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HomeOpinionSeattle, California caste ban votes same as BJP’s Project Pasmanda. For US...

Seattle, California caste ban votes same as BJP’s Project Pasmanda. For US ‘model minority’

'We’ve hit a nerve and exposed a form of discrimination many never even knew existed,' said Aisha Wahab, Democratic Party leader, who proposed the legislation.

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First, the Seattle City Hall’s 6-1 vote to ban caste discrimination two months ago, and now, the California Senate Judiciary Committee’s vote in favour of banning caste-based prejudice in its overall anti-discrimination laws. It has crossed the first legislative hurdle and has now sent the legislation to the next committee for consideration.

It’s curious why White-majority America is suddenly waking up and listening to the calls of Indian-origin anti-caste groups. Could it be that they too are looking to identify the Pasmandas among its Indian-origin community, the so-called ‘model minority’? This community’s numbers grew by 150 per cent between 2000 and 2018, making it the second-largest immigrant group in America.

“We’ve hit a nerve and exposed a form of discrimination many never even knew existed,” said Aisha Wahab, Democratic Party leader, who proposed the legislation. She had earlier told the senate committee members that she even received death threats for her move.

In my last article, I wrote that these moves weren’t going to stop at Seattle, and that it would spread to other American states. I was right. And it so happens that the most successful, prominent, and rich Indians live in California, Seattle, and New York — true-blue Democratic states bordering on the Left. I had said that it’s part of the larger American culture wars and the growing call to study systemic prejudices and critical race theories. Wahab now calls it “generational trauma”.

All that is true. Just like the Pasmanda prejudice among Indian Muslims is also true. There is politics in everything. And in politics, timing is everything.


Also read: BJP Pasmanda outreach biggest disruption since Mandal. Desire for quota rising among Muslims


BJP’s Project Pasmanda

In India, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Pasmanda outreach began in 2022. PM Narendra Modi and other BJP leaders have sought to isolate and signal the Pasmanda communities. And this has caused quite a bit of a stir among political observers and Ashraaf Muslim intellectuals as well. They see it as part of the BJP’s cynical divide-and-rule politics — Unite the Hindus and divide the Muslims.

It seeks to split the image of a monolith Muslim minority community in India by pointing out that there are divisions within. It is a political, electoral, and social project. It robs Muslims of a unified voice and blunts the anti-Hindutva narrative that the Ashraaf community have been successfully building in India and around the world.

Similarly, the Indian community in the United States have been growing steadily in recent decades — in numbers, jobs, wealth, and political voice. Indian-origin people have grown to over 4 million, and the community is now looking more and more diverse compared to two decades ago. Unlike other foreign-born immigrants, the Indian community tends to be predominantly middle-class and prosperous and occupy high-skilled jobs.

The first and the second generations of Indian-origin people tended to be Democratic Party supporters. That is consistent with most first-generation immigrants’ voting patterns in that country. But in recent years, there has been a slow optical shift — though not an electoral one yet — among the Indian community. More and more were drawn to former US President Donald Trump as he aligned closely with PM Modi and the BJP here.

The huge public spectacles involving Trump and Modi in Howdy Modi in Texas and Namaste Trump in Gujarat reflected something that was going beyond the platitudes of India-US ‘strategic alliance’ and ‘defining partnership of the 21st century’ template. This personal bonhomie between the two signalled a political leaning as well – one of the reasons that the Democrats pulled Vice President Kamala Harris out of their hat to emphatically appeal to the Indian-origin voters and the African-American community.

Amid this nascent political churn in the US comes this direct appeal to the marginalised among its Hindu minorities – the exact same appeal that Modi made in his address to the BJP national executive meeting in January. It’s still early churn for this politics. In 2020, an important study concluded that the Indian-Americans still ‘remain solidly with the Democratic Party’.

There is no survey yet to show the political preferences of American Hindus along caste lines. Perhaps in the years to come, it will be commissioned – given the landmark developments in Seattle and California.


Also read: Georgia, California, Seattle—Any criticism of caste in America is being fought as Hinduphobia


Two ends of a spectrum

Earlier this month, Hindu Americans scored a big victory in the Georgia Assembly when it passed the first-ever resolution against Hinduphobia, citing documented evidence of hate crimes against Hindus in America over decades.

Truly, India’s political schisms have reached American shores. In the run-up to the 2024 Lok Sabha election, the BJP and the forces of ‘opposition unity’ are trying to draw a line in the sand between Mandal and Kamandal – all over again by pitting Bihar CM Nitish Kumar’s caste census against Hindutva.

Georgia and California represent roughly two ends of this Indian political spectrum in the United States. In this, what the American Hindus and Pasmandas will do in the coming months and years will be a real strategic alliance between the world’s largest and oldest democracies.

Rama Lakshmi is Opinion and Ground Reports Editor at ThePrint. Views are personal.

(Edited by Humra Laeeq)

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