In 2020, the “Cisco case” made headlines for quite some time alleging caste discrimination in the company. It dragged the names of the so-called “upper caste” Sundar Iyer and Ramana Kompella who were sued over discrimination for not selecting a Dalit John Doe for a job opening at Cisco.
Iyer, originally from India and studying in the US, was sued by the Cisco Research Development Foundation (CRD) in June 2020, along with his colleague Ramana Kompella. CRD accused them of discriminating against John Doe, a Dalit, and denying him a leadership role in Iyer’s startup based on his caste. Iyer contested these allegations, asserting that he had hired John Doe and offered top positions to other Dalits.
The CRD’s claims attracted media attention, accompanied by articles from caste activists that harmed their reputations. Iyer and Kompella faced activist propaganda and harassment, including attacks on their last names. Iyer found it ironic that CRD assigned him a Hindu Brahmin caste solely based on his last name, with Equality Labs, CRD’s partner, making controversial comparisons.
CRD faced criticism for profiling and accusing Hindu Americans of crimes against Dalits without evidence, which the judge dismissed. In January 2023, Iyer and others filed a motion to sanction CRD prosecutors for pursuing a baseless case. Although CRD dropped the case against Iyer and Ramana, they continued to sue Cisco. A white paper in April 2023 accused CRD of corrupt behavior, and in July 2023, California for Justice accused CRD of targeting Indian Americans, calling for Governor Newsom’s intervention.
In April 2023, in a significant development, the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) voluntarily dismissed its case against Cisco Systems engineers Sundar Iyer and Ramana Kompella, who were accused of caste discrimination earlier this year. The dismissal followed nearly three years of investigations and public scrutiny that adversely affected the engineers’ reputations. The DFEH’s claims, which included allegations of discrimination against Dalit employees, were based on shaky legal and factual grounds. The agency faced criticism for its media publicity blitz and for making false claims about Hinduism and people of Indian origin. The Hindu American Foundation filed civil rights claims against the DFEH. The case’s dismissal raises questions about the agency’s handling of the matter and its impact on the accused engineers.
Speaking on the That’s So Hindu podcast, Sundar Iyer recounted what exactly happened.
In the 1-minute clipping shared by the Hindu American Foundation where Iyer details the reasons why the case was never justified in the first place, he said, “They said he didn’t get the Head of Engineering position. We pointed out that John Doe never applied for the position. This is a position that was open for several months. Everybody was welcome to apply, but he didn’t. If you read the Cisco court documents, Cisco tells you that he didn’t even show interest in wanting that position. Just two things off the bat, if you will, we also pointed out to the CRD that the position that John Doe claimed discrimination for because he is a Dalit was actually given to a senior colleague of mine who was also Dalit, who self-identified as Dalit. This senior Dalit colleague of mine, a brilliant guy, I’ve known him for 25 years, co-founded companies with him, a prolific, hardworking, and just extremely knowledgeable and experienced person. Why did I give him that position?”
Wrongly accused of caste discrimination by California, Sundar Iyer tells us what really happened.
— LISTEN —https://t.co/rbPSGBiqis pic.twitter.com/Ni4bgUEGxq
— Hindu American Foundation (@HinduAmerican) December 13, 2023
It is noteworthy that the notorious Equality Labs led by Thenmozhi Soundarajan, a second-generation immigrant in the US, is a “human rights organization”, funded by George Soros, played a crucial role in the landmark case where California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing sued Cisco for alleged caste discrimination against a Dalit Indian-American employee.
Guess who Equality Labs is funded by? pic.twitter.com/YPN6opuKgC
— malika (@malikakas) February 23, 2023
Thenmozhi’s talk on caste bias was also cancelled by Google in 2022 to avoid division and discord in the community, as stated by Google’s spokesperson, Shannon Newberry, “Caste discrimination has no place in our workplace. We also have a very clear, publicly shared policy against retaliation and discrimination in our workplace. We also made the decision to not move forward with the proposed talk which — rather than bringing our community together and raising awareness — was creating division and rancor,”. Notably, Thenmozhi’s Equality Labs also pushed for the SB403 law to be pushed in the US.
While leftist portals like The News Minute and their ilk published article after article on the Cisco case, there is not one mention of the case once it was dismissed. Their agenda of doing a hitjob and slandering the “upper caste Brahmin” Iyer guilty was done and dusted and hence it seems they did not feel it was important to report the news in the same length when the same man was exonerated of his charges.
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