Marxist firebrand and outgoing Seattle City Council member, Kshama Sawant, pushing through a bill adding the word “caste” to the city’s non-discrimination statute in front of hundreds of South Asians protesting for and against the bill, it was not the first time the city was roiled over caste.
A century ago the Puget Sound American, a local Seattle area daily, published a xenophobic diatribe over a small number of Indian migrants residing in the area.
“Have we a dusky peril,” the paper asked, pointing to the “Hindu caste system” among the reasons why locals should “keep the Hindus out.”
For at least the past century or longer, one of the most persistent stereotypes Indians faced, along with “cows and karma” is “caste”. The wording of Sawant’s bill traffics in those very stereotypes about Hindus and Indians — equating caste with Hinduism — to achieve a political goal.
Ending discrimination wherever it exists is a good and necessary goal. But why do so many Indian Americans like me oppose this bill if we’re against discrimination? If only those who are guilty of discriminating based on caste need to worry, why are we concerned?
These questions often come from Indian commentators, bringing to mind the old proverb about the frog in the well who knows nothing of the sea. They seem unaware not only of the limitations of their own experiences living as Indians in India, but also the vastly different realities of Indian Americans living in America with many now several generations removed from India.
Also Read: More Dalit students going to Oxfords, Harvards. West now gets the caste divide
Opposed to policies that single out a community
The reason we oppose Seattle’s “caste” bill is because we’re opposed to any policy that singles out a particular community as inherently bigoted and deserving of special policing. We’re opposed to any policy that is impossible to implement and enforce without singling out and harming Indians and South Asians in the US. And we’re opposed to any policy that contravenes the US Constitution.
Discrimination harms, and that’s why broad and generally applicable categories are the most powerful tool to protect against it. Seattle’s city ordinances already proscribe discrimination based on national origin, religion and ancestry — none of which single out any one community or presume any particular perpetrator and victim. Perversely, Sawant’s bill violates the very non-discrimination policies it’s amending by adding a category that demonises and then singles out, for disparate treatment, members of a community based on their national origin, religion or ancestry.
Over time, there is a real fear that Sawant’s bill may dissuade the hiring of South Asians altogether—and, well, Dilip Mandal, an Indian columnist who calls himself a “professor in the Center of Brahmin Studies”, has admitted that that’s exactly what he seeks. He also says that “identifying someone from one’s own caste group is like knowing the back of their own hand.” He quotes a survey by the Pew Research Center to make his point.
But Mandal seems to disregard that Pew surveyed only Indians in India, not Seattle. Or that the Carnegie Endowment survey, the only large-scale survey focused on Indian Americans completed to date, found that only a third of Hindu Americans born in the United States identify with any caste at all.
But on one point the Pew and Carnegie surveys agree: 82 per cent of all Indians (70 per cent of whom are designated as SC/ST/OBC) and 95 per cent of all Indian Americans have never personally faced caste discrimination, demolishing any claims of rampant caste discrimination in either country.
Also Read: India is Hindu, Hindus are India — Why Indian Americans think the way they do
A sweeping denial of equal protection
ThePrint’s Opinion and Features editor Rama Lakshmi, echoes Sawant’s presumption about Hindu Americans. She is unsparing even of Hindu Americans that deny that they discriminate based on caste. Denying any recognition of caste as a Hindu is enough, apparently, to be “construed as racism.” Not only are Hindu Americans trapped in caste, Lakshmi, argues that while many Indian immigrants celebrate “merit” as opening their path to the US, the “tone-deaf word ‘merit’ itself is a product of social filtering and discrimination processes”. She celebrates “caste” consciousness in city and university policies institutionalising caste in America because she hopes it will allow Dalits, along with “privileged caste” tech workers to “benefit from the affirmative action diversity pie when it comes to landing American jobs.”
Lakshmi is entirely off the mark in her assertion that Indian Americans are benefiting from diversity quotas in the U.S. today — especially in the tech sector or education. Other than the fact that quotas have been ruled as an unconstitutional denial of equal protection by numerous American courts, including the US Supreme Court, there’s also a landmark lawsuit pending before the US Supreme Court arguing the counterfactual: that Indians and other Asians are openly discriminated against in college admission policies to actively reduce their populations at prestigious universities because they exemplify too much merit (high GPAs, test scores and other achievements).
One of the first guarantees enshrined in the US Constitution is equal protection under the law. This means laws must apply equally to all people regardless of background. In letter and intent, however, Sawant made clear she is creating a policy specifically applicable only to Seattle South Asians who are presumed to be inherently bigoted, while every other racial or ethnic group gets the benefit of the doubt.
In addition to being concerned with this sweeping denial of equal protection, our concerns are also about implementation.
Also Read: Hindu-Americans are in denial about caste. It’s been in religious scriptures for long
Vegetarian diet, celebration of Holi as caste markers
In India, caste identities are local, and studies show that status can differ for the same communities living in different locations. As one speaker opposing the caste policy said in Seattle, a prominent Indian American caste activist who self-identifies as a Dalit carries the surname of “Soundararajan” which is often associated with castes ascribed “dominant” status in Tamil Nadu. How, possibly, would an Indian American, originally from, say, Kanpur, or an Indian American who’s grandparents moved to the US in the 1960s discern this activist’s caste and supposed status? Given such complexities, will South Asians be singled out and forced to check boxes and self-declare a caste for administrative expediency, many have asked.
Even worse, since caste cannot be distinguished by name, colour or physical markers, activists prior to and at the Seattle city council hearing took to using a preference for a vegetarian diet, not eating out at restaurants or celebrating Holi as indicators of caste bias. Knowing the general unfamiliarity most Americans have about Indians, it’s safe to assume that Seattle bureaucrats adjudicating caste complaints will be guided by the false and negative stereotypes Sawant’s bill and its champions foreground. And so, many of us now worry about the spectre that the burden of enforcing and adjudicating “caste discrimination” complaints creates an uncertain maze for human resources departments at major tech companies in Seattle where many South Asians are employed.
While Sawant and her allies celebrate what they claim is a “historic win” for “the oppressed”, what they seem to completely miss is that they’ve actually scored a self-goal — and the losers are all Indians and South Asians.
While India may have “schedules”, “caste certificates” and “atrocity laws” which designate groups of people into those who are entitled to special programs and protections and those who aren’t, American law does not. So just as a self-declared Dalit individual could file a complaint of workplace discrimination based on caste, a self-declared “general category” person could just as easily file a claim against a Dalit individual in the office who castigates her vegetarianism or celebration of Holi and excludes her from a group assignment. Indeed, a so-called “Brahmin” staffer working in Sawant’s Seattle office could file a discrimination complaint insisting that Sawant has made the office a hostile environment with her constant demonisation of “Brahmanical tyranny.” All of this makes all South Asians of any and every caste background appear to be both a nuisance and a liability.
That Sawant and her ideological allies are wrong in conflating the social evil of caste discrimination with the Hindu tradition that insists on oneness of all existence is obvious, and that the system of categorising castes as ‘depressed’ or ‘general’ was instituted under colonial British censuses, is indisputable.
So why would Sawant propose a bill specifically targeting her own South Asian community when categories like ethnicity or ancestry, which would include the common understanding of ‘caste’, are already operational?
The answer may lie in Sawant’s political ideology and pervasive Hinduphobic rhetoric that adhering to Hindu traditions is to perpetuate bigotry through caste.
Take for example that in introducing the caste bill, Sawant described caste as a system of oppression, and added, “As a socialist, as Marxist, we are opposed to all oppression…we believe that can happen only through actually ending capitalism itself and ushering in a socialist system.”
Or that a Harvard academic, Suraj Yengde, who is a prominent supporter of Sawant’s resolution, openly displays anti-Hindu hatred, he has said that “a self-respecting human will relinquish Hindu identity” or that “Hinduism is exploitation and murder of Dalits everywhere”.
A blinkered Indian intelligentsia exporting their home-grown caste faultlines do us in the diaspora no favours at all.
Seattle papers may not be warning of a “dusky peril” to keep “the Hindus out” in 2023, but peril lurks for Hindus and Indians in Seattle nonetheless.
Suhag A. Shukla is the co-founder and executive director of the Hindu American Foundation. She tweets @SuhagAShukla. Views are personal.
Rama Lakshmi’s response:
I did not use the word ‘quotas’ at all in my article on the Seattle caste ban. It’s because I know that quotas are outlawed in the US. Having studied and worked in the US, I’m aware of the diversity requirements and compliance of employers.
Views are personal
ThePrint closes the discussion here.
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)