Seattle Metropolis Councilmember Kshama Sawant speaks throughout an inauguration ceremony for metropolis officers Monday, Jan. 6, 2014, in Seattle. Considered one of Ms. Sawant’s earliest reminiscences of the caste system was listening to her grandfather- a person she “in any other case cherished very a lot” – utter a slur to summon their lower-caste maid. Now an elected official in a metropolis hundreds of miles from India, she has proposed an ordinance so as to add caste to Seattle’s anti-discrimination legal guidelines.
| Picture Credit score: AP

A decision moved by an upper-caste Hindu official within the Seattle Metropolis Council to usher in an ordinance banning caste-based discrimination within the metropolis has generated intense debates amongst members of the Indian-American group.

The Seattle Metropolis Council is scheduled to vote on the decision moved by Council member Kshama Sawant at its assembly on Tuesday. If voted, Seattle would turn into the primary American metropolis to particularly outlaw caste discrimination.

The decision proposing an ordinance so as to add caste to Seattle’s anti-discrimination legal guidelines has divided the small however influential South Asian group.

Proponents of the transfer, which is the primary of its type in a U.S. metropolis council, have hailed it as an necessary step in direction of selling social justice and equality.

However, an equally giant variety of individuals have alleged that it is a transfer to focus on the bigger South Asian Diaspora, notably Indian Individuals.

“We’ve to be clear, whereas the price of discrimination towards oppression doesn’t present up in the US, in each kind that it reveals up in South Asia, the discrimination may be very actual out right here,” stated Ms. Sawant, who’s an upper-caste Hindu.

Many Indian-Individuals worry that codifying caste in public coverage will additional gas situations of Hinduphobia within the U.S.

Over the past three years, ten Hindu temples and 5 statues, together with these of Mahatma Gandhi and Maratha emperor Shivaji, have been vandalised throughout the U.S. as an intimidation tactic towards the Hindu group.

Indian Individuals are the second-largest immigrant group within the U.S. Based on knowledge from the 2018 American Group Survey (ACS), which is performed by the U.S. Census Bureau, there are 4.2 million individuals of Indian origin residing in the US.

The Seattle metropolis ordinance is much like the decision that was tried by Equality Labs within the Santa Clara Human Rights Fee in 2021. The decision failed after listening to objections from the Indian-American diaspora within the Bay Space.

The Seattle metropolis ordinance makes use of the Equality Lab’s caste survey which associates the social sick to be “established in Hinduism”. Whereas the ordinance itself doesn’t point out the phrase Hindu, the reference to the caste survey has turn into some extent of competition.

Ambedkar Phule Community of American Dalits and Bahujans, in an announcement, stated that the inclusion of “caste” as a particular protected class would unfairly single out and goal all individuals of South Asian descent and origin and that included Dalits and Bahujan Samaj.

“If handed, this regulation will make Seattle employers much less more likely to rent South Asians as a complete, which may have unintended penalties of decreasing employment/alternatives of all South Asians together with us Dalits/ Bahujans,” it stated.

Equality Lab, which is main the marketing campaign, on Monday urged the Metropolis Council members to vote ‘Sure’ on the decision.

“We’ve identified for a very long time that caste discrimination takes place in US faculties and workplaces throughout the nation, regardless of being a largely hidden difficulty,” it stated.

“Regardless of sounding benign, it advances bigotry towards the South Asian group through the use of racist, colonial tropes of ‘caste’. It’s horrific to see the blatant singling out of a minority group primarily based on nothing however unsubstantiated claims primarily based on defective knowledge from hate teams,” stated Pushpita Prasad, Coalition of Hindus of North America (CoHNA), which has been main a nationwide marketing campaign towards such a decision.

“The proposed ordinance will violate the civil rights of minority group (South Asians) as a result of it (1) singles them out, (2) assumes South Asians have extra discrimination or hierarchy than all different human teams and (3) makes these assumptions on the idea of flawed knowledge from hate teams,” she alleged.

For and towards campaigns have now spilled out within the public. Proponents of the decision have been writing columns and op-eds in varied U.S. newspapers.

Organized by CoHNA, hundreds of emails have been despatched to the town councillors and dozens of South Asians have been referred to as into metropolis conferences to protest and level out the various causes it is a dangerous thought. This features a broad number of people and organisations from all backgrounds.

A various coalition of almost 100 organizations and companies wrote to the Seattle Metropolis Council this week, urging it to vote ‘No’ on the proposed caste ordinance, which they argued is predicated on defective knowledge from hate teams and can violate the civil rights of the South Asian group.

“In impact, the proposed ordinance assumes that a whole group— primarily Hindu Individuals— are responsible of ‘caste’-based discrimination until they’re someway confirmed harmless,” remarked Nikunj Trivedi, president of CoHNA.

“That is un-American and flawed. It additionally smacks of McCarthyism, concentrating on individuals for his or her suspected beliefs,” he stated.

In the meantime, Council member Sawant intensified her marketing campaign forward of the vote.

She wrote a letter to 2 Indian-American lawmakers— Congressman Ro Khanna and Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal – and requested for his or her help.

“As Congressmember and Chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, I hope that your workplace will stand with our motion towards the proper wing,” Ms. Sawant wrote within the letter to Jayapal.

India banned caste discrimination in 1948 and enshrined that coverage within the Structure in 1950.