List on Denial in Diaspora

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Where There are Indians, There is Caste: A ReadingList on Denial in DiasporaEPW ENGAGE

The Thread offers context to news through EPW Archives.

A reading list discusses how caste manifests in Indian diasporas and how the fight againstcaste discrimination has played out globally.

When Ahmed Kathrada, a senior Indian leader of South Africa, was asked about the castesystem, he remarked with some discomfiture, “Please don’t bring Indian problems here.”

Do Indians shed caste when they cross borders? Last month, a US based organization,Equality Labs released data from a community-driven survey that highlighted how castebased practices are prevalent in South Asian institutions and society in the USA.

In March 2017, Theresa May’s government launched a public consultation on Caste in GreatBritain and Equality Law. However, British Dalits who have been demanding protectionfrom caste discrimination for many years, face opposition from savarna South Asiancommunities.

How does caste manifest in Indian

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diasporas? 1) For diaspora Punjabis, caste consciousness can be more important than race

Paramjit S Judge’s study (2002) in two cities, Birmingham and Leamington Spa, focusing onthe experience of members of the ad-dharmi community showed that caste continues tohave relevance across the community. The respondents revealed that caste trumped raceand economic status as a social category within the Punjabi community.

Among the ad-dharmis the pattern of most marriages is not different fromother caste groups in the Punjabi community. All the ad-dharmi respondentswere in favour of caste endogamy. They said that one should marry in one’sown caste, because it helped in the adjustment of the spouses. One majorproblem they pointed out in the case of an intercaste marriage was in thesymmetrical interaction among the relatives. The upper caste relatives did notregard a dalit as equal.

2) No one can claim that we do not have caste here

Suraj Milind Yengde (2015) contextualises the issue of caste among the Indian diaspora inAfrica. He delves into how Indians were categorised as a “race” by South Africa’s oppressiveregime, thus uniting them in their fight against this regime. However, he argues that Indianactivism in South Africa, and Africa in general, is premised on, and inspired by Gandhi'sideals and Gandhi’s disinterest towards the lower caste Indians is a legacy that SouthAfrican Indian leaders perpetuate even today.

Once they started getting wealthy, the Mochis in South Africa insisted thatthey were Kshatriyas and not low-caste cobblers. They adopted Rajputsurnames like Chauhan, Chavda, Jagas and claimed Kshatriya status. They alsoturned to vegetarianism, essentially a higher caste (Brahminical) tradition.

3) Opposition to legislation is connected to the fear that the routine ways ofpractising caste-based identities will come under scrutiny

Meena Dhanda was part of a team of experts drawn from different research institutions tocarry out an independent study on caste in Britain by the Equality and Human Rights

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Commission. In this article (2017), she maps out a spectrum of opinions about caste andfinds a dissonance: on one hand respondents claim to live in a society without castetensions, on the other, the examples of their daily lives show that caste affects status,marriage, social networks and formal institutions. She also details the vehement oppositionto the efforts of British Dalit groups such as CasteWatch’s campaign to mention “caste” inthe Equality Act 2010:

It has been argued that caste legislation “could introduce and reify casteboundaries,” “induce caste based-thinking” and “induce tensions betweengroups which have never been felt before…… [however] How can thelegislation “introduce” what is already present as a valued source of self-esteem?

How has the fight against castediscrimination played out globally?

4) There is no acknowledgement that discrimination on grounds of caste might bea genuine issue for anyone in the UK

In Britain, the Equality Act 2010, introduced by the 2005–10 Labour government, does notspecifically prohibit caste discrimination. British anti-discrimination legislation has neverbeen all-encompassing; it prohibits discrimination on grounds of certain personalcharacteristics in certain defined areas, outside of which discrimination is lawful.

Annapurna Waughray (2018) unveils how many UK based people of Indian origin claimthat pushing for legislation against caste discrimination will “bring to the surface”“irrelevant social forces” and undermine “community cohesion.”

Opponents of legal protection against caste discrimination claim thatlegislation threatens “Indian associational needs,” for example, the existence oforganisations “based on an extended kinship structure like a jati,” that it willundermine Indian communities in Britain, and will result in spurious andmalicious claims of caste discrimination against Indian businesses andcommunity organisations... Such arguments position Indian organisations,businesses, and employers as the victims of legislation, which is depicted notas a source of protection from caste discrimination but as a threat to thecontinued existence of Indian communities.

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5)It is only because of lack of democratic social conditions in Indian society that wehave lagged behind

Vivek Kumar (2004) writes that the dalits abroad did not remain aloof from each otherthough they migrated from different parts of India and belonged to different sub-castes.Detailing how they have created their own organisations to develop social solidarity withdifferent Dalit Communities, he highlights how the whole process has broken nationalboundaries and taken the dalit movement to international levels.

The mobility which dalits have attained in different countries has motivatedthem to assert that they are not inferior to any one. They have argued, “lookwe have demystified the ideal type image of dalits as dirty, drunkard, devoid ofany merit, beast of burden, etc, by developing ourselves without anygovernmental help”. In the same vein, “by attaining the mobility in differentrealms of foreign society without the help of the protective discrimination we(dalits) have made a point that nothing is inherently wrong with us. It is onlybecause of lack of democratic social conditions in Indian society that we havelagged behind.

6) Dalit activists want to see caste as a fragment of race – not conceptually, notanalytically, not even empirically but legally

Shiv Visvanathan (2001) writes about how, at the United Nations World Conference onRacism held in Durban, South Africa in August-September 2001, Dalit groups across theworld had fought a battle for the inclusion of caste into the official charter on race as a formof descent-based discrimination.

The argument [made by Indian bureaucrats] is that caste is an internal matterand that raising the issue only creates a source of divisiveness andembarrassment. Dalits argue that the current objections to the welding ofcaste and race and the attempts to raise caste at the Durban conference onrace, has a similar ring.

7) How do diasporic upper caste Indians try to control the narrative of caste andthe community?

Chinnaiah Jangam (2016) writes about how in 2016, the South Asian diaspora protested the

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way in which the Indian subcontinent's history, culture and people were represented inschool textbooks in California. How did this controversy reflect the anxiety of the casteHindu diaspora surrounding its own identity, history and culture?

Interestingly, the caste Hindu diaspora in North America is trying to carve outa niche as spiritually-minded Hindus and victims of colonialism and racialprejudices. They argue that the representations of Hindu religious and socialpractices in school textbooks—especially of caste inequality, practice ofuntouchability and the treatment of women—place them in a negative light andthat their children get bullied as a result. The argument of victims ofimperialism emanates from the postcolonial theory, which holds that theEuropean Enlightenment through its master narrative assimilates and violatesthe histories of non-Europeans. The ensuing argument is that this masternarrative effectively leads to the denial of history and agency.

Read More:Gujarati Business Communities in East African Diaspora :Major Historical Trends | MakrandMehta

The Ravi Dasis of Punjab: Global Contours of Caste and Religious Strife | Surinder S Jodhka

Dalit Movement and Dalit International Conferences | Vivek Kumar

Caste Discrimination and UN | Ambrose Pinto

Caste on the International Stage | Nivedita Menon

Caste on UK Shores: Legal Lessons from the Diaspora | Sameena Dalwai