keep up with their coursework, science students often pay for instruction in pricey private academies called coaching institutes, something many Dalit families cannot afford.

For those Dalits who make it into elite scientific institutes, cultural barriers remind them of the caste divide. During his time at IISc, Thomas found that his lower-caste and Dalit sources identified reflections of upper caste culture throughout the institute. Thomas focused on the Carnatic music concerts that Brahmin students organized. Traditionally, Carnatic music, a type of classical music, has long been the domain of Brahmins in southern India. In one instance at IISc, after the singer finished her song, the Brahmin audience continued singing, showing their familiarity with the art form, writes Thomas. But such events alienated researchers who were not Brahmin. One saw Carnatic music as a “symbol of domination” and said he preferred “folk songs and songs of resistance by Dalit reformers.”

“The mindset remains extraordinarily Brahminical in these elite institutions,” said Abha Sur, a historian of science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has written about caste and gender in Indian science. That mindset, she added, tacitly aligns itself with caste hierarchy: “There is implicit devaluation of people that continuously erodes their sense of self.”

In a predominantly Dalit neighborhood of Mumbai, people gather around a statue of Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar to read their newspapers. Ambedkar, a Dalit leader who founded a group of colleges, is sometimes compared to Martin Luther King Jr. To many, the casteism Ambedkar fought against still exists today. 

Visual: Ankur Paliwal for Undark

Undark spoke with eight early-career Dalit science researchers who declined to be identified, fearing retaliation from their institutions or harm to their careers. Most described receiving humiliating reminders about using reservation quotas from upper-caste students and teachers, which implied they weren’t there on their own merit. Many also said their institutes make no effort to create awareness about casteism, and just overlook it. “It seems that the untouchability still exists, but in a different form,” said one student, who’s pursuing a Ph.D. in engineering at IISc.

These tensions sometimes bubble into the public eye. In 2007, for example, a government committee found widespread discrimination and harassment against Dalit and Adivasi students at the All India Institute of Medical Science in New Delhi. The humiliation and abuse by upper-caste students was so bad, the committee reported, that Dalit and Adivasi students had moved to the two top floors of their hostels, seeking safety together.

In 2016, Rohith Vemula, a Dalit Ph.D. researcher at Hyderabad University, died by suicide. The press reported that discrimination at the university had contributed to Vemula’s death. His loss sparked outrage on several campuses across India and led to the formation of more student organizations like Ambedkar Periyar Study Circle, which offer support to Dalit and other oppressed castes.

In a copy of one 2019 discrimination complaint leaked to Undark, a Dalit Ph.D. student at IISc describes experiencing several instances of caste discrimination. In one incident detailed in the report, the student’s supervisor didn’t let him enter a lab where cells are grown in a carefully controlled environment, saying he was “not clean.” Later, the supervisor justified his actions by saying that the student sometimes scratched his skin. The report alleges that the student’s supervisors also kept delaying a critical exam required within two years of starting a Ph.D., saying the student had not gathered enough data. But, the student said in the complaint, other students from the same lab had taken the exam with far less data. The student asked for a transfer to another lab, where he passed the exam and transitioned to a senior fellow position.


“It seems that the untouchability still exists, but in a different form,” said one IISc student.

Such formal complaints may be relatively rare. Akshay Sawant, an upper-caste member of Ambedkar Periyar Phule Study Circle, a student organization at IIT Bombay, said that discrimination cases remain underreported because students fear retaliation from their upper-caste supervisors. The special Dalit and Adivasi affairs committee at IIT Bombay received only one complaint between 2019 and 2020, which, as of May, was still being investigated. IISc received three complaints in 2020, of which two, as of late April, were unresolved.

Caste divisions occasionally spill over into scientific communities beyond India’s borders. Since the mid-1960s, for example, United States policies designed to incentivize the immigration of skilled STEM professionals have led hundreds of thousands of scientists and engineers — most of them upper-caste — to move from India to the U.S. In June 2020, California state regulators sued the technology company Cisco Systems, alleging that two upper-caste supervisors had harassed and discriminated against a Dalit employee. According to the complaint, one of the supervisors had disclosed the engineer’s caste to colleagues, telling them he had attended an IIT in India under the country’s reservation policy. The complaint also states the engineer was subjected to a hostile work environment and pay discrimination based on his caste. (The hearings have been postponed until September of this year.) ­­­

A 2016 survey by Equality Labs, a progressive Dalit civil rights organization, found that 67 percent of Dalits in the Indian diaspora in the U.S. reported facing caste-based harassment and discrimination in the workplace. In Silicon Valley, most of the Indians come from institutions “where caste discrimination is rampant,” Subramanian wrote in an email to Undark. “Therefore, the entry of caste discrimination into the American tech sector is not in the least bit surprising.”

WHEN KALE entered graduate school in the 1970s, there were no Dalit role models for him in science. Fifty years later, many early-career Dalit researchers say the same.

One early-career Dalit scientist willing to speak openly about her experiences is Shalini Mahadev, a researcher pursuing a doctorate in neural and cognitive sciences at the University of Hyderabad, one of India’s top-ranked universities. In an interview, Mahadev said she badly wants to see more senior scientists from her community, and to have teachers who can relate to the life experiences of students like her. “Having them in your classroom, in your research, in your lab is something else, because you are coming with so many anxieties, you know,” she said. “And you are feeling inefficient all the time.”

Mahadev is in her late 30s and grew up in Hyderabad. Her father, who was part of the first generation in his family to go to school, had received an engineering diploma — a specialized course shorter than an undergraduate degree — in order to get a job quickly. Her mother discontinued her studies after marrying young. The family had modest resources, and Mahadev remembers feeling intense pressure to study and perform. Her father told her that he has always lived with a gnawing feeling that he couldn’t study more, and that he didn’t want her to feel the same way, recalled Mahadev.

Early-career Dalit researcher Shalini Mahadev says she badly wants to see more senior scientists from her community.
Visual: Courtesy of Shalini Mahadev

After high school, Mahadev took a break to prepare for national examinations to become a doctor. Like many students in India, she turned to coaching institutes that help students prepare for the exam. The atmosphere in these institutes is extremely competitive. On her first day of classes, she said, teachers would ask Dalit students to stand up, while upper-caste students sat in their chairs. The teachers would tell the Dalit students that, even if they didn’t study hard or get great marks, they were likely to get admission in medical colleges because of reservation policies — unlike the upper-caste students who needed to study harder.

Standing in the class, Mahadev could feel the eyes of her upper-caste classmates on her. Teachers “are already making people hate me,” she remembers thinking. As demeaning incidents piled up, Mahadev said, she began avoiding going to the institute. Eventually, she decided she didn’t want to become a doctor. Instead, she chose to study biology, because she liked learning about genes. Later, she became fascinated with neurons. Today, she studies the connection between neurons and the sense of hearing in grasshoppers.

Reminders of caste shadowed her. On campus, she said, upper-caste people would assert their status in subtle ways — through what they wore, how they talked, even how they walked. At one point, when Mahadev was a junior research fellow, another fellow told her that science is not for poor people, she recalled. That broke Mahadev’s heart, because it also seemed true to her. In her view, historically, “science was only done by rich people,” she said — people who have the time and resources to pursue it. And for Mahadev, time often seemed scarce: Living in a neighborhood on the outskirts of Hyderabad, she spent four to six hours each day commuting via bus between her house and the university, until she could finally get a place in the university hostel.

Many elite institutes have resisted change. In April 2020, following growing criticism in Indian media about the low representation of marginalized communities at IITs, India’s Department of Higher Education formed a committee to suggest ways to implement the reservation policy. The committee, in its report, said that because few students from the “reserved category” receive Ph.D.s, few are available to be hired as teachers or researchers. The committee also recommended that IITs, as “institutes of national importance,” should be exempted from following the reservation policy in hiring teachers.


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