Seattle may become the first U.S. city to outlaw caste:
One of Kshama Sawant’s earliest memories of the caste system was hearing her grandfather — a man she “otherwise loved very much” — utter a slur to summon their lower-caste maid.
The Seattle City Council member, raised in an upper-caste Hindu Brahmin household in India, was 6 when she asked her grandfather why he used that derogatory word when he knew the girl’s name. He responded that his granddaughter “talked too much.”
Now 50, and an elected official in a city far from India, Sawant has proposed an ordinance to add caste to Seattle’s anti-discrimination laws. If her fellow council members approve it Tuesday, Seattle will become the first city in the United States to specifically outlaw caste discrimination.
In India, the origins of the caste system can be traced back 3,000 years as a social hierarchy based on one’s birth. While the definition of caste has evolved over the centuries, under both Muslim and British rule, the suffering of those at the bottom of the caste pyramid – known as Dalits, which in Sanskrit means “broken” — has continued.
Sawant is a socialist, and she believes in social justice. Her family’s background is Tamil Brahmin, like Kamala Harris’ mother. Though currently married to Calvin Priest, Sawant’s surname is from her first Indian husband (who was not Brahmin).
Caste is a big deal in India, both socially and genetically. My two posts on my Substack are popular with Indians in part because I look at the issue with some detachment. Caste isn’t a thing in the US. But you wouldn’t know it by what the media is telling you.
Caste in California: Tech giants confront ancient Indian hierarchy:
The update came after the tech sector – which counts India as its top source of skilled foreign workers – received a wake-up call in June 2020 when California’s employment regulator sued Cisco Systems (CSCO.O) on behalf of a low-caste engineer who accused two higher-caste bosses of blocking his career.
Most media write-ups and social justice activism around caste focus on this single alleged case. Was this person discriminated against based on caste? We don’t know. Could he have been? Sure.
But the idea that caste discrimination is pervasive in the US is a manufactured narrative by a few activists, woke Indians, and useful non-Indian idiots who have never seen a social justice cause they could say no to (also some frog-nazis who just hate Indians on racial/ethnic competition grounds). Many of the “data” on caste discrimination comes from Equality Labs, an activist organization that used “snowball sampling.” That means the survey went out to people in the Equality Labs network.
The Carnegie Foundation’s more methodologically sound survey paints a much more mixed picture. Basically, around half of Indian Americans are Hindu, and about half of Hindus have identification with a caste group. That identification is much stronger among the foreign-born.
Most Indian Americans were raised in India because of the massive wave of post-2000 immigration. When you say “Indian American,” you mean immigrants, not people like Nikki Haley or Vivek Ramaswamy. It’s entirely plausible that these immigrants have some sensibility of caste and might engage in discrimination…but there are severe problems with how this would play out in America more than theoretically.
– About 1% of Americans are of Indian origin, and only half are Hindu. The vast majority of Indians exist in an overwhelmingly non-subcontinental professional world and, to a great extent, a very cosmopolitan social world. Systemic caste discrimination’s social and cultural instruments are not operational in the US. There just aren’t levers that people can pull to engage in discrimination.
– About 60% of Hindus in India are “backward” or “scheduled castes.” The rest are basically “high caste” in some way. In the US, 80% of Indians are “high caste.” In India, 20% of Hindus are Dalit, formerly called outcastes. In the US, the figure is 1%. Not only is the social context for caste discrimination not operative in the US, but there are also very few “low castes” or “outcastes” to discriminate against.
– Caste discrimination still exists in a stark manner in rural India, but it is much more subtle in urban areas. There is self-segregation and self-dealing within communal networks. 90-95% of Indians marry within their jati, one of the thousands of subcastes in the subcontinent. The situation in the US among the immigrant community is very different. There is a strong skew toward “progressive” and “modern” outlooks, and many Indian techies are married to people from different jatis or regions. I haven’t seen a survey, but if you are familiar with the H1-B class, you know this is true. By definition people from different ethnolingusitic groups are from different castes, and this is very common.
The problem of course, is that most Americans are not familiar with the subtle gradations among Indians. Brown is brown. From an American perspective, a Bengali Brahmin married to a Gujarati Brahmin is an endogamous marriage. In India, it would be exogamous and against caste principles just a few generations ago (it is much more common in urban professional circles in India today, though).
More generally, Americans have certain perceptions of caste that are often contradicted by reality.
On the left is Rho Khanna, a Punjabi Hindu. On the right is Nikki Haley, a Punjabi Christian from a Sikh background. Khanna is a Khatri, which is definitely a “higher” caste than the Jats, from which Haley’s family comes. But, because Haley is much closer to “passing” for white than Khanna, I am 100% sure most non-brown Americans who are “woke to caste,” which is probably less than 5%, would guess that she is “higher caste.”
But wait, it gets more complicated. Here is the Wikipedia entry on Jats:
Jats are classified as Other Backward Class (OBC) in seven of India’s thirty-six States and UTs, namely Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh, Delhi, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. However, only the Jats of Rajasthan – excluding those of Bharatpur district and Dholpur district – are entitled to reservation of central government jobs under the OBC reservation. In 2016, the Jats of Haryana organized massive protests demanding to be classified as OBC in order to obtain such affirmative action benefits.
In the state of Punjab, where Haley’s parents are from, Jats are the dominant caste politically and in terms of land ownership. But in other states, they are not so powerful, so their status within the caste hierarchy is conditional on where they are. Regarding religious status, there are arguments about the Jats, but most would argue that they are Sudras, the lowest of the official castes (Dalits are outside of the caste system). But in many parts of India, ritually Sudra castes are the dominant ones politically and regarding rural land ownership (Patels, who are quite prospery in the US, are ritual Sudras).
Americans are taught a simple model of Brahmins (priests), Kshatriyas (warriors), Vaishyas (commoners and merchants) and Sudras (servants and peasants). But the reality is in India, caste is operationalized as 3,000 local and regional jatis. In the southern state of Tamil Nadu there are two significant groups of Brahmins, Iyers and Iyengars, and within both there are subgroups that traditionally do not intermarry.
This stuff is extremely complicated, and most Indians don’t know how caste functions in other parts of India. But we expect this woman can make decisions about caste discrimination:
:
Several things are going on here.
First, caste is one of the few things many Americans know about Hindus. But many Indian American Hindus consciously do not tell their children about their caste because they are aware it doesn’t matter in the US, and the type of Indians who come to this country are often somewhat embarrassed by the institution (though most do know caste identities/origins by surname if they are born in India). I have a friend who did not know his caste, and I guessed based on his genotype (he had to call his mother to ask what I was talking about).
Second, some groups, like subcontinental Muslims, seem to think Hindu Americans are very casteist. I don’t want to explore the issue deeply, but subcontinental Muslims and Hindus hate each other, and in the US many of them have very negative perceptions of the other group. So, when someone who looks Hindu, like me, talks about caste, white people listen, because I look Hindu, but my name makes it clear to any South Asian I’m from a Muslim background. Brown Muslims have strong, often uninformed, opinions on caste, and the “brown face” makes their views more credible to non-browns.
Third, this points out what happens once the interrogation of caste becomes the norm: non-Hindu brown people will start to be asked about it. After all, we look Hindu, unless we ostentatiously dress in ways that signal we are not (hijab). Caste is just a highly racialized institution, so you will have the farce of DEI professionals who are not brown interrogating confused Indian Americans who grew up in the US about their caste status.
The whole situation frustrates me because many lies buttress this new truth that people are starting to get woke to. It’s really harder when you see the consent of the dull masses manufactured out of whole cloth right before your eyes.
This particular issue won’t affect non-browns very much because no non-brown will ever be asked about caste discrimination. But, it will serve as a template to bringing every social justice concern in the whole world to the US. This means more jobs for DEI bureaucrats but a total swamp in terms of America’s genuinely diverse society. We’ll be drowning in identity categories soon. We need to stop dividing Americans.
Note: When Paragh Agrawal became CEO of Twitter frog-Nazis, brown anti-caste SJWs started decrying Brahin supremacy. The problem is Agrawal is a clear non-Brahmin Bania name. It would be like people assuming Ron DeSantis is of Mayflower stock. Yes, they’re that stupid.
i)
I was born and bred in Mauritius where 48.5% of the population is Hindu and 17.2% of the population Muslim, all from undivided India.
Even if the caste system was imported on the island nation, with nearly 35% of the population completely clueless about it, it didn’t survive long in the work and educational environments
In colonial Mauritius, even the highest Brahman was socio-econo-politically lower than the white catholics of french descent. Perpetuating a hierarchial system in an environment where you don’t occupy the highest rung of the ladder is simply not possible
Demographics matter more. Vaish are vastly more numerous in Mauritius because most indentured labourers belong to this varna while British colonial officials made sure that “troublemaker” brahmans were as few as possible
This led to a situation where the political power ultimately fell in the hands of mostly Vaish politicians
Lastly, educational attainment matters more. At the end of the day, in a highly competitive, merit based educational system, we today have doctors from various castes who have a higher social status than upper caste less educated hindus
The Mauritian caste system, one that exists in a non indian setup, was extensively studied by a french anthropologist, Mathieu Claveyrolas, and as a Hindu Atheist Mauritian, I was quite astonished by the accuracy of his findings
A link to the study https://journals.openedition.org/assr/25272
ii)
As far as the article is concerned, I’m a bit surprised that the author didn’t speak once of the Islamic caste system in South Asia or even the racism of South Asian Muslims in the US towards Black Muslims
It seems that Mrs Sawant, in 1979 India, heard her already aged grandfather use a casteist slur to call his lower caste maid and despite, it seems never having seen any other open manifestation of casteism, believes that caste based discrimination is a major issue in 2023 United States
If I’m not mistaken, Hindus represent 1% of the total american population, twice as many as the author wrote
Still, being casteist in such an environment is near impossible
Ironically, upper caste Hindus, discriminated by the Indian reservation system for lower castes in Indian Universities, moved to the US to have better educational opportunities. If the US, starts discriminating against upper caste hindus, they will probably start immigrating elsewhere
I have worked in IT in US and UK, with many colleagues with Indian roots. I have never known anyone’s caste, but I have noticed a rough but clear gradient. In one side of it, people are darker skinned, from the south, meek, incredibly polite, longer last names. On the other side, they are lighter skinned, from the north, assertive, shorter last names, and talk a lot about how their families have palaces and land and government positions and professorships back home. I have always assumed that this is a socio-economic gradient that maps both into geography, status and caste.
@Ezequeil
I have to admit, I laughed a lot reading your description of north and south indians because you are right. It is not a matter of caste but of regional differences. Indo-Dravidians, from the South are known to be more polite but also less assertive, Indo-Aryans from the North are known to be more assertive and can be loud at times
This is completely unrelated to caste as a Tamil Brahmin will less brag about his property back home than a Punjabi Sudra
And North India being very vast, there are distinguishable personality differences in the North. Punjabis are loud, Bengalis less so.
In Canada, my anecdotal view is that this ‘caste-ish’ lens is something that developed indeed by the post 2000s-wave. The post-2000s wave in Canada at least is much more int’l students or professionals coming in from India, SL, Nepal.
Earlier waves were more ‘anti-origin’ whether due to being ethnic/religious minorities, highly WEIRD, or political differences. Also far less in number, we were easier and eager to drop elements from home (that we didn’t even like/know) and assimilate. We also congealed quicker into the generic brown identity of the 80s/90s.
Caste, religion, or sometimes even ethnicity never came up as much growing up – and I come a from nominally ‘anti-caste’ culture. Now, caste, cricket, and other weird themes are more prevalent both in the younger brown population and discourse overall.
@Ezequeil
I think you’re also tripping against what one would call broadly ‘merchant right’ vs ‘brahmin left’ cultures. Not to mention, the adage that while money talks, wealth whispers 🙂
If I’m not mistaken, Hindus represent 1% of the total american population, twice as many as the author wrote
only half to 2/3rd of indian americans are self-id hindus (Christians overrepresented in immigrant stream, conversion, + disaffiliation). so no, though it is somewhere in the interval .5 to 1% (pew samples size too small)
I have always assumed that this is a socio-economic gradient that maps both into geography, status and caste.
no. north indians are just braggarts. especially punjabis. no offense.
Kind of see the whole thing of it being kind of stupid to bring in some laws around something that isn’t really a major problem, but it doesn’t seem useless if it ever occurs; something doesn’t have to be at all common to be worth some legislation towards if it does occur (e.g. at one point Black ppl very rare in much of Europe; was it worth having laws then to prohibit discrimination or better to have waited until more present?). Kind of find it doubtful that any kind of “Oh, this could actually make people think about this thing and thus make it worse” angle could happen (whether that’s an idea or not, I’m not totally clear).
That said, I think in the UK basically following a consultation (https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/727790/Caste_in_Great_Britain_and_equality_law-consultation_response.pdf) it seems like the conclusion was that Caste is already covered by law covering ethnic discrimination, because they are ethnic groups.
I would have thought the same challenge would exist in the US – these are basically already different ethnic groups, so it’s superfluous to consider caste as a separate required law to existing inter-ethnic discrimination law? There’s no need to particular understand a hierarchy of castes in order to simply understand that X and Y are from different ethnic groups (by their own admission or general understanding of a reasonable person in their social circles) and X did Z to Y due to these ethnic groups.
I would presume that the US would be the same.
“This means more jobs for DEI bureaucrats but a total swamp in terms of America’s genuinely diverse society.”
If there actually is a big cost to these guys, it could gain some credence for the Right to do some firm accounting on how much of the budgetary drain there is from their employment; whether direct employment or as contractors.
The US tends to have a pretty minimal social services set up compared to your average OECD country. Of course every bit of money wasted is something annoying, but I don’t know what the size of this is. Guess I am more of a skeptic on this recently as some on the Right (not you razib) seem more determined than ever over the last couple years to burn through the goodwill of trust that they are talking about real things that the government actually does (rather than made up stuff).
(I’ve tended to worry less about awareness of social division or expense of DEI and more about things that are heavy on legitimizing of underming the state, or ethnic targeting, e.g. 1619 Project.)
A caste being the dominant caste in a state does not overturn the caste hierarchy. The status of higher castes like Khatris, Rajputs, Banias and especially Brahmins is based on spiritual and ritual parameters, not temporal ones.
In the modern era, some higher castes like the Tamil Brahmins, Banias and Khatris have been able to convert their higher social capital from the pre-modern era into modern parameters of prominence such as educational qualifications, business ownership and media influence.
Other traditional higher castes like the UP Brahmins and to a lesser extent Rajputs have been less successful in leveraging their ancestral status.
A similar dynamic has been playing out with the traditional middle castes, now usually the dominant castes in their states. Marathas of Maharashtra achieved prominence even in the pre-modern era, and have continued their growth graph. Gujarati Patels started prospering in the British era and are now perhaps the richest caste in total wealth.
Punjab Jats experienced a dramatic upward trend under the British, abruptly interrupted by the partition and reversed by the Sikh insurgency. UP and Bihar Yadavs have remained somewhat stagnant.
Indian states which have prospered tend to have the formulation: higher castes transforming social capital into domain expertise + middle castes/peasantry achieving upward mobility into farm and business ownership, without conflict between the two. Gujarat (Banias/Jains/Parsis + Patels), Maharashtra (Brahmins + Marathas), Haryana and southern states follow this script. In contrast, Punjab has seen conflict between the Khatri elites (who are mostly Hindu) and Jat peasantry (overwhelmingly Sikh), UP/Bihar between the Brahmin/Rajput elites and Yadav peasantry.
The BJP has basically unified the upper caste + dominant caste vote in North and West India (except Punjab).
I always just assumed that the surprising tendency for Indians (particularly women) to adopt SJW/woke ideology was partly just a cynical ploy to “recaste” themselves as victims and gain access to the social/financial rewards that come with downtrodden/minority status in the US, and partly a means of denying or escaping from the reality that they themselves are the product of a transparently unjust and discriminatory hierarchy that they are at the top of. Denouncing all of the sinners while feeling as though they’re wearing a big scarlet “C”
Just a minor comment : I think the actual percentage of forward/upper caste people in India is more like 30% , if the Wikipedia source is to be believed ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forward_caste ). According to the same source dalits (“Scheduled castes”) are about 16% , adivasis/tribals around 8% .The rest are OBC’s
Also…does anyone have a source of what the percentages of upper/middle/lower castes is in other South Asian countries? Is it only India that collects this sort of statistic?.
luis, only 80% of indians are hindu. that’s the difference
@Manish
Your last paragraph of a thoughtful and informative description read:
“Ironically, upper caste Hindus, discriminated by the Indian reservation system for lower castes in Indian Universities, moved to the US to have better educational opportunities. If the US, starts discriminating against upper caste hindus, they will probably start immigrating elsewhere.”
That’s interesting you say that. It’s not because of being discriminated by the reservation system that upper castes are migrating to places like the US. It’s because they are capable of getting the higher education in India to be qualified to emmigrate. When, say, 20% of the population have 95% of the seats in universities and high level jobs, then there is a need for a reservation system like scheme to rectify the situation. I am not a big proponent of the reservation system but I am trying to explain why you see upper castes in foreign countries than you see lower classes. I think it would be a mistake to think they are running to escape from something. They don’t have to run anywhere.
I am interested to learn about ‘Tamil Brahmins’.
I had always thought that Dravidian Aborigines remained free of the Aryan Invasion’s genetic admixture and presumed that the ‘TB’ designation referred to Tamil – speaking incomer – descended people from the North.
Jats and Patels are shudras,didnt knew this. Are Marathas and Reddys also shudras?
yes. maratha ruling elite made a fake kshatriya lineage tho
@Dr. G
In some states like Tamil Nadu, reservations for lower castes ends up in allocating nearly all available university seats to them. Unless, forward castes get admission to say an IIT, where reservations don’t apply, these upper castes may end up without any tertiary education.
Reservations were created for scheduled castes (dalits/untouchables) and scheduled tribes both at 16% and 9% of the population. But with time, for purely vote bank political reasons OBCs were added to the beneficiaries reducing the space for forward castes.
Caste isn’t related to wealth. Poor upper castes are the losers.
Americans conflate jati with varna under the caste label, this is half of the root of this issue.
You’re right . I should have read you more carefully…thought you meant as a percentage of total population
What is a frog nazi? Does that have some specific meaning? Genuine question.
@JMcG
Right-wing Twitter anons with Pepe the frog as their avatar. Very obnoxious and stupid as a rule.
Here in Canada where I live, much of the animosity between different Indian groups is between Hindus and Sikhs rather than Hindus and Muslims (although a few years ago, an Indo-Canadian Hindu leader drew attention to himself when he held a “dog protest” outside a mosque). Just recently, two Hindu temples were defaced, and some evidence points to the culprits being Sikh, although until we know for sure who the perpetrators are, nothing is 100% certain. What is the situation of Sikhs in the United States?
Sikhs in the US are not as overepresented among Indians as they are in Canada. The ones I have interacted with seem to have Khalistani sympathies and don’t like India or Hindus. No violence between them and Hindus though, everyone just minds their own business. I think South Asian immigrants in the US are just a class above the ones in Canada. Canadian South Asians seem more “ghetto” and too attached to their old country.
For the most part, explicit Khalistani sympathies don’t matter that much for most people who grew up in Canada – just like Tamil or Croatian pride doesn’t matter all that much day-to-day. It does sometimes flare up when young men shit-talk and with political activism.
These issues ironically flare up the most when other people are strongly sensitive about the origin country. If I was glib, I would say sensitivity about your home country is a worse metric for assimilation, than say separatism about some far-away place. Certainly hasn’t caused Irish or Zionists in North America too much issues with assimilation after the 1900s.
It is true though that Canadian South Asians are more broad in their socio-economic class but I don’t think its all that bad either. For example conservatives seem to do better with South Asians here than they do in the US.
Likewise, I think people underrate the extent to which more skilled immigration or international students tend to bring their ‘culture’ – compared to ‘ghetto’/working class ones.
I live in France and in 2019, participated in “Le festival de l’Inde”, organised by my town
On the last day, the mostly Tamil organisers thought it great to invite a sikh group for a martial cultural presentation
All went well but at the end of the presentation, they pulled out a Khalistani flag and the show was followed by a photo and text presentation of Sikhism
The text insisted on Sikhism being a monotheistic religion and insisted on diffentiating Sikhs from Hindus
Noone seemed to notice it, even less the tamils from Puducherry
The sikh diaspora is profoundly anti indian and hinduphobic. The problem is, they are outnumbered by Hindus everywhere, perform less well at school and in the work place and wear their religion on their head at all times.
The French see them as another exotic Indian group and their lack of integration within french society doesn’t help them advance their agenda
Lastly, most Hindus in France are either tamils from Sri Lanka, Puducherry and Réunion Island or biharis from Mauritius. Tamils and Biharis didn’t have any historical interaction so Sikhs can’t really target us or complain about French Hindus