Date: 25/02/2023

Relevance: GS-1: Social empowerment, communalism, regionalism & secularism.

Key Phrases: Civil Rights Protections, Outcastes or Untouchables, Double Disadvantage of Race and Caste, Caste As An Institution of Discrimination And Bigotry, Caste Discrimination At Workplace, Human Trafficking and Wage Law Violations

Why in News?

• The recent move by the Seattle City Council to recognise and ban caste discrimination has divided Indians in the US who argue that such legislation denigrates a specific community.

Key Highlights about the legislation:

• The City Council of Seattle has become the first to recognise and ban caste based discrimination in the US.
• The legislation will prohibit businesses from discriminating based on caste with respect to hiring, tenure, promotion, workplace conditions, or wages.
• It will ban discrimination based on caste in places of public accommodation, such as hotels, public transportation, public restrooms, or retail establishments.
• The law will also prohibit housing discrimination based on caste in rental housing leases, property sales, and mortgage loans.
• It recognises caste as a Hindu practice that has spread to other religions as well.
• The ordinance draws on past cases, several activist interventions and scholarship to recognise the double disadvantage of race and caste that the caste-oppressed may face.
• The legislation is an important and pioneering intervention in the western world as it makes it possible now to legally protest caste discrimination in Seattle and hopefully, paves the way to do so in other US states in the future.

Caste As An Institution Of Discrimination And Bigotry:

• Jati or caste is a dynamic social form that has changed over the years and even collapsed in certain contexts.
• Despite these changes, the brutality of caste discrimination and exclusion persists and is faced the most by “outcastes” or “untouchables”.
• Caste has bound Indian civilisation for ages and, simultaneously, produced a stable and hierarchised society that cherishes inequality.
• It results in subtle and sophisticated kinds of discrimination and favouritism in modern society.
• They do not just exist in rural areas but also in metropolitan and even could be seen in the most cosmopolitan settings.

Need For The Legislation:

• The law is needed as caste is not included under the current civil rights protections in the US.
• All of the inequalities associated with caste status have become embedded in all of the major South Asian American institutions and they extend into mainstream American institutions which have significant South Asian immigrant populations.
• The US is the second most popular destination for Indians living abroad, according to the Migration Policy Institute, which estimates the US diaspora grew from about 206,000 in 1980 to about 2.7 million in 2021.
• Among other things, two out of three Dalits reported being treated unfairly in their workplace and one in three Dalits reported discrimination during their education.

Reasons For Caste Entering Into Public Consciousness Of America:

• Caste Discrimination at workplace: Computer giant Cisco Systems Inc., discriminated against an Indian-American employee and permitted caste-based harassment. This episode, which made news across the US, was among the first significant examples of caste discrimination to be documented in the ostensibly progressive surroundings of Silicon Valley.
• Exposition of discriminatory practices: Journalist Isabel Wilkerson examined numerous forms of discrimination as well as underlying causes for each one in her book, The Roots of Human Discontents" during the peak of the pandemic. Many Americans were first exposed to the otherwise foreign concept of caste through her exposition of it using the language of race and vice versa.
• Human trafficking and wage law violations: In 2021, the Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha or BAPS was accused of human trafficking of dalit workers and wage law violations, in regard to the construction of the Swaminarayan Temple in New Jersey.

Reasons For Opposition Against The Legislation:

• Principle opposition to the resolution has come from Hindu organisations across the US who see this move as something that could lead to further “anti-Hindu discrimination and may dissuade employers from hiring South Asians”.
• The Hindu American Foundation (HAF) had even filed an intervention arguing that caste had “nothing to do with Hinduism”.
• Another criticism of the move has been regarding that a due research has not been done before passing the law.

Source: The Indian Express

Mains Question:

Q. The caste system in India is assuming new identities in recent years. In this light discuss the importance and challenges posed by the caste system. (250 Words).