Certainly one of Kshama Sawant’s earliest reminiscences of the caste system was listening to her grandfather — a person she “in any other case liked very a lot” — utter a slur to summon their lower-caste maid.

The Seattle Metropolis Council member, raised in an upper-caste Hindu Brahmin family in India, was 6 when she requested her grandfather why he used that derogatory phrase when he knew the woman’s title. He responded that his granddaughter “talked an excessive amount of.”

Now 50, and an elected official in a metropolis removed from India, Sawant has proposed an ordinance so as to add caste to Seattle’s anti-discrimination legal guidelines. If her fellow council members approve it Tuesday, Seattle will develop into the primary metropolis in the USA to particularly outlaw caste discrimination.

In India, the origins of the caste system might be traced again 3,000 years as a social hierarchy primarily based on one’s beginning. Whereas the definition of caste has advanced over the centuries, underneath each Muslim and British rule, the struggling of these on the backside of the caste pyramid – often called Dalits, which in Sanskrit means “damaged” — has continued.

In 1948, a yr after independence from British rule, India banned discrimination on the premise of caste, a legislation that turned enshrined within the nation’s structure in 1950. But the undercurrents of caste proceed to swirl in India’s politics, schooling, employment and even in on a regular basis social interactions. Caste-based violence, together with sexual violence towards Dalit girls, remains to be rampant.

The nationwide debate in the USA round caste has been centered within the South Asian group, inflicting deep divisions throughout the diaspora. Dalit activist-led organizations comparable to Oakland, California-based Equality Labs, say caste discrimination is prevalent in diaspora communities, surfacing within the type of social alienation and discrimination in housing, schooling and the tech sector the place South Asians maintain key roles.

The U.S. is the second hottest vacation spot for Indians dwelling overseas, in accordance with the Migration Coverage 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 Individuals Main Collectively experiences that almost 5.4 million South Asians stay within the U.S. — up from the three.5 million counted within the 2010 census. Most hint their roots to Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

There was robust pushback to anti-discrimination legal guidelines and insurance policies that concentrate on caste from teams such because the Hindu American Basis and the Coalition of Hindus of North America. They are saying such laws will damage a group whose members are considered as “individuals of shade” and already face hate and discrimination.

However over the previous decade, Dalit activism has garnered assist from a number of corners of the diaspora, together with from teams like Hindus for Human Rights. The final three years particularly have seen extra individuals establish as Dalits and publicly inform their tales, energizing this motion.

Prem Pariyar, a Dalit Hindu from Nepal, will get emotional as he talks about escaping caste violence in his native village. His household was brutally attacked for taking water from a group faucet, mentioned Pariyar, who’s now a social employee in California and serves on Alameda County’s Human Relations Fee. He moved to the U.S. in 2015, however says he couldn’t escape stereotyping and discrimination due to his caste-identifying final title, whilst he tried to make a brand new removed from his homeland.

Pariyar, motivated by the overt caste discrimination he confronted in his social and educational circles, was a driving drive behind it changing into a protected class within the 23-campus California State College system in January 2022.

“I’m combating so Dalits might be acknowledged as human beings,” he mentioned.

In December 2019, Brandeis College close to Boston turned the primary U.S. school to incorporate caste in its nondiscrimination coverage. Colby School, Brown College and the College of California, Davis, have adopted related measures. Harvard College instituted caste protections for pupil employees in 2021 as a part of its contract with its graduate pupil union.

Laurence Simon, worldwide improvement professor at Brandeis, mentioned a college activity drive made the choice primarily based “on the emotions and fears of scholars from marginalized communities.”

“To us, that was sufficient, despite the fact that we didn’t hear of any critical allegations of caste discrimination,” he mentioned. “Why do we’ve got to attend for there to be a horrendous downside?”

Among the many most hanging findings in a survey of 1,500 South Asians within the U.S. by Fairness Lab: 67% of Dalits who responded reported being handled unfairly at their office due to their caste and 40% of Dalit college students who have been surveyed reported going through discrimination in instructional establishments in comparison with solely 3% of upper-caste respondents. Additionally, 40% of Dalit respondents mentioned they felt unwelcome at their place of worship due to their caste.

Caste must be a protected class underneath the legislation as a result of Dalits and others negatively affected by it wouldn’t have a authorized technique to handle it, mentioned Thenmozhi Soundararajan, founder and govt director of Equality Labs. Soundararajan’s dad and mom, natives of Tamil Nadu in southern India, fled caste oppression within the Nineteen Seventies and immigrated to Los Angeles, the place she was born.

“We South Asians have so many troublesome historic traumas,” she mentioned. “However once we come to this nation, we shove all that underneath the rug and attempt to be a mannequin minority. The shadow of caste remains to be there. It nonetheless destabilizes lives, households and communities.”

The trauma is intergenerational, she mentioned. In her e book “The Trauma of Caste,” Soundararajan writes of being devastated when she discovered that her relations have been thought-about “untouchables” in India. She recounts the damage she felt when a good friend’s mom who was higher caste, gave her a separate plate to eat from after studying about her Dalit id.

“This battle round caste is a battle for our souls,” she mentioned.

The Dalit American group isn’t monolithic on this challenge. Aldrin Deepak, a homosexual, Dalit resident of the San Francisco Bay space, mentioned he has by no means confronted caste discrimination in his 35 years within the U.S. He has embellished deities in native Hindu temples and has an array of group members over to his home for Diwali celebrations.

“Nobody’s requested me about my caste,” he mentioned. “Making a difficulty the place there may be none is just creating extra fractures in our group.”

Nikunj Trivedi, president of the Coalition of Hindus of North America, views the narrative round caste as “utterly twisted.” Caste-based legal guidelines that single out Indian Individuals and Hindu Individuals are unacceptable, he mentioned.

“The understanding of Hinduism is poor on this nation,” Trivedi mentioned. “Many individuals consider caste equals Hinduism, which is solely not true. There may be variety of thought, perception and observe inside Hinduism.”

Trivedi mentioned Seattle’s proposed coverage is harmful as a result of it’s not primarily based on dependable knowledge.

“There’s a heavy reliance on anecdotal experiences,” he mentioned, suggesting it might be troublesome to confirm somebody’s caste. “How can individuals who know little or no or nothing about caste adjudicate points stemming from it?”

Suhag Shukla, govt director of the Hindu American Basis, known as Seattle’s proposed ordinance unconstitutional as a result of “it singles out and targets an ethnic minority and seeks to institutionalize implicit bias towards a group.”

“It sends that message that we’re an inherently bigoted group that have to be monitored,” Shukla mentioned.

Caste is already coated underneath the present set of anti-discrimination legal guidelines, which give protections for race, ethnicity and faith, she mentioned.

Laws pertaining to caste isn’t about focusing on any group, mentioned Nikhil Mandalaparthy, deputy govt director of Hindus for Human Rights. The Washington, D.C.-based group helps the proposed caste ordinance.

“Caste must be a protected class as a result of we would like South Asians to have related entry to alternatives and never face discrimination in workplaces and academic settings,” he mentioned. “Generally, meaning airing the soiled laundry of the group in public to make it recognized that caste-based discrimination isn’t acceptable.”

Council member Sawant mentioned authorized recourse is required as a result of present anti-discrimination legal guidelines usually are not sufficient. Sawant, who’s a socialist, mentioned the ordinance is backed by a number of teams together with Amnesty Worldwide and Alphabet Staff Union that represents employees employed by Google’s dad or mum firm.

Greater than 150,000 South Asians stay in Washington state, with many employed within the tech sector the place Dalit activists say caste-based discrimination has gone unaddressed. The problem was within the highlight in 2020 when California regulators sued Cisco Techniques saying a Dalit Indian engineer confronted caste discrimination on the firm’s Silicon Valley headquarters.

Sawant mentioned the ordinance doesn’t single out one group, however accounts for a way caste discrimination crosses nationwide and spiritual boundaries. A United Nations report in 2016 mentioned a minimum of 250 million individuals worldwide nonetheless face caste discrimination in Asia, Africa, the Center East and Pacific areas, in addition to in numerous diaspora communities. Caste programs are discovered amongst Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, Jains, Muslims and Sikhs.

Among the many diaspora, many Dalits pushing to finish caste discrimination usually are not Hindu. Nor are all of them from India.

D.B. Sagar confronted caste oppression rising up within the Nineties in northern Nepal, not removed from the Buddha’s birthplace. He fled it, emigrating to the U.S. in 2007. Sagar says he nonetheless bears bodily and emotional scars from the oppression. His household was Dalit and practising components of each Hinduism and Buddhism, and felt shunned by each faiths.

“We weren’t allowed to take part in village festivals or enter temples,” he mentioned. “Buddhists didn’t permit anybody from the Dalit group to develop into monks. You may change your faith, however you continue to can not escape your caste id. If changing to a different faith was an answer, individuals can be free from caste discrimination by now.”

In class, Sagar was made to take a seat on a separate bench. He was as soon as caned by the college’s principal for ingesting from a water pot within the classroom that Dalits have been barred from utilizing. They believed his contact would pollute the water.

Sagar mentioned he was shocked to see related attitudes come up in social settings among the many U.S. diaspora. His experiences motivated him to start out the Worldwide Fee for Dalit Rights. In 2014, he organized a march from the White Home to Capitol Hill demanding that caste discrimination be acknowledged underneath the U.S. Civil Rights Act.

His group is presently wanting into about 150 complaints of housing discrimination from Dalit Individuals, he mentioned. In a single case, a Dalit man in Virginia mentioned his landlord rented out a basement, however prevented him from utilizing the kitchen due to his caste.

“Caste is a social justice challenge, interval,” he mentioned.

Like Sagar, Arizona resident Shahira Bangar is Dalit. However she is a practising Sikh and her dad and mom fled caste oppression in Punjab, India. Her dad and mom by no means mentioned caste when she was younger, however she discovered the reality in her teenagers as she attended highschool in Silicon Valley surrounded by high-caste Punjabi buddies who belonged to the upper, land-owning Jat caste.

She felt omitted when her buddies performed “Jat satisfaction” music and when a good friend’s mom used her caste id as a slur.

“I felt this deep unhappiness of not being accepted by my very own group,” Bangar mentioned. “I felt betrayed.”

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