At Cisco’s San Jose headquarters, Doe worked with a team of entirely Indian employees…Except for Doe, the entire team are also from the high castes in India. As beneficiaries of the caste system, Doe’s higher caste supervisors and co-workers imported the discriminatory system’s practices into their team and Cisco’s workplace,” read the California state’s complaint in the now famed Cisco case.
Such a disturbing story on its face — a story that had become the archetypal rejoinder to the casteist claim that “caste goes wherever Hindus go” and casteist trope of the evil, oppressive Hindu Brahmin.
Cisco headlines, followed by an unprecedented raid on the BAPS temple in New Jersey have been unquestioningly quoted ad nauseam as evidence to justify adding caste to anti-discrimination policies at universities, Seattle, and now, potentially, California state law.
But what if I told you that the Cisco caste story was never true?
What if I told you that case records indicate that a Dalit candidate was offered every leadership position on this Cisco team?
Also Read: Georgia, California, Seattle—Any criticism of caste in America is being fought as Hinduphobia
Full of lies
The Cisco story that was published world over was full of lies. And perhaps even more disturbing is that the California state agency pursuing its first-ever case of alleged caste discrimination in the United States knew as much, but chose to push its case regardless.
So, after nearly three years, on 10 April 2023 when the California Civil Rights Department voluntarily dismissed its case in Superior Court against Cisco Systems engineers Sundar Iyer and Ramana Kompella, those of us who have been watching the case closely weren’t at all surprised.
After enduring a nightmare of unending investigations, a brutal online witch hunt, and a presumption of guilt in the media after the CRD ruined their reputations and lives, these two engineers have been vindicated, but Cisco itself is not.
A mediation conference between the company and the CRD is set for 2 May, and Cisco has promised a rigorous defence, rejecting the claims of discrimination.
So why was the case dropped now?
Filed in June 2020, the CRD simultaneously employed a media publicity blitz — an unusual tactic for a state agency — which resulted in thousands of global headlines making false claims about Sundar Iyer and Ramana Kompella, false claims about the Hindu religion and ugly, xenophobic depictions of people of Indian origin.
It went so far as seeking a legal conclusion that caste and a caste system are inherent to Hindu teachings and practice, what Hindu Americans believe, and made assumptions about the caste identities of all the Indians working at Cisco by labelling them all “upper caste” — essentially labelling us with castes and as casteists. The state made a number of wild and unsubstantiated claims, including asserting that Indian Americans assaulted thousands of Dalits in America or blanket statements like, “Anecdotal evidence also indicates that Dalit Indians in the United States, once their caste is revealed, have been raped, attacked, and spat upon because of their caste”.
It was so egregious, that the Hindu American Foundation filed two civil rights claims against the CRD that remain active at this time.
The case always rested on shaky legal and factual grounds. Even reporters ran with the ‘facts’ alleged by the state. HAF guided many reporters to court records showing that the state was ignoring publicly available evidence that refuted their story.
What is the true story?
Also Read: What dominant Hindus in US get wrong about Seattle caste ban
False narratives
According to court records, in late December Iyer and Kompella threatened to file a motion for sanctions. A sanctions motion is a plea to the court to impose penalties on the opposing counsel for engaging in unethical conduct, such as suppressing or fabricating evidence or, abuse of the legal process, and pursuing cases with no legal or factual basis.
Let’s start with Sundar Iyer, who the State of California claimed was a “Hindu” and “Brahmin” — an assertion to fit its case neatly into the state’s false narrative of Indians abiding by an oppressive, pyramidal structure of abuse.
According to Iyer’s declaration made under oath, he’s an atheist, a belief system he publicly expressed over 20 years ago. He opposed “casteism” — even wrote a short story about his opposition. Iyer also informed the state that a few members of his own extended family are married to Dalits. The state knew all of this, yet went ahead and assigned him a religion, in deliberate violation of the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of religion, and assigned him a caste to build its case.
The CRD also painted an unsettling picture — one that revealed CRD staff’s xenophobia more than the actual reality — of John Doe being a lone Dalit in a team of “upper caste” Indians, all of whom were ostensibly beneficiaries of an imagined pan-Indian system of oppressive hierarchy, and who brought their horrible practices with them.
Aside from the deeply offensive and discriminatory act of attribution of wrongdoing solely on the basis of their being Indian or from presumed social backgrounds (the state did not interview any of the other team members), the state’s stance that it was an all “upper caste” team who relegated Doe to the lowest status was also a lie.
John Doe was not the only Dalit on the team. The team wasn’t all Indian — something that can be discovered by a simple Google search. The team was not all “upper caste”. And, as for hierarchy, Doe was not at the bottom but held one of the highest levels of seniority — the same as Kompella.
In fact, another self-identified Dalit was a leader on the team. He held one of the only three leadership positions in the department. Iyer had hired, mentored and championed this individual’s career, and at one point, also offered him the other two leadership positions. Two of these offers were made well before Doe filed any complaints of purported discrimination.
The state also alleged that Doe received fewer opportunities, less pay, and other inferior terms and conditions of employment because he held the “lowest status” on the team because of his caste.
In fact, Iyer actively recruited Doe. They were classmates at the Indian Institute of Technology more than 20 years ago. And based on this long-standing relationship, Iyer hired Doe to join him as a Principal Engineer at Cisco to work on a high-profile project and gave him several opportunities for career advancement.
The truth is Doe was one of the highest compensated employees in the group and a millionaire, thanks to Iyer’s generosity. Iyer gave away millions of dollars of stock grants — the entirety of his own equity as CEO of the project — in order to build and incentivise his team, a team Doe was a part of.
Ramana Kompella’s story is also disturbing. His grave sin: being of Indian origin and Hindu.
According to Kompella’s declaration, also made under oath, Doe “had little interest in timely completing tasks, choosing instead to be insubordinate, confrontational, and create [a] disruptive working environment. In one such instance, a critical release was delayed because Doe neglected to address [a] software bug for which he was responsible.”
Because of these workplace performance concerns, Kompella’s white American supervisor, not Kompella himself, came up with the idea of Doe submitting weekly reports where he would track his progress on tasks to avoid missing important project deadlines.
Surely, the state would have spoken to someone on the team during its years-long investigation to better distinguish between performance issues and discriminatory conduct? And why didn’t the state bother to actually talk to the other Dalit leader on the team?
The state’s handling of these two individuals is a shocking foretelling of how ideological motivations and negative stereotypes can create a perfect storm for state abuse and personal ruin.
And in a sick twist of irony, the state agency tasked with enforcing California’s non-discrimination laws diverged in how it pursued claims and essentially discriminated against and harassed two individuals because of their Indian origin and their presumed Hindu identity and Brahmin ancestry. The CRD made up ugly and damaging claims to pursue a discrimination claim that never happened.
Suhag A. Shukla is the co-founder and executive director of the Hindu American Foundation. She tweets @SuhagAShukla. Views are personal.
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)