A law aimed at expressly prohibiting caste discrimination in California was overwhelmingly approved by the state’s Senate Judiciary Committee, despite heavy opposition from Indian-American individuals, business, and religious organisations.
The measure, presented by State Senator Aisha Wahab, proposes to alter the Unruh Civil Rights Act’s anti-discrimination policy by including caste as a protected group.
It is not the first-time anti-caste legislation is being passed in the US. On February, 2023 Seattle City Council member Kshama Sawant, a member of the Trotskyist Socialist Alternative political party, succeeded in passing a bill adding the category of ‘caste’ to the city’s non-discrimination statute.
Now, the California Civil Rights Department (CRD) has started racial/ethnic profiling Indians by giving legal sanction to xenophobia against Hindus.
This is an especially disturbing trend aimed at dividing Hindu community in the west. While Hindus are uniting in India, in abroad anti-Hindu forces are sowing discord among NRI community by raising false narrative about divisionary practices.
Let us look at the absurdity of these events, and why the seemingly legal racial profiling in the name of ‘anti-caste’ will not stand the test of natural rights.
Hindumisia In California
In the last 2 years, there were over 53000 mentions of caste in American media which are being quoted to lobby for anti-caste discrimination policy.
These are based on the Cisco Caste Case, which incorporates a 2016 survey claiming rampant caste discrimination in the United States by Equality Labs (an openly Hinduphobic activist organization).
In June 2020, the CRD filed a lawsuit under existing race, ancestral anti-discrimination laws on behalf of “John Doe”(CISCO case) who called himself a Dalit, and alleged caste discrimination under his “Brahmin” bosses.
While this case is sub-judice, it is serving as a great narrative builder in media, in introducing caste-based policy in academic institutions like Harvard, Cal State, University of Minnesota, etc.
Activists present allegations as facts to malign an entire community of Hindu Americans as casteist, discriminatory, and a vile and violent ethnic group that threatens “Dalits.” (Details of the case and discrimatory practices of CRD against Hindu Americans can be accessed here: https://castegate.org/).
In CISCO case, the CRD identifies caste as a vital aspect of Hinduism and alleges caste discrimination on behalf of John Doe (a pseudonym), whom they identify as a Dalit Indian.
The CRD claims that revealing Doe’s true name would cause him bodily harm, and that his two managers, Mr. Iyer, and Mr. Kompella, whom the CRD forced-identified as high caste Savarnas or Brahmins, were wilfully discriminatory, retaliated against Doe, harassed Doe, gave Doe low pay, and hampered Doe’s advancement in the organisation.
In January 2021, the Hindu American Foundation sought injunctive relief under the 1st and 14th Amendments, as well as California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act, to prevent the state’s overreach and infringement of Hindu American rights (since the CRD classified caste as an integral feature of Hinduism).
The HAF reaffirmed that caste is already protected under existing categories such as race, ancestry, and others. HAF remained neutral, taking no legal position on the facts of the case. Cisco’s preliminary legal defence includes a Motion to Strike the CRD’s use of unscientific surveys from Equality Labs, as well as the removal of various xenophobic and racially offensive comments directed against Hindu and Indian Americans. Judge Drew Takaichi refused the CRD’s request to introduce 23+ irrelevant and xenophobic documents as evidence.
The venom spewing Thenmozhi Soundararajan and Equity labs also has huge part in these events. Harking back to the horror of days of EVR, when venom was spewed on Hindus in Nazi style, Mrs. Soundararajan now imports this toxic EVR politics into dividing the Hindu community abroad.
The anti-Hindu hate in the west fuelled by despicable activists is a threat that needs to be checked for the harmony of Hindu community. Read about SB 403 legislation here.
As the case is under sub judice, the article will stay clear of the judging issues but will focus on the atrocious propaganda and human rights violations committed by CRD against Hindu brethren.
CRD’s Attack On Hindu Community
CRD seemingly colluding with Equity Labs and other hatred spewing lobbies have imported flawed concepts in to the ongoing CISCO case.
The CRD violates the establishment clause (which prevents the government from interpreting religion) of the first amendment in multiple unique ways and in several instances by interpreting the Hindu religion in State Court.
The CRD interprets Hinduism by defining caste as “a strict Hindu social and religious hierarchy.”
The CRD further ascribes a caste hierarchy and denigrates Hinduism by defining Dalit as the “most disadvantaged people under India’s centuries-old caste system”.
The CRD’s Freedom of Religion and Belief violations as shown below were deliberate and intentional.
The CRD assumes a Hindu religious identity for an openly irreligious Mr. Iyer.
The CRD perpetuates the caste-by-birth social hierarchy.
The CRD presumes a Brahmin caste by virtue of birth on Mr. Iyer, an irreligious American citizen who has actively opposed and never undergone any rite of passage caste marker (‘symbolic sacred thread’).
This hypocrisy is the very antithesis of what a Civil Rights Department should stand for.
The CRD assumes a Hindu religious identity for Mr. Kompella, by assigning him a Hindu religious caste.
This despite their own admission that they did not even bother to verify his religion or caste as this assignment was made ‘upon information and belief‘.
The CRD conspicuously colludes with an openly Hinduphobic activist organization called Equality Labs whose venom spewing founder repeatedly states “Nazis aren’t Germans in F*king Europe, they’re actually upper-caste Indians”, inciting hate against her ideological opponents.
The CRD uses their data from their unscientific surveys, and in court documents, court declarations, and press releases.
The CRD racially insults all Dalit Americans by indirectly assuming that tens of thousands of them are incapable of filing a single credible police report alleging rape or physical assault.
As per studies by Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, discrimination on the basis of caste is extremely rare in the US but still the CRD is hellbent on wreaking havoc on Hindus in the US.
Half of Indian Americans surveyed in a study reported alleged discrimination, the basis of discrimination reported was mainly colour (30%), gender (18%), religion (18%) and national origin (1%).
Only 5% of those surveyed reported encountering alleged discrimination based on caste, with almost half of those respondents reporting the perpetrator of the alleged discrimination being of non-Indian origin, indicating that caste may have been conflated with some other factor or basis.
Most Hindu respondents (53%) do not identify with any caste group at all. Within the group that does identify with a caste, there is a significantly lower number of U.S.-born Hindu Indian Americans who identify with a caste group (34%) versus those that are foreign-born (53%), which may indicate that caste identification becomes increasingly less relevant with every generation.
The study and the findings make us question the intention behind the springing up of anti-caste legislation.
Is it an attempt by vested activists, radical leftists cancel culture cannibals to demonize Hinduism?
Or is it a master plan to divide and sow discord within NRI community in the US?
Whatever the truth is, Hindu community in the US is putting up brave resistance against this vicious propaganda.
Hindumisia In The West
Hindumisia or anti-Hindu hatred have a tragically long history which continues to this day across the globe.
They are fuelled by a range of factors, including religious intolerance, religious exclusivism, a lack of religious literacy, misrepresentation in the media, academic bias still rooted in oftentimes racist, colonial-era mis portrayals and, in the diaspora, generalised anti-immigrant xenophobia and hatred.
This has been professed by colonisers of the Indian subcontinent in form of control over temple wealth and enactment of acts such as Lex Loci Act, 1850 which was one of the root causes for 1857 first war of Indian Independence.
In fact, there is a rising trend in the west to only acknowledge concerns of Abrahamic religions (evident from UN Day on Islamaphobia).
The political ambivalence to concerns of Hindu community is also an issue in the West.
Recent attacks and the lack of credible condemnation against vandalization of Hindu temples in Australia, vandalization of temples in Canada, anti-Hindu violence in the UK and general violence against Hindu’s in the Subcontinent speaks volumes on this issue.
The US, which claims itself to be the leader of human rights albeit enforcing its rule via military measures across the world had never recognized slaughter of Hindu Bangladeshis during 1971 war.
But the US administration was happy to recognize Armenian genocide by Turkey which fits their propaganda of being human rights champions perfectly.
The violence against Hindus and scathing attacks in the form of discriminatory legislation in western nations are resulting in a wave of anti-Hindu climate fuelled by ‘paid’ activists spreading misinformation about Hindu culture and traditions.
If we look in to the rising Hindumisia in the West and the pattern of so called ‘activists’ trying to divide Hindu community, one thing is clear, there are vested ‘activists’ with vested ‘funded’ interests sitting behind the wheel.
It is high time that these so called ‘progressive regions’ of the world acknowledge rampant anti-Hindu hate crimes and take measures against it instead discriminating against the victim, which are the Hindus themselves.
(Anand Krishna is lawyer from Kerala and a columnist)
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