On November 26, 2019, Brandeis University amended their nondiscrimination statement to include a new category: “caste.” From that point forward, caste would be “included within the university’s current bans on discrimination and harassment based on race, color, ancestry, religious creed, and national or ethnic origin.”
Caste — a form of inherited social status that categorizes people into groups with distinct roles, privileges, and restrictions within South Asian societies — has recently emerged as a flashpoint at several American institutions. In the wake of Brandeis’s decision, caste-discrimination bans have been carried out at Harvard, California State, and Georgetown Universities and the University of Minnesota and other colleges. The effort is not limited to higher-ed institutions: Seattle became the first city to ban caste-based discrimination in 2022. In California, both houses of the legislature passed similar bills in 2023.
Many in the Indian American community have responded with outrage. Caste, they point out, is singularly associated with Hindus, Indians, and South Asians. Existing laws already prohibit discrimination on the basis of national origin, ethnicity, and ancestry, all of which can encompass caste. To highlight caste as a separate category, they believe, will single out South Asians for scrutiny. In response to the Cal State policy, the Hindu American Foundation filed a lawsuit against the university for “misguided overreach.” In October 2023, amid resistance from Hindu groups, Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat of California, vetoed the bill, which would have banned caste discrimination throughout the entire state.
Caste has recently emerged as a flashpoint at several American institutions.
Once completely overlooked on American campuses, caste has suddenly become entwined in emotionally charged discussions surrounding diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. Is this incorporation of caste into the DEI framework constructive? It can be, if it’s applied carefully and rigorously. Unfortunately, this is rarely the case, as American DEI offices tend to lack the scholarly resources and understanding necessary to evaluate charges of caste discrimination. The effort to impose the categories of American identity politics onto a delicate, complex, and dynamic social construct like caste, especially during a period of significant political polarization in both India and the United States, can reinforce and even exacerbate divisions on campus and beyond.
Discussions of caste presents unique challenges. India’s constitutional ban on caste discrimination, written in 1950, was the outcome of heated debates that lasted for several years and are still reverberating. In India, even asking people their caste identity on a census form is so controversial that the government has been unable to generate accurate figures on caste membership. Despite these tensions, India pulled off comprehensive deliberations on caste while writing its constitution.
On American campuses today, by contrast, such debates are nearly impossible. South Asian-studies programs are typically small, underfunded, and staffed entirely by Western-educated academics who have rarely immersed themselves in these ideas. While many of the standard works of scholarship taught in these programs — books like Nicholas B. Dirks’s Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India (2001) and Susan Bayly’s Caste, Society and Politics in India From the Eighteenth Century to the Modern Age (1999) — are rigorously researched (I’ve assigned both of these texts in my own courses), they are all by Western-trained academics living outside India. Most syllabi do not include critiques of the approach used by these scholars, perspectives from Hindus who value caste identity, or explorations of caste in pre-colonial times. The conversation over caste thus ends up being driven not by scholars but by off-campus activists, whose ideologies and agendas are shaped by current American and Indian political trends.
On American campuses today, debates about caste discrimination are nearly impossible.
Among proponents of caste bans, the strongest voices are from South Asian civil-rights organizations that frame caste as a fundamental human-rights issue. Equality Labs, for example, claims that caste is a form of “systematized oppression” that affects over 260 million people globally. Their 2018 survey of caste in the United States found widespread discrimination of marginalized castes, many of whom are collectively referred to as “Dalits” (which literally means “oppressed”). In their publication Caste in the United States: A Survey of Caste Among South Asian Americans, they argue that South Asians living in the United States “balance the experiences of living under white supremacy while replicating caste, anti-Dalitness, and anti-Blackness” as immigrants. In other words, privileged South Asians can be victims of white racism while simultaneously practicing “caste apartheid” against marginalized people in their own community.
Organizations like Equality Labs go to great lengths to explain that caste, unlike race and gender, cannot be determined from a person’s appearance. It can only be decoded through scrutiny of a person’s name, community of origin, ancestry, dietary habits, and cultural symbols that only other South Asians understand. This, they argue, allows high-status South Asians to harass those with less privilege in plain sight, outside the recognition of DEI administrators. More than half of Dalit students in the United States report a fear of being outed for their caste and feeling alienated in campus housing, dining, and professional networks. Implementing prohibitions against caste-based discrimination could undoubtedly alleviate this distressing situation.
These messages, with their emphasis on justice and equity, resonate with a burgeoning demographic on college campuses: liberal-arts scholars with South Asian heritage. As historians, anthropologists, and cultural-studies experts trained in the West, they are well-versed in the ideologies of Marxism and post-colonial thought. Though most have likely never engaged in a rigorous study of caste on its own terms, they gravitate to the ideas of B.R. Ambedkar, the inspiring Columbia University jurist who was chairman of the Drafting Committee of the Indian Constitution. Ambedkar linked the oppression of Dalits to the fundamental tenets of Hinduism, a stance underscored by his own renunciation of Hinduism and conversion to Buddhism.
South Asian scholars have established new organizations such as the South Asia Scholar Activist Collective and the Auntylectuals. Working together with organizations such as the Dalit American Coalition and the Indian American Muslim Council, these groups have pushed for bans on caste discrimination in the United States. Their fight is, however, not just about caste: They also challenge the broader Hindu nationalist ideology of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and its stance toward religious minorities. In 2021, a broad group of stakeholders came together to host a conference entitled Dismantling Global Hindutva. One of the main goals was to challenge “the singular narrative of Hinduism adopted by Hindu supremacists.”
These efforts have perplexed many in the Indian American community, which is predominantly Hindu. Estimates from a Pew Research poll suggest that though nearly three quarters of this community lean toward the left in the United States, a notable majority lean right on political issues in India. Most support India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party. For many in this community, a pressing question arises: What does Hinduism truly espouse about the caste system?
Organizations like the Hindu American Foundation and the Coalition of Hindus of North America step in with their own answers. They vehemently reject the link between caste and Hinduism. The Coalition of Hindus argues that the term “caste” is actually of Portuguese origin, “imported into India by its colonial rulers.” They see the modern-day caste system as a legacy of colonialism rather than an innate characteristic of South Asian society. Hinduism, they argue, does not espouse any form of discrimination. Caste should thus be understood as part of the broader problem of social stratification that occurs in all societies — and thus no separate category is needed in campus anti-discrimination statements.
These organizations also dispute empirical claims regarding caste discrimination in the United States. The Coalition of Hindus, for example, argues that the numbers in the Equality Labs survey are grossly exaggerated. They note that the survey lacked a representative sample and used an online self-administered platform to gather responses, leading to biased estimates.
Such advocacy is quickly amplified on social media. Online culture warriors who are supportive of Hindu solidarity (and BJP dominance) have coalesced under banners such as Hindu on Campus and Stop Hindu Hate to counter anti-national, anti-BJP, and anti-Hindu professors and their partnerships with civil-rights organizations. Their zealous surveillance has led to mass campaigns to cancel “Hinduphobic” campus events and, on occasion, death threats to anti-national scholars.
In the midst of this chaos and polarization, how are students to figure out what the facts actually are? They need to hear from real experts: serious scholars of South Asian culture with credentials in religious studies, history, and the social sciences. They need answers to specific questions about what caste is, where it comes from, and how it differs from class and race as conventionally understood in the United States. They need to see the evidence for caste-based inequality and discrimination. All of this is beyond the current capabilities of a typical college’s DEI office.
In a perfect world, this would be where scholars of South Asian culture would step in. Unfortunately, there are fewer than 50 South Asia-studies programs at American colleges. Students often turn to professors who study South Asia within disciplines like anthropology, economics, or political science to help them make sense of the controversies over caste discrimination. I can attest to this, since I am one of those professors. We try our best to provide answers, but our perspectives are shaped by the prisms of our disciplines. As an applied micro-economist for example, I run econometric models on survey data where caste is often inadequately measured. My mathematically based research on caste-based inequality in contemporary India sheds no light on whether this is a Hindu practice or not.
In the midst of chaos and polarization, how are students to figure out what the facts actually are? They need to hear from real experts.
Some of us do take the leap into interdisciplinary scholarship and teaching. But this requires considerable study that goes beyond our training. We must read history, sociology, and texts written in South Asian languages. But here even the most dedicated scholars hit a roadblock when it comes to religion. Most of us don’t know enough Sanskrit to read the Dharmaśāstras (the ancient Indian legal codes that are the origin of caste-based discrimination). Nor can we turn to South Asian colleagues for help: Since India is a secular state, only a handful of its more than 900 universities have research programs on religion, and their research output is not easily accessible.
This type of intellectual lacuna is not exclusive to the South Asian diaspora. The study of East Asia, and in particular China, once had similar blind spots. But the situation changed, in part due to demographic incentives and the changing composition of faculty. A recent report notes that though the field of China studies is still dominated by a small number of institutions, for over 50 years there has been a surge in the representation of scholars of Chinese descent, along with increased investments in “the integrated study of literature, history, philosophy, and religion.” A student seeking answers to controversial questions about Chinese culture would be able to access a structured curriculum in a progression ensuring a full range of perspectives, where they would encounter important ideas as well as critiques of those ideas from within the field. There are great and rising numbers of South Asians in American higher education, too, but these scholars are overwhelmingly concentrated in fields like engineering and medicine — in part, perhaps, because of the relative paucity of course offerings in American colleges focused on South Asian culture.
I see the caste-ban controversy as a wake-up call to American colleges: We need to invest more in South Asian studies. What we need to resolve the caste controversy is not political pressure, but more and better scholarship. Policies stemming from inclusive deliberative forums led by scholars, with participation open to all students and community members, are the most viable paths forward for the caste debate, not only on college campuses, but beyond.
