essay on caste discrimination in english

Title VII and Caste Discrimination

• Guha Krishnamurthi
• Charanya Krishnaswami
• See full issue

Introduction

In the summer of 2020, a report of workplace discrimination roiled Silicon Valley and the tech world. 1 An employee at Cisco Systems, Inc. (Cisco), known only as John Doe, alleged he had suffered an insidious pattern of discrimination — paid less, cut out of opportunities, marginalized by coworkers — based on his caste. 2 Consequently, the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) brought suit against Cisco, alleging that the employee’s managers and (thus) Cisco had engaged in unlawful employment discrimination. 3 Doe is a Dalit Indian. 4 Dalits were once referred to as “untouchables” under the South Asian caste system; they suffered and continue to suffer unthinkable caste-based oppression in India and elsewhere in the Subcontinent. 5 Doe claims that two managers, also from India but belonging to a dominant caste, 6 denigrated him based on his Dalit background, denied him promotions, and retaliated against him when he complained of the discriminatory treatment. 7 Thereafter, a group of thirty women engineers who identify as Dalit and who work for tech companies like Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Cisco shared an anonymous statement with the Washington Post explaining the caste bias they have faced in the workplace and calling for the tech industry to be better. 8

While Doe’s and the thirty women engineers’ allegations of caste discrimination raise novel questions about the application of civil rights statutes to workplace discrimination on the basis of caste, these allegations echo a tale as old as time: the millennia-old structure of caste discrimination and the systemic oppression of Dalits, which has been described as a system of “apartheid,” 9 the “[c]onstancy of the [b]ottom [r]ung,” 10 and reduction to the “lowest of the low,” 11 a fixed position that followed Doe and these thirty women engineers halfway around the world. DFEH’s case based on Doe’s allegations is still at the complaint stage, with a long road of discovery surely ahead. Other claims of caste discrimination, including by the thirty women engineers, have not yet been brought to court. Thus, for all these cases, a preliminary legal question beckons: Is a claim of caste discrimination cognizable under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964? 12 We argue that the answer is yes.

This Essay continues in two Parts. In Part I, we explain the basic contours and characteristics of the South Asian caste system and detail the reach and impact of caste in the United States. In Part II, we explain how caste discrimination is, as a legal matter, cognizable under Title VII as discrimination based on “race,” “religion,” or “national origin,” following the Supreme Court’s teaching in Bostock v. Clayton County , 13 in which the Court found that sexual orientation discrimination is a type of sex discrimination. 14 We briefly conclude, contending that, despite the coverage of caste discrimination under federal law, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) or Congress should provide further clear guidance — and in doing so consider other kinds of discrimination throughout the world that should be explicitly prohibited in the United States. While addressing claims of caste discrimination through Title VII enforcement is just one of many steps that must be taken to eradicate caste-based discrimination, naming caste as a prohibited basis on which to discriminate has the added value of increasing public consciousness about a phenomenon that, at least in U.S. workplaces, remains invisible to many.

I. Caste Discrimination and Its Reach

A. brief description of the south asian caste system.

Caste is a structure of social stratification that is characterized by hereditary transmission of a set of practices, often including occupation, ritual practice, and social interaction. 15 There are various social systems around the world that have been described as “caste” systems. 16 Here, we will use “caste” to refer to the South Asian caste system that operates both in South Asia and in the diaspora. 17 As we will see, the South Asian caste system is a hierarchical system that involves discrimination and perpetuates oppression.

The South Asian caste system covers around 1.8 billion people, and it is instantiated in different ways through different ethnic, linguistic, and religious groups and geographies. 18 As a result, it can be difficult to say anything categorical about the caste system. Thus, our description identifies its broad contours and characteristics.

The caste system is rooted in the indigenous traditions, practices, and religions of South Asia. 19 We can generally refer to those traditions, practices, and religions as “Hinduism.” The term Hinduism, as we use it, is an umbrella term for a diversity of traditions, practices, and religions that may share no common thread except for geographical provenance. So defined, the term Hinduism is capacious. We separately identify Jainism, Buddhism, and Sikhism. As a matter of convention, Christianity and Islam are not generally considered or labeled indigenous religions of the Subcontinent, but the forms of those religions in the Subcontinent have distinctive features. 20

The caste system is an amalgamation of at least two different systems: varna and jati . 21 Varna is a four-part stratification made up of brahmana , kshatriya , vaishya , and shudra classes. 22 These classes have been characterized as the priestly class, the ruler-warrior class, the merchant class, and the laborer class, respectively. 23 There is implicitly another varna — those excluded from this four-part hierarchy. 24 They are sometimes described as belonging to the panchama varna (literally, the “fifth varna ”). 25 The panchama varna is treated as synonymous with the term “untouchable” 26 — now called “Dalit.” 27

Alongside the varna system is the jati system. Jati refers to more specific groupings, and in the actual practice of the caste system, jati is much more significant. 28 There are thousands of jati -s, and jati identity incorporates, among other things, traditional occupation, linguistic identity, geographical identity, and religious identity. 29 Similar to varna , there is a large underclass in the jati system made up of many jati -s. Those include jati -s based on certain traditional occupations viewed as “unclean,” like agricultural workers, scavengers, cobblers, and street sweepers. 30 They also include certain tribal identities, called “Adivasis.” 31 The relationship between varna and jati is complex. At various junctures, people have attempted to place jati -s within a varna , to create a unified system of sorts. This attempted fusion inevitably continues the “tradition of dispute over whether these two hierarchies coincide, and which is the more fundamental.” 32

The foundations of the caste system are nebulous at best. The system may have had some grounding in primitive racial, color, ethnic, or linguistic distinctions, but that is unclear. 33 Nevertheless, the resulting caste system can be characterized with at least the following core traits: (1) hereditary transmission and endogamy; (2) strong relationships with religious and social practice and interaction; (3) relationships with concepts of “purity” and “pollution”; and (4) hierarchical ordering, including through perceived superiority of dominant castes over oppressed castes, hierarchy of occupation, and discrimination and stigmatization of oppressed castes. 34

As observed, the caste system is rooted in Hinduism. 35 And it continues to live in modern Hindu practice. 36 Of course, many Hindus are committed to the eradication of caste and the belief that true Hindu belief eschews (and has always eschewed) the evils of caste. 37 But modern Hindu practice continues to recognize and entrench caste in religious and social practice and interaction, and people suffer oppression and discrimination on the basis of caste. 38 The tentacles of caste oppression extend beyond modern Hindu practice as well: in South Asia, caste distinction and oppression manifests in Christian, Muslim, Sikh, and Jain communities, among others. 39 As a detailed report on caste by the Dalit-led research and advocacy group Equality Labs has observed, “[t]his entire [caste discrimination] system is enforced by violence and maintained by one of the oldest, most persistent cultures of impunity throughout South Asia, most notably in India, where despite the contemporary illegality of the system, it has persisted and thrived for 2,500 years.” 40 There is no doubt that Hinduism provided the foundation for caste discrimination and oppression and that modern Hindu practice continues to perpetuate it. But the insidiousness of caste discrimination is such that it sprouts and thrives even when divorced from its doctrinal home of Hinduism, and even when there is claimed caste eradication.

Regarding caste hierarchy, the ordering is complex, incomplete, and controversial. There is no lineal ordering, and any putative ordering is not definitive. Brahmana are generally described as occupying the top of the proverbial pyramid, though kshatriya and vaishya communities often claim divine lineage, and do not necessarily recognize any so-called brahmana supremacy. 41 These three varna are usually understood to form the core of the so-called “upper,” or dominant, castes. 42 Those of the four named varna -s have historically been ranked as “superior” to those of the fifth ( panchama ) varna — the “untouchables” or Dalits. 43 Similarly clear is that those categorized as brahmana , kshatriya , and vaishya have historically subjugated the shudra varna . 44

Of course, these hierarchical comparisons are entirely bigoted and without merit. 45 As a result of them, Dalits, Shudras, and others have experienced and continue to experience horrific oppression at the hands of dominant castes — what Equality Labs has described as a “system of Caste apartheid,” with oppressed castes “having to live in segregated ghettoes, being banned from places of worship, and being denied access to schools and other public amenities including water and roads.” 46

Oppressed-caste status impacts everything in one’s life. 47 It can impact one’s access to religious and social institutions — for example, Dalits and Shudras may be barred from entering temples, mosques, gurdwaras, and churches. 48 It may mean that they cannot eat in certain restaurants or shop at certain stores. It may mean that they are not allowed to marry people of different caste lineage 49 — and will be killed if they try. 50 It may mean that they cannot eat in certain people’s houses. 51 It may mean that they are not even allowed to cremate or bury their dead. 52 Moreover, oppressed-caste individuals have often been subjected to hate-based violence, with no genuine access to jus-tice. 53 And, as a political matter, individuals of oppressed castes have often been denied meaningful representation. 54

Consequently, South Asian governments have attempted to address these problems, at least nominally, through prohibitions on discrimination 55 and through “reservation” — systems that seek to uplift these oppressed communities through uses of quotas in education and employment. 56 These actions have faced continued opposition from members of dominant castes. 57 And, as a result, Dalits, Adivasis, and Other Backward Classes (OBCs) who obtain reservation are often discrimi-nated against as potential beneficiaries of reservation, even though res-ervation was meant to rectify and address millennia of caste-based oppression.

Finally, and relevantly, the South Asian caste system has traveled beyond the borders of the Subcontinent. The South Asian diaspora observes caste identity, and there is consequent caste discrimination. 58 As Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, a leader of the Dalit liberation movement and author of the Indian Constitution, stated, caste discrimination and oppression “is a local problem, but one capable of much wider mischief, for ‘as long as caste in India does exist, Hindus will hardly intermarry or have any social intercourse with outsiders; and if Hindus migrate to other regions on earth, Indian caste would become a world problem.’” 59

B. The Impact of Caste in the United States

The immigration of South Asians to the United States has come in waves, each of which has changed the caste dynamics of the population. While today the population is viewed as a monolith, from the earliest days of South Asian migration, dominant-caste members of the diaspora sought to differentiate themselves from the oppressed others. 60 Given dominant-caste members’ fears that crossing an ocean would cause them to lose their caste status, the earliest migrants to the United States were those who had nothing to lose: predominantly oppressed-caste and non-Hindu people. 61

At the turn of the twentieth century, xenophobic backlash against East and South Asian immigrants led to new laws forbidding nonwhite immigrants from accessing citizenship, with heart-wrenching consequences for South Asian immigrants who had forged lives and families in the country. 62 In 1923, Bhagat Singh Thind, a dominant-caste immigrant born in Amritsar, Punjab, “sought to make common cause with his upper-caste counterparts in America,” 63 effectively arguing his ethnic background and caste laid a claim to whiteness in his adopted coun-try — claims, as Equality Labs notes, the caste-oppressed could never make. 64

Today, there are nearly 5.4 million South Asians in the United States. 65 From 2010 to 2017, the South Asian population grew by a “staggering” forty percent. 66 The first wave of modern migration from the Subcontinent took place in the wake of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, 67 which removed discriminatory national origin-based quotas, and which established the modern immigration system based on work and family ties. 68 Equality Labs notes the majority of South Asian immigrants who came to the United States after the 1965 reform were “professionals and students[,] . . . largely ‘upper’ Caste, upper class, the most educated, and c[oming] from the newly independent Indian cities.” 69 Oppressed-caste people, by contrast, having had at that point just limited access to educational and professional opportunities, came in smaller numbers. 70 The Immigration Act of 1990, 71 which liberalized employment-based migration, further opened up pathways for South Asian immigration to the United States. 72 This wave, according to Equality Labs, included a growing number of immigrants from historically oppressed castes who, through resistance movements and reforms in access to education and other opportunities, were increasingly able to harness sufficient mobility to migrate. 73 Even still, according to a 2003 study from the Center for the Advanced Study of India at the University of Pennsylvania, only 1.5% of Indian immigrants were members of Dalit or other oppressed castes, while more than 90% were from high or dominant castes. 74

Yet, contrary to the fears of the earliest South Asian immigrants to the United States, the fact of one’s caste is not shed by the crossing of an ocean. As South Asian immigrants have integrated into the United States in increasing numbers, caste discrimination among the diaspora’s members threatens to entrench itself as well. This caste discrimination is complicated and perhaps obscured by a second racial caste system in the United States: one which situates South Asians generally as an in-between “middle caste,” relatively privileged and sometimes conferred “model minority” status, yet still systematically excluded from the highest echelons of power and discriminated against on the basis of race and national origin. 75

Given how entrenched and ubiquitous caste oppression still is across South Asia, and how programmed and hereditary discriminatory attitudes can be, it is easy to imagine how a subtler, more insidious form of caste discrimination has replicated here. As the South Asian community in the United States has grown, so have, for example, identity groups organized around linguistic and caste identities, 76 informally entrenching caste divisions among South Asians in the United States. The only study of which we are aware concerning caste identity and discrimination in the United States, conducted by Equality Labs, found that, of 1,200 people surveyed, over half of Dalits in the United States reported experiencing caste-based derogatory remarks or jokes against them, and over a quarter reported experiencing physical assault based on their caste. 77

Of particular relevance to this paper, an astonishing two-thirds of Dalit respondents to the survey reported experiencing some form of discrimination in the workplace. 78 The workplace is one of the primary areas where caste discrimination manifests — perhaps because caste itself is historically predicated in part on one’s work, the notion that one’s birth consigns one to a certain occupation, and concomitantly a certain status and fate.

In the U.S. tech sector, which has a large South Asian workforce, 79 complaints of caste discrimination have been particularly rampant. Earlier this month, a group of thirty women engineers who identify as Dalit and who work for tech companies like Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Cisco issued a public statement to the Washington Post stating they had faced caste bias in the U.S. tech sector. 80 Other Dalit employees have described their fears of being “outed” in the workplace, as well as subtle attempts to discern their caste based on so-called “caste locator[s],” such as the neighborhoods where they grew up, whether they eat meat, or what religion they practice. 81 The risks of caste discrimination against oppressed-caste employees are exacerbated in professions with high numbers of South Asians, where programmed attitudes about caste superiority and inferiority can easily take hold. With this subtler, more insidious discrimination taking root, we must determine what recourse exists in the law to combat it.

II. Title VII’s Coverage of Caste

To answer the legal question, we first look at the statute. Title VII prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. 82 Thus, for caste discrimination to be cognizable under Title VII, it must be cognizable as discrimination based on at least one of these grounds. The challenge is to determine which if any of these grounds encompasses caste discrimination.

Following the Supreme Court’s decision in Bostock v. Clayton County , our determination whether caste discrimination is cognizable under any of these grounds is governed by the text of the statute. 83 Title VII makes it “unlawful . . . for an employer to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.” 84

The first question in determining coverage under Title VII is whether caste is in fact simply reducible to one of these categories. If not, the next question is whether caste discrimination satisfies the but-for causation test with respect to one of these categories. 85 As the Bostock Court explains:

[But-for] causation is established whenever a particular outcome would not have happened “but for” the purported cause. In other words, a but-for test directs us to change one thing at a time and see if the outcome changes. If it does, we have found a but-for cause. This can be a sweeping standard. Often, events have multiple but-for causes. So, for example, if a car accident occurred both because the defend-ant ran a red light and because the plaintiff failed to signal his turn at the intersection, we might call each a but-for cause of the collision. When it comes to Title VII, the adoption of the traditional but-for causation standard means a defendant cannot avoid liability just by citing some other factor that contributed to the challenged employment decision. So long as the plaintiff’s sex was one but-for cause of that decision, that is enough to trigger the law. 86

Finally, we can ask whether caste is “conceptually” dependent on one of these categories. 87 For all these questions, we may consider the original expected applications of the statute, but we are not limited to those expected applications. 88 Rather, we are led by the fair and reasonable meaning of the plain text, even if that goes beyond the expected applications. 89

As a preliminary determination, we can remove “sex” from the picture. Whatever caste discrimination is, it is self-evidently not on the basis of sex. At a first level, caste discrimination is not simply reducible to sex. Further, caste discrimination can be levied upon actors regardless of their sex, and without any appeal to their sex. Consequently, it meets neither the but-for causation test nor the conceptual dependence test. Of course, a person may experience discrimination based on caste and sex — for example, a Dalit woman may experience harassment based on both features of their identity. That raises questions of mixed motivation, addressed below. 90 But discrimination on the basis of caste alone does not necessarily implicate questions of sex.

That leaves national origin, race, color, and religion for our further investigation. We consider each in turn.

A. National Origin

We first contend that there is a plausible argument that caste discrimination constitutes discrimination on the basis of national origin.

Importantly, discrimination based on being South Asian is cognizable as discrimination based on “national origin.” 91 This may at first glance seem like an odd conclusion, since South Asia is not itself a nation. On this point, the EEOC explains: “National origin discrimination involves treating people (applicants or employees) unfavorably because they are from a particular country or part of the world, because of ethnicity or accent, or because they appear to be of a certain ethnic background (even if they are not).” 92 On this account, discrimination based on South Asian identity is clearly national-origin discrimination.

That said, straightforwardly, caste identity is not simply reducible to being South Asian. It is a further qualification of one’s South Asian identity.

In addition, the but-for test can be used to argue that caste discrimination is a form of national-origin discrimination, because it would not occur “but for” one’s national origin. Specifically, but for the employee having an ancestor who had a particular caste identity defined and dictated by South Asian culture and practice, the employee would not have been discriminated against. More simply, but for the employee having a particular South Asian heritage (that is, their involuntary membership in a South Asian caste hierarchy), the employee would not have been discriminated against. So that is national-origin discrimination.

And on the conceptual test: one cannot understand the employee’s caste identity without appeal to certain features of South Asian culture — thus, caste identity is conceptually dependent on South Asian identity and is therefore national-origin discrimination.

What exactly “race” is, and how “races” are properly defined, is an almost impenetrably difficult question. 93 There are compelling accounts of the caste system as, at its genesis, based on some variety of racial categorization, even if primitive. 94 And there are other accounts that claim that race is orthogonal to caste. 95 Resolving the question of whether caste is in fact reducible to or based on race would prove controversial, and so finding caste discrimination is racial discrimination because of caste’s relationship to race is an equally controversial proposition. Consequently, here, we do not pursue that type of argument.

There is however another sense in which caste may be simply reducible to race. If “race” means something like a group distinguished by ancestry, 96 then caste will select a particular “race,” because caste is a hereditary system that relates to ancestry. 97 The EEOC has suggested such an understanding of “race”: “Title VII does not contain a definition of ‘race.’ Race discrimination includes discrimination on the basis of ancestry or physical or cultural characteristics associated with a certain race, such as skin color, hair texture or styles, or certain facial features.” 98

The Supreme Court’s decision in Saint Francis College v. Al-Khazraji 99 supports the contention that discrimination based on “race” would be interpreted to include discrimination on the basis of “ancestry.” There, a professor — who was a United States citizen born in Iraq — filed suit alleging that his denial of tenure was based on his Arabian heritage and thus constituted unlawful discrimination under 42 U.S.C. § 1981. 100 The district court dismissed the complaint, ruling that a claim under § 1981 could not be maintained for discrimination based on being of the “Arabian race.” 101 The Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit reversed, holding that the complaint properly alleged discrimination based on race. In so doing, the court of appeals explained that § 1981 was not limited to present racial classifications. Instead, the statute evinced an intention to recognize “at the least, membership in a group that is ethnically and physiognomically distinctive.” 102

The Supreme Court affirmed the court of appeals’ decision and holding that discrimination based on “Arabian ancestry” is racial discrimination under 42 U.S.C. § 1981. 103 The Court stated that the court of appeals “was thus quite right in holding that § 1981, ‘at a minimum,’ reaches discrimination against an individual ‘because he or she is genetically part of an ethnically and physiognomically distinctive sub-grouping of homo sapiens .’” 104 The Court cautioned, however, that this was sufficient but not necessary, and that in this case Arab heritage was sufficient because the statute evinced that Congress intended to protect people from discrimination “because of their ancestry or ethnic characteristics.” 105 Indeed, the Court may have been eschewing a biological or genetic conception of race, in favor of an understanding predicated on social construction. To this point, the Court noted:

Many modern biologists and anthropologists, however, criticize racial classifications as arbitrary and of little use in understanding the variability of human beings. It is said that genetically homogeneous populations do not exist and traits are not discontinuous between populations; therefore, a population can only be described in terms of relative frequencies of various traits. Clear-cut categories do not exist. The particular traits which have generally been chosen to characterize races have been criticized as having little biological significance. It has been found that differences between individuals of the same race are often greater than the differences between the “average” individuals of different races. These observations and others have led some, but not all, scientists to conclude that racial classifications are for the most part sociopolitical, rather than biological, in nature. 106

Thus, it seems that the Court understood ancestry discrimination as a type of racial discrimination. 107 And under the Court’s understanding of “ancestry or ethnic characteristics,” even if formed primarily due to sociopolitical forces, caste would qualify as ancestry, and thus caste discrimination as ancestry discrimination and “race” discrimination. 108

Of course, the current Supreme Court may not accept this formulation of race as including “discrimination on the basis of ancestry” or an “ethnic[] and physiognomic[]” subgrouping. Indeed, it is plausible that the Court would interpret “race” to be rooted in racial classifications that were salient in the American experience at the time of the Act’s passage. 109 The new Court could disclaim its decision in Al-Khazraji . Or the Court might decide that, while “Arabian” ancestry was salient at the time of the Act’s drafting, South Asian caste was not.

Notwithstanding, in light of the Court’s precedent and the EEOC’s definition of “race” as encompassing ancestry discrimination, there remains a sound basis to find that discrimination based on South Asian caste is encompassed within Title VII’s category of “race.”

The analysis of whether caste discrimination is discrimination based on “color” is similar to the analysis under “race.” Just as with “race,” it likely rises or falls based on controversial questions about the nature of caste, along with difficult questions about the meaning of “color.”

Like “race,” “color” is not defined by Title VII. The EEOC explains that “[c]olor discrimination occurs when a person is discriminated against based on his/her skin pigmentation (lightness or darkness of the skin), complexion, shade, or tone. Color discrimination can occur between persons of different races or ethnicities, or even between persons of the same race or ethnicity.” 110

Based on the EEOC’s interpretation and a fair interpretation of the text, it does seem that for caste discrimination to be discrimination on the basis of “color” it must be related to discrimination based on skin “pigmentation . . . , complexion, shade, or tone” 111 (which, for ease, we call “visual skin color”). Finding that caste identity is related to visual skin color is difficult. 112 There is some empirical support for the claim, 113 but at the moment the strength of that relationship is uncertain. 114 As a historical matter, varna has one definition which literally translates to “color.” 115 If this referred to visual skin color, then there may be a strong basis — grounded in history and continued by a hereditary, endogamous system — to find caste discrimination as a type of color discrimination. But the consensus scholarly view seems to be that varna did not refer to skin color. 116

As a result, and based on our current understanding, we contend that for purposes of interpreting Title VII, caste discrimination is not best understood as discrimination on the basis of “color.”

D. Religion

What about religion? We contend that there is a plausible argument that caste discrimination can be viewed as discrimination based on religion.

Importantly, discrimination on the basis of religion can be on the basis of religious heritage. 117 That is, if an employee is discriminated against because their ancestors had particular religious beliefs or had a particular religious association, that is religious discrimination, even if the employee does not have those beliefs or accept that association.

Now, suppose a manager discriminates against an employee for their caste identity. The employee has the caste identity of being a Shudra or a Dalit. We know that is a feature of their religious heritage, and so we need not further ask whether the employee has any particular religious beliefs or accepts the association. The question is firmly whether this feature of their heritage is religious heritage. We think it is.

First, caste identity is inextricably linked to religious practice. Caste identity places one in a particular (complex) hierarchy in how they are viewed within a religious community, and in religious terms such as purity, pollution, and piety. In particular, someone being a Shudra or a Dalit means that they are, due to bigotry, seen as occupying a lesser position or role in their religious community — whatever their religion is. Historically, access to places of worship has, and continues to be, closely linked to one’s caste identity. 118 And it is a core facet of caste that it places one in that hierarchy. Consequently, discrimination based on caste is discrimination based on one’s role in their religious community — and that is religious discrimination. 119

An example may clarify: Suppose an employee of unknown religion confesses to their manager that their clan is seen as the lowest in their religious community — but the employee gives no further details about their religion. The manager is disgusted by this and fires them. In so doing, the manager is discriminating against the employee because of a facet of their religious identity. Even though the manager is largely ignorant of the employee’s religious identity, that is still plainly religious discrimination.

In a similar vein, we might also argue that caste identity always qualifies one’s religious identity. It is, in a sense, being part of a particular sect of a religion. Understood thusly, it is pellucid that caste discrimination should constitute religious discrimination.

Now one might object that caste identity is compatible with different religious identities. For example, one can be a Shudra or a Dalit and be of many different religious backgrounds — among other things, Hindu, Jain, Sikh, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist. What if the manager does not care at all about the employee’s religion? Would this take caste discrimination outside the scope of religious discrimination?

We think not. First, as argued above, we think that caste discrimination is discrimination based on position in religious society — and thus is religious discrimination. But caste also impacts other parts of one’s life, so the objecting manager may protest that religion has nothing to do with their motivations. Even still, we think the argument is unavailing for another reason: because caste relates to religious heritage. That is, to discriminate against someone based on caste is usually to discriminate against them on the basis that they had an ancestor who occupied a certain position in Hindu society. This is for the simple fact that the caste system is inherited from Hindu society — and one’s caste identity arises from ancestors who occupied a certain position in that Hindu society. We contend that this is religious discrimination. That is because we understand discrimination based on religious heritage as discrimination on the basis of religion, irrespective of the employee’s actual beliefs. 120 But this may also be properly considered discrimination on the basis of ancestry, and therefore as discrimination on the basis of race or national origin. Important here is to recognize that there may be overlap between these categories. 121

In light of that, we can put this idea simply in terms of the but-for test: But for the employee having an ancestor who had a particular caste identity as defined and dictated by Hindu religious practice, the employee would not have been discriminated against. Ergo, but for the employee having a particular Hindu heritage, the employee would not have been discriminated against. Hence, had the employee’s ancestors not been Hindu, the employee would not have their caste identity (that was the subject of discrimination). That is then clearly religious (heri-tage) discrimination.

The conceptual test reaches the same conclusion: one cannot understand the employee’s caste identity without appeal to certain Hindu ideas — thus, caste identity is conceptually dependent on religious practice and is therefore religious discrimination. 122

E. Mixed Motivation

One’s caste identity may be determined by myriad features, other than purely ancestral traits. Their caste identity could, for example, be defined by adopted religion, where one lives, and what languages one speaks, among other things. 123 Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, himself a Dalit, converted to Buddhism from Hinduism because he believed caste discrimination was endemic to Hinduism. 124 In addition to his own conversion, Ambedkar led a mass conversion movement, called the Ambedkarite Buddhism movement (or the Dalit Buddhist movement). 125 Those who were or are part of that movement may identify as Dalit Buddhists, due to their ancestral Dalit identity and their non-ancestral trait of their religious beliefs.

Discrimination against someone based on this combined identity — here, being a Dalit Buddhist — will in the vast majority of cases satisfy the but-for causation test with respect to the ancestral portion of their caste identity. For example, we could imagine someone who discriminated against a Dalit Buddhist, but not a Dalit Hindu nor a non-Dalit Buddhist. The discriminator’s motivation for discrimination is not simply that the employee is a Dalit, but that they are a Dalit who flouted Hindu identity by converting to Buddhism. However, in such an example, but for the person’s Dalit identity, they would not have been discriminated against. 126

One common strategy to defeat recognizing discrimination on mixed-motivation is to disentangle the purportedly separate motivations and then question each in isolation. For example, suppose an employee claims she is being discriminated against for being a Black woman, but the employer also discriminated against non-Black women as well as Black men. Applying a “divide-and-conquer” strategy, the employer may be able to undermine but-for causation on either of the bases of being Black or being a woman, by using non-Black employees (including discriminated-against women) as comparators for assessing the racial component of her claim, while using male employees (including discriminated-against Black men) as comparators for the gendered component. A similar argument might arise against the Dalit Buddhist, where the employer discriminates against non-Buddhist Dalits as well as non-Dalit Buddhists.

Here, Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw’s work is critical and illuminating. Among her observations, she recognized that discrimination across multiple axes of identity may result in particularly pernicious treatment for the targets of such discrimination. 127 Crenshaw’s theory of intersectionality may allow targets of multiaxial discrimination to use comparators who suffer discrimination, but not as severe, to ground their claims. 128 In our examples, if Dalit Buddhists are treated more severely than Dalit non-Buddhists and non-Dalit Buddhists, they can still ground their claim as they suffer worse treatment than these comparators. 129

Caste discrimination is in our midst in the United States. Given the nature of caste, which seeks to indelibly mark and stigmatize, this discrimination reaches all facets of life, and thus, it is no surprise that it enters our workplaces. This issue requires our collective awareness and our vigilance. We have argued that Title VII gives us the tools to ensure that we can prevent, rectify, and ensure restitution for caste discrimination. In particular, we have shown how under the text of Title VII, in light of the Supreme Court’s teaching in Bostock v. Clayton County , caste discrimination is cognizable as race discrimination, religious discrimination, and national origin discrimination.

While these arguments are strong, given that judicial interpretation of Title VII’s protections are in flux, the surest way to ensure that workers who experience caste discrimination are able to access recourse is to explicitly enshrine “caste” as a prohibited basis of discrimination, in both executive-branch policy and in the text of Title VII itself. The EEOC could issue an opinion letter or guidance clarifying that Title VII’s provisions prohibiting race, national origin, and/or religious discrimination forbid discrimination on the basis of caste. An even stronger protection, of course, would be for Congress to pass legislation that explicitly states that caste discrimination is unlawful under Title VII. Even in this time of extreme partisanship, this is uncontroversial and should garner bipartisan support. 130 Furthermore, though we do not contend that EEOC guidance or amending Title VII thusly would serve as a magic-bullet solution to a complicated, deep-rooted problem, it would have an important signaling effect, putting workplaces on notice that caste-based discrimination is real and must be vigilantly addressed. Finally, although we address South Asian caste discrimination in particular, there are other types of “caste” and ancestry discrimination that occur around the globe. 131 We think that this case study of caste discrimination, and how it may be addressed by Title VII, applies generally. In that spirit, both the executive branch and Congress should act to clarify that all varieties of global “caste” discrimination are unlawful and intolerable in a just society.

* Assistant Professor, South Texas College of Law. ** J.D., 2013, Yale Law School. The views expressed in this Essay represent solely the personal views of the authors. The South Asian caste system was and is a paradigm of injustice. It has perpetuated incomprehensible suffering. We wish to acknowledge that we are, as a matter of ancestry, members of the dominant Brahmin caste — a designation that has conferred upon us systemic privilege we have done nothing to deserve. We would like to thank Susannah Barton Tobin, Mitchell Berman, Anisha Gupta, Alexander Platt, Charles Rocky Rhodes, Peter Salib, Anuradha Sivaram, and Eric Vogelstein for insightful comments and questions. We would also like to acknowledge the pathbreaking work of Equality Labs on these issues, which served as an inspiration for this Essay.

^ See Yashica Dutt, Opinion, The Specter of Caste in Silicon Valley , N. Y. TIMES (July 14, 2020), https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/14/opinion/caste-cisco-indian-americans-discrimination.html [ https://perma.cc/DMS8-LCTF ]; David Gilbert, Silicon Valley Has a Caste Discrimination Problem , VICE NEWS (Aug. 5, 2020, 8:16AM), https://www.vice.com/en/article/3azjp5/silicon-valley-has-a-caste-discrimination-problem [ https://perma.cc/W3V8-H6WN ]; Thenmozhi Soundararajan, Opinion, A New Lawsuit Shines a Light on Caste Discrimination in the U.S. and Around the World , WASH. POST (July 13, 2020, 4:57 PM), https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/07/13/new-lawsuit-shines-light-caste-discrimination-us-around-world [ https://perma.cc/5CV8-LC64 ].

^ Paige Smith, Caste Bias Lawsuit Against Cisco Tests Rare Workplace Claim , BLOOMBERG L. (July 17, 2020, 2:45 AM), https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/caste-bias-lawsuit-against-cisco-tests-rare-workplace-claim [ https://perma.cc/2E6E-A7TN ]; Press Release, California Dep’t of Fair Emp. & Hous., DFEH Sues Cisco Systems, Inc. and Former Managers for Caste-Based Discrimination (June 30, 2020), https://www.dfeh.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/sites/32/2020/06/Cisco_2020.06.30.pdf [ https://perma.cc/VWC2-79J7 ].

^ Press Release, California Dep’t of Fair Emp. & Hous., supra note 2. DFEH initially brought suit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, alleging violations of Title VII. Id . Thereafter, on October 16, 2020, DFEH voluntarily dismissed the suit without prejudice, stating its intention to refile in California state court. California Drops Caste Discrimination Case Against Cisco, Says Will Re-file , The Wire (Oct. 21, 2020), https:// thewire.in/caste/california-drops-caste-discrimination-case-against-cisco-says-will-re-file [ https://perma.cc/P6Z7-E8NM ]. This action may have been because of some question as to whether caste discrimination is cognizable under Title VII or other federal law. If so, we contend this Essay establishes that it is.

^ Gilbert, supra note 1.

^ E.g ., Hum. Rts. Watch, Caste Discrimination (2001), https://www.hrw.org/reports/pdfs/g/general/caste0801.pdf [ https://perma.cc/YA8L-Z8PR ] (discussing discrimination against Dalits in South Asia); Hillary Mayell, India’s “Untouchables” Face Violence, Discrimination , Nat’l Geographic (June 2, 2003), https://www.nationalgeographic.com/pages/article/indias-untouchables-face-violence-discrimination [ https://perma.cc/L5XE-263U ] (“Human rights abuses against [‘untouchables’], known as Dalits, are legion.”).

^ We will use the term “dominant caste” to refer to the so-called “upper castes,” which better reflects the hierarchy of power that has created systemic oppression of Dalits, Adivasis, and other disfavored castes. We will use the term “oppressed caste” to refer to Dalits, Adivasis, and other disfavored castes. See infra notes 41–44 and accompanying text.

^ See Dutt, supra note 1.

^ Nitasha Tiku, India’s Engineers Have Thrived in Silicon Valley. So Has Its Caste System ., Wash. Post (Oct. 27, 2020, 6:45 PM), https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/10/27/indian-caste-bias-silicon-valley [ https://perma.cc/VP2F-U7QX ].

^ Maari Zwick-Maitreyi, Thenmozhi Soundararajan, Natasha Dar, Ralph F. Bheel & Prathap Balakrishnan, Equal. Labs, Caste in the United States: A Survey of Caste Among South Asian Americans 10 (2018), https://static1.squarespace.com/static/58347d04bebafbb1e66df84c/t/603ae9f4cfad7f515281e9bf/1614473732034/Caste_report_2018.pdf [ https://perma.cc/7PW3-DUL5 ] [hereinafter Caste in the United States ].

^ Isabel Wilkerson, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents 128 (2020).

^ Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, Opinion, Securing the Rights of India’s “Untouchables ,” The Hill (Feb. 27, 2018, 3:30 PM), https://thehill.com/opinion/international/375851-securing-the-rights-of-indias-untouchables [ https://perma.cc/2L2S-9Z67 ].

^ 42 U.S.C. § 2000e et seq .

^ 140 S. Ct. 1731 (2020).

^ Id . at 1737.

^ E.g ., A New Dictionary of the Social Sciences 194 (G. Duncan Mitchell ed., 2d ed. 1979) (defining “social stratification” and explaining the concept of “caste”).

^ See generally, e.g ., Elijah Obinna, Contesting Identity: The Osu Caste System Among Igbo of Nigeria , 10 Afr. Identities 111 (2012) (describing the Osu caste system among the Igbo people in Nigeria); Tal Tamari, The Development of Caste Systems in West Africa , 32 J. Afr. Hist . 221 (1991) (explaining endogamous groups that exist in West Africa); Hiroshi Wagatsuma & George A. De Vos , The Ecology of Special Buraku , in Japan’s Invisible Race: Caste in Culture and Personality 113–28 ( George A. De Vos & Hiroshi Wagatsuma eds., 1966) (describing Japan as having a caste system and discussing the position and oppression of the Buraku people); Paul Eckert, North Korea Political Caste System Behind Abuses: Study , Reuters (June 5, 2012, 9:11 PM), https://www.reuters.com/article/us-korea-north-caste/north-korea-political-caste-system-behind-abuses-study-idUSBRE85505T20120606 [ https://perma.cc/NZ9Z-4J3L ] (describing the “Songbun” caste system in North Korea).

^ A New Dictionary of the Social Sciences , supra note 15, at 194 (stating that the “classical Hindu system of India approximated most closely to pure caste”).

^ The caste system continues to exist in some form in Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Pakistan, among other countries, which collectively have a population of nearly 1.8 billion people. See Population, Total — India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal , World Bank Grp ., https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.TOTL?end=2019&locations=IN-PK-BD-NP&start=2019&view=bar [ https://perma.cc/8YYT-XN24 ] (searches for country populations); Iftekhar Uddin Chowdhury, Caste-Based Discrimination in South Asia: A Study of Bangladesh 2, 51–55 (Indian Inst. Dalit Stud., Working Paper Vol. III No. 7, 2009), http://idsn.org/wp-content/uploads/user_folder/pdf/New_files/Bangladesh/Caste-based_Discrimination_in_Bangladesh__IIDS_working_paper_.pdf [ https://perma.cc/CQ5N-VFHJ ]; Peter Kapuscinski, More “Can and Must Be Done” to Eradicate Caste-Based Discrimination in Nepal , UN News (May 29, 2020), https://news.un.org/en/story/2020/05/1065102 [ https://perma.cc/JZ62-FVUB ]; Rabia Mehmood, Pakistan’s Caste System: The Untouchable’s Struggle , Express Trib . (Mar. 31, 2012), https://tribune.com.pk/story/357765/pakistans-caste-system-the-untouchables-struggle [ https://perma.cc/4H9Z-46SJ ]; Pakistan Dalit Solidarity Network & Int’l Dalit Solidarity Network , Caste-Based Discrimination in Pakistan 2–3 (2017), https://www.ecoi.net/en/file/local/1402076/1930_1498117230_int-cescr-css-pak-27505-e.pdf [ https://perma.cc/77TM-P8WB ]; Mari Marcel Thekaekara, Opinion, India’s Caste System Is Alive and Kicking — And Maiming and Killing , The Guardian (Aug. 15, 2016, 11:55 AM), https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/15/india-caste-system-70-anniversary-independence-day-untouchables [ https://perma.cc/ER4H-L4KY ].

^ In one important passage, the Rig Veda describes a four-part social hierarchy — of the brahmana , rajanya (later associated with the kshatriya class), vaishya , and shudra . The Hymns of the Rigveda 10.90.12 (Ralph T.H. Griffith trans., Motilal Banarsidass 1973). The Bhagavad Gita also details the general distinction of caste. The B hagavad-GÎt 4.13 , at 110 (A. Mahâdeva Śâstri trans., 2d ed. 1901) (describing the four-fold division of mankind). The Dharmasastras and Dharmasutras , compilations of texts about various Hindu cultural practices, offer an extremely detailed account of the operation of the caste system. The proper understanding of all of these sources is up for debate. See, e.g ., Dharmasūtras: The Law Codes of Āpastamba, Gautama, Baudhāyana, and Vasiṣṭha , at xlii–xliii (Patrick Olivelle ed., trans., Oxford U. Press 1999) (contending that the Dharmasutras are “normative texts” but contain “[d]ivergent [v]oices,” id . at xlii); J.E. Llewellyn, The Modern Bhagavad Gītā : Caste in Twentieth-Century Commentaries , 23 Int’l J. Hindu Stud . 309, 309–23 (2019) (analyzing differing interpretations of caste by leading Hindu thinkers); M.V. Nadkarni, Is Caste System Intrinsic to Hinduism? Demolishing a Myth , 38 Econ. & Pol. Wkly . 4783, 4783 (2003) (arguing that Hinduism did not support the caste system); Chhatrapati Singh, Dharmasastras and Contemporary Jurisprudence , 32 J. Indian L. Inst . 179, 179–82 (1990) (explaining the various ways of interpreting the Dharmasastras ); Debate Casts Light on Gita & Caste System , Times of India (Apr. 8, 2017, 7:10 PM), https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/58072655.cms [ https://perma.cc/Q5XG-MSA9 ] (describing a “heated debate” over interpretations of the Bhagavad Gita ). Regardless, what is clear is that caste was endemic to Hindu practice over time.

^ See generally, e.g ., U.A.B. Razia Akter Banu, Islam in Bangladesh 1–64 (1992) (explaining the distinctive nature of Islam in Bangladesh and Bengali communities); Adil Hussain Khan, From Sufism to Ahmadiyya 42–90 (2015) (detailing the rise of the distinctive Ahmadiyya sect of Islam that arose in Punjab); Rowena Robinson, Christians of India 11–38, 103–39 (2003) (explaining the distinctive Christianity that has developed in India, arising from the mixing of Christian theology and practice and regional traditions); Paul Zacharia, The Surprisingly Early History of Christianity in India , Smithsonian Mag . (Feb. 19, 2016), https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/how-christianity-came-to-india-kerala-180958117 [ https://perma.cc/KRY4-UN3C ] (describing the traditions of the modern Syrian Christians of Kerala).

^ See generally Chandrashekhar Bhat, Ethnicity and Mobility 1–9 (1984); Declan Quigley, The Interpretation of Caste 4 (1993).

^ Sumeet Jain, Note, Tightening India’s “Golden Straitjacket”: How Pulling the Straps of India’s Job Reservation Scheme Reflects Prudent Economic Policy , 8 Wash. U. Glob. Stud. L. Rev . 567, 568 n.7 (2009) (outlining the four-part varna system).

^ Sean A. Pager, Antisubordination of Whom? What India’s Answer Tells Us About the Meaning of Equality in Affirmative Action , 41 U.C. Davis L. Rev . 289, 325 (2007) (discussing the so-called “untouchables,” outside the four-part varna system).

^ Bhat, supra note 21, at 2–3 (discussing the panchama varna and its traditional Vedic understanding); Varsha Ayyar & Lalit Khandare, Mapping Color and Caste Discrimination in Indian Society , in The Melanin Millennium 71, 75, 83 (Ronald E. Hall ed., 2012) (defining the fifth caste as describing “ex-untouchables,” id . at 83, or those outside of the varna system).

^ See Bhat , supra note 21, at 6–7; Ayyar & Khandare, supra note 25, at 75.

^ See Dalits , Minority Rts. Grp. Int’l , https://minorityrights.org/minorities/dalits [ https://perma.cc/TVV9-UN9R ].

^ Bhat, supra note 21, at 3 (discussing the jati system).

^ Padmanabh Samarendra, Census in Colonial India and the Birth of Caste , 46 Econ. & Pol. Wkly . 51, 52 (2011) (explaining the variety of factors that inform jati identity, based in part on region).

^ Who Are Dalits? , Navsarjan Tr ., https://navsarjantrust.org/who-are-dalits [ https://perma.cc/599J-QEHY ] (detailing the subdivisions based on profession within the Dalit community).

^ “Adivasi” and “scheduled tribe” are the terms for certain tribes in the Subcontinent. The term “Adivasi” itself means “original inhabitants.” Adivasis , Minority Rts. Grp. Int’l , https://minorityrights.org/minorities/adivasis-2 [ https://perma.cc/Q34Q-2L95 ]. They face severe discrimination in India and South Asia. Id .

^ Robert Meister, Discrimination Law Through the Looking Glass , 1985 Wis. L. Rev . 937, 975 (book review).

^ See supra note 19 and accompanying text.

^ See, e.g ., Indian Temple “Purified” After Low-Caste Chief Minister Visits , Reuters (Sept. 30, 2014, 9:10 AM), https://www.reuters.com/article/us-foundation-india-caste/indian-temple-purified-after-low-caste-chief-minister-visits-idUSKCN0HP1DE20140930 [ https://perma.cc/8NHE-MB9T ].

^ Caste in the United States , supra note 9, at 10.

^ Dipankar Gupta, Interrogating Caste 54–147 (2000) (observing that individual castes do not necessarily recognize claims of inferiority and thus questioning claims of strict hierarchy between the castes, especially between the “Brahman, Baniya [or vaishya ], [and] Raja [or kshatriya ],” id . at 116).

^ See Jain, supra note 22, at 569 n.7.

^ See sources cited supra note 5.

^ Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd, Where Are the Shudras? , Caravan (Sept. 30, 2018), https://caravanmagazine.in/caste/why-the-shudras-are-lost-in-today-india [ https://perma.cc/S6DY-U4BR ] (discussing discrimination against Shudra communities in India); Tapasya, Not Just “Dalits”: Other-Caste Indians Suffer Discrimination Too , Diplomat ( Aug. 27, 2019), https://thediplomat.com/2019/08/not-just-dalits-other-caste-indians-suffer-discrimination-too [ https://perma.cc/M67R-WE9G ].

^ See, e.g ., T.M. Scanlon, Why Does Inequality Matter? 26 (2018) (“Caste systems and societies marked by racial or sexual discrimination are obvious examples of objectionable inequality.”).

^ See generally Kaivan Munshi, Caste and the Indian Economy , 57 J. Econ. Literature 781 (2019) (explaining that “[c]aste plays a role at every stage of an Indian’s economic life,” from school, to university, to the labor market, and into old age, id . at 781).

^ See, e.g ., Nirmala Carvalho, Indian Church Admits Dalits Face Discrimination , Crux (Mar. 24, 2017), https://cruxnow.com/global-church/2017/03/indian-church-admits-dalits-face-discrimination [ https://perma.cc/M8QD-6E28 ]; Dheer, supra note 39 (observing that there were three separate Sikh shrines based on caste identity); Anuj Kumar, Dalit Women Not Allowed to Enter Temple , The Hindu (Nov. 1, 2019, 2:27 AM), https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/other-states/dalit-women-not-allowed-to-enter-temple/article29847456.ece [ https://perma.cc/BGJ5-HDA2 ]; Tension over Temple Entry by Dalits , The Hindu (Sept. 2, 2020, 6:08 PM), https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/karnataka/tension-over-temple-entry-by-dalits/article32505553.ece [ https://perma.cc/29N4-DX85 ]; Shivam Vij, In Allahpur, a Moment of Truth , Pulitzer Ctr . (Sept. 12, 2011), https://pulitzercenter.org/reporting/allahpur-moment-truth [ https://perma.cc/G3A4-LRKE ] (detailing different mosques based on caste identity). Surveying the news, the vast majority of reported incidents of caste discrimination in places of worship involve Hindu temples. Many of these are not even reported or openly identified, because they are unspoken but known norms that oppressed castes do not dare transgress. There is reason to believe that such caste discrimination is prevalent across South Asian religions, but that does not absolve Hindu practice. Instead, it seeks acknowledgment of the extent of the evil.

^ See, e.g ., Shamani Joshi, A Community in Gujarat Has Banned Inter-caste Marriage and Mobile Phones for Unmarried Girls , Vice (July 18, 2019, 3:02 AM), https://www.vice.com/en/article/evye5e/a-community-in-gujarat-india-has-banned-inter-caste-marriage-and-mobile-phones-for-unmarried-girls [ https://perma.cc/KCT9-CZK8 ].

^ See, e.g ., Couple, Who Had “Intercaste Marriage,” Killed , Hindustan Times (June 28, 2019, 12:07 AM), https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/couple-who-had-intercaste-marriage-killed/story-3cmlhKaraKeGMwoQ6ytxeL.html [ https://perma.cc/245B-D576 ]; Dalit Man Killed by In-Laws Over Inter-caste Marriage: Gujarat Cops , NDTV (July 9, 2019), https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/dalit-man-killed-by-in-laws-over-inter-caste-marriage-gujarat-cops-2066848 [ https://perma.cc/8YMQ-JD6R ].

^ See, e.g ., Hum. Rts. Watch , supra note 5, at 8 (stating that Dalits are often not allowed to enter the houses of so-called upper-caste people).

^ See, e.g ., Dalits, OBCs Forced to Bury Their Deceased by the Roadside , Sabrangindia (Mar. 21, 2020), https://sabrangindia.in/article/dalits-obcs-forced-bury-their-deceased-roadside [ https://perma.cc/V3GT-759U ]; Karal Marx, Denied Access to Crematorium, Dalits “Airdrop” Dead in Tamil Nadu , Times of India (Aug. 22, 2019, 2:51 PM), http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/70779016.cms [ https://perma.cc/7FKN-JBHF ]; Sanjay Pandey, Crematorium Turns “Casteist” as “Upper Caste” People Forbid Funeral of Dalit Woman in Uttar Pradesh , Deccan Herald (July 28, 2020, 4:58 PM), https://www.deccanherald.com/national/crematorium-turns-casteist-as-upper-caste-people-forbid-funeral-of-dalit-woman-in-uttar-pradesh-866699.html [ https://perma.cc/WC24-EGJ8 ]; Anand Mohan Sahay, Backward Muslims Protest Denial of Burial , Rediff India Abroad (Mar. 6, 2003, 2:58 AM), https://www.rediff.com/news/2003/mar/06bihar.htm [ https://perma.cc/85QM-F4YA ].

^ See, e.g ., Soutik Biswas, Hathras Case: Dalit Women Are Among the Most Oppressed in the World , BBC (Oct. 6, 2020), https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-54418513 [ https://perma.cc/WW9P-45XH ]; Vineet Khare, The Indian Dalit Man Killed for Eating in Front of Upper-Caste Men , BBC (May 20, 2019), https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-48265387 [ https://perma.cc/LR9D-T2QU ]; Nilanjana S. Roy, Viewpoint: India Must Stop Denying Caste and Gender Violence , BBC (June 11, 2014), https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-27774908 [ https://perma.cc/8VK3-VJN6 ]; Gautham Subramanyam, In India, Dalits Still Feel Bottom of the Caste Ladder , NBC News (Sept. 13, 2020, 4:30 AM), https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/india-dalits-still-feel-bottom-caste-ladder-n1239846 [ https://perma.cc/2Z67-BPA5 ].

^ See, e.g ., Ilaiah Shepherd, supra note 44 (discussing lack of representation for Shudra communities in India); Bhola Paswan, Dalits and Women the Most Under-Represented in Parliament , The Record (Mar. 3, 2018), https://www.recordnepal.com/data/dalits-and-women-the-most-under-represented-in-parliament [ https://perma.cc/5C27-Q3D9 ].

^ In India, caste discrimination was explicitly addressed in the Constitution, authored by Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar. See Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar , Encyc. Britannica , https://www.britannica.com/biography/Bhimrao-Ramji-Ambedkar [ https://perma.cc/GX6S-AHJZ ]. Article 17 states that “‘Untouchability’ is abolished and its practice in any form is forbidden. The enforcement of any disability arising out of ‘Untouchability’ shall be an offence punishable in accordance with law.” India Const. art. 17. These protections were further instantiated in legislation, including primarily in the Untouchability (Offences) Act of 1955, which prohibited and punished discrimination on the basis of untouchability in various arenas including religious institutions and commercial entities. Untouchable , Encyc. Britannica , https://www.britannica.com/topic/untouchable [ https://perma.cc/QLV2-VEW2 ]. In practice, enforcement of these protections has been difficult, especially in rural India. Id .; Kaivan Munshi, Why Does Caste Persist? , Indian Express (Nov. 2, 2013, 3:16 AM), https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/why-does-caste-persist [ https://perma.cc/KZW8-ENHE ] (“Given the segregation along caste lines that continues to characterise the Indian village, most social interactions also occur within the caste.”).

^ One set of “reservation” reforms in India was implemented nationally by the Mandal Commission, tasked with determining how to uplift “backward classes” — primarily through reservations and quotas. Sunday Story: Mandal Commission Report, 25 Years Later , Indian Express (Sept. 1, 2015, 12:54 AM), https://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/sunday-story-mandal-commission-report-25-years-later [ https://perma.cc/VM4S-MABP ]; see also E.J. Prior, Constitutional Fairness or Fraud on the Constitution? Compensatory Discrimination in India , 28 Case W. Rsrv. J. Int’l L . 63, 81 (1996) (providing further history on the Mandal Commission); Jagdishor Panday, More Reservation Quotas Sought for Ethnic Groups , Himalayan Times (Feb. 19, 2019, 8:56 AM), https://thehimalayantimes.com/nepal/more-reservation-quotas-sought-for-ethnic-groups [ https://perma.cc/WBW7-PSK2 ] (discussing reservation on the basis of ethnicity and caste in Nepal).

^ See, e.g ., Shashi Tharoor, Why India Needs a New Debate on Caste Quotas , BBC (Aug. 29, 2015), https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-34082770 [ https://perma.cc/H3U6-E3VN ] (“Inevitably, a backlash has set in, with members of the forward castes decrying the unfairness of affirmative action in perpetuity . . . .”).

^ See generally Caste in the United States , supra note 9; Gov. Equals. Off., Caste Discrimination and Harassment in Great Britain, Report , 2010/8 (2010), https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/85524/caste-discrimination-summary.pdf [ https://perma.cc/8BPY-YMP5 ] (discussing prevalence of caste discrimination in Great Britain).

^ Babasaheb Ambedkar, 1 Writings and Speeches 5–6 (1979) (quoting Sheridhar V. Ketkar , I The History of Caste in India 4 (1909)).

^ See, e.g ., Caste in the United States , supra note 9, at 12.

^ Id . at 10–11.

^ See id . at 11.

^ Wilkerson , supra note 10, at 126. In United States v. Thind , 261 U.S. 204 (1923), the Court considered whether a “high caste Hindu” was “white” for purposes of naturalization under the Immigration Act of 1917, id . at 206, ultimately answering the question in the negative, id . at 215. In support of his position, Thind’s counsel stressed Thind’s common ancestral and linguistic ties to Europe, given his “Aryan” roots. John S.W. Park, Elusive Citizenship: Immigration, Asian Americans, and the Paradox of Civil Rights 124 (2004). Thind’s counsel further wrote: “The high-caste Hindu regards the aboriginal Indian Mongoloid in the same manner as the American regards the Negro, speaking from a matrimonial standpoint.” Id .

^ Caste in the United States , supra note 9, at 12.

^ Demographic Information , S. Asian Ams. Leading Together , https://saalt.org/south-asians-in-the-us/demographic-information [ https://perma.cc/4F8R-GKT3 ].

^ South Asians by the Numbers: Population in the U.S. Has Grown by 40% Since 2010 , S. Asian Ams. Leading Together (May 15, 2019), https://saalt.org/south-asians-by-the-numbers-population-in-the-u-s-has-grown-by-40-since-2010 [ https://perma.cc/XD5K-YRSD ].

^ Pub. L. No. 89-236, 79 Stat. 911 (codified as amended in scattered sections of 8 U.S.C.).

^ See Caste in the United States , supra note 9, at 13–14.

^ Id . at 13.

^ See id . at 13–14.

^ Pub. L. No. 101-649, 104 Stat. 4978 (codified as amended in scattered sections of 8 U.S.C. and at 29 U.S.C. § 2920).

^ See generally Muzaffar Chishti & Stephen Yale-Loehr, Migration Pol’y Inst., The Immigration Act of 1990: Unfinished Business a Quarter-Century Later (2016), https://www.migrationpolicy.org/sites/default/files/publications/1990-Act_2016_FINAL.pdf [ https://perma.cc/3WQS-SKYR ].

^ Caste in the United States , supra note 9, at 14.

^ Tinku Ray, The US Isn’t Safe from the Trauma of Caste Bias , The World (Mar. 8, 2019, 9:00 AM), https://www.pri.org/stories/2019-03-08/us-isn-t-safe-trauma-caste-bias [ https://perma.cc/7LUN-U49T ].

^ See, e.g ., Buck Gee & Denise Peck, Asian Americans Are the Least Likely Group in the U.S. to Be Promoted to Management , Harv. Bus. Rev . (May 31, 2018), https://hbr.org/2018/05/asian-americans-are-the-least-likely-group-in-the-u-s-to-be-promoted-to-management [ https://perma.cc/5RNM-T6YY ]; Matt Schiavenza, Silicon Valley’s Forgotten Minority , New Republic (Jan. 11, 2018), https://newrepublic.com/article/146587/silicon-valleys-forgotten-minority [ https://perma.cc/WTG6-EKBB ].

^ See, e.g ., Ray, supra note 74.

^ Caste in the United States , supra note 9, at 26–27, 39.

^ Id . at 20.

^ See, e.g ., Paresh Dave, Indian Immigrants Are Tech’s New Titans , L.A. Times (Aug. 11, 2015, 8:57 PM), https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-indians-in-tech-20150812-story.html [ https://perma.cc/NYB3-W9QC ]; Riaz Haq, Pakistani-Americans in Silicon Valley , S. Asia Inv. Rev . (May 4, 2014), https://www.southasiainvestor.com/2014/05/pakistani-americans-in-silicon-valley.html [ https://perma.cc/Y7XK-J6HS ] (“Silicon Valley is home to 12,000 to 15,000 Pakistani Americans.”); India’s Engineers and Its Caste System Thrive in Silicon Valley: Report , Am. Bazaar (Oct. 28, 2020, 7:08 PM), https://www.americanbazaaronline.com/2020/10/28/indias-engineers-and-its-caste-system-thrive-in-silicon-valley-report-442920 [ https://perma.cc/MPR8-CYPP ] (“The tech industry has grown increasingly dependent on Indian workers.”).

^ Tiku, supra note 8.

^ 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2(a).

^ See Bostock v. Clayton County, 140 S. Ct. 1731, 1738–39 (2020).

^ Bostock , 140 S. Ct. at 1739.

^ Id . (citations omitted); see Michael Moore, Causation in the Law , Stan. Encyc. of Phil . (Oct. 3, 2019), https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/causation-law [ https://perma.cc/7UDF-5Q5S ] (discussing the but-for test or the sine qua non test).

^ See Bostock , 140 S. Ct. at 1749.

^ See infra section II.E, pp. 479–81.

^ See Koehler v. Infosys Techs. Ltd., 107 F. Supp. 3d 940, 949 (E.D. Wis. 2015) (recognizing South Asian heritage as a national origin); Sharma v. District of Colunbia, 65 F. Supp. 3d 108, 120 (D.D.C. 2014) (same).

^ U.S. Equal Emp. Opportunity Comm’n, National Origin Discrimination , https://www.eeoc.gov/national-origin-discrimination [ https://perma.cc/XK6N-MJU9 ]; see also 29 C.F.R. § 1606.1 (2020) (addressing the definition of national origin under Title VII and stating that “[t]he Commission defines national origin discrimination broadly as including, but not limited to, the denial of equal employment opportunity because of an individual’s, or his or her ancestor’s, place of origin; or because an individual has the physical, cultural or linguistic characteristics of a national origin group”).

^ Michael James & Adam Burgos, Race , Stan. Encyc. of Phil . (May 25, 2020), https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/race [ https://perma.cc/4ZZ2-YGWH ].

^ See generally Oliver C. Cox, Race and Caste: A Distinction , 50 Am. J. Soc . 360 (1945) (arguing that caste and race are distinct).

^ Ancestry , Merriam-Webster , https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ancestry [ https://perma.cc/7V5R-7B26 ] (defining “ancestry” as “line of descent”).

^ See supra note 34 and accompanying text.

^ U.S. Equal Emp. Opportunity Comm’n , EEOC-NVTA-2006-1, Questions and Answers About Race and Color Discrimination in Employment (2006) https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/guidance/questions-and-answers-about-race-and-color-discrimination-employment [ https://perma.cc/R6XW-BTZ6 ].

^ 481 U.S. 604 (1987).

^ Id . at 606.

^ Id . (quoting Al-Khazraji v. St. Francis Coll., 784 F.2d 505, 517 (3d Cir. 1986)).

^ Id . at 607.

^ Id . at 613 (quoting Al-Khazraji , 784 F.2d at 517).

^ Id .; see also Shaare Tefila Congregation v. Cobb, 481 U.S. 615, 617 (1987) (holding that a claim for discrimination based on Jewish heritage is cognizable under 42 U.S.C. § 1981, for similar reasons).

^ Al-Khazraji , 481 U.S. at 610 n.4. See also Khiara M. Bridges, The Dangerous Law of Biological Race , 82 Fordham L. Rev . 21, 52–57 (2013) (same); Chinyere Ezie, Deconstructing the Body: Transgender and Intersex Identities and Sex Discrimination — The Need for Strict Scrutiny , 20 Colum. J. Gender & L . 141, 178–80 (2011) (embracing the Al-Khazraji Court’s conception of race).

^ Though the Court acknowledged the limits of biological and genetic conceptions of race, if caste can be shown to pick out “ethnic[]” and “physiognomically distinctive” traits, there may be a strong argument that caste discrimination qualifies as racial discrimination on that alternative basis.

^ One might ask whether the EEOC’s interpretation holds any weight. Even with Chevron deference, we don’t think that answers the question definitively. See Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. Nat. Res. Def. Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837, 843 (1984) (holding that courts give deference to an agency’s interpretations of an abmiguous statute, if the agency’s interpretation is a permissible construction of the statute). Here, the Court may not even find the term “race” to be ambiguous for Chevron deference to be applicable.

^ U.S. Equal Emp. Opportunity Comm’n , supra note 98.

^ See generally S. Chandrasekhar, Caste, Class, and Color in India , 62 Sci. Monthly 151 (1946) (arguing against the proposition that there is a strong relationship between caste and color).

^ See, e.g ., Ayyar & Khandare, supra note 25, at 71; Skin Colour Tied to Caste System, Says Study , Times of India (Nov. 21, 2016), https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/55532665.cms [ https://perma.cc/25X3-M8HX ].

^ At the same time, discrimination on the basis of skin color is prevalent in South Asia and among South Asian populations. See generally Taunya Lovell Banks, C olorism Among South Asians: Title VII and Skin Tone Discrimination , 14 Wash. U. Glob. Stud. L. Rev . 665 (2015) (describing colorism in India and the South Asian diaspora and examining its role in employment discrimination claims filed by South Asians). Thus, certain kinds of discriminatory behavior may entangle both caste and skin color.

^ Monier-Williams, A Sanskrit-English Dictionary 924 (1899).

^ Varna , Encyc. Britannica (Mar. 7, 2021), https://www.britannica.com/topic/varna-Hinduism [ https://perma.cc/WP5J-TAZG ] (stating that the idea that varna referenced skin color has been discredited); Neha Mishra, India and Colorism: The Finer Nuances , 14 Wash. U. Glob. Stud. L. Rev . 725, 726 n.6 (2015).

^ Gulitz v. DiBartolo, No. 08-CV-2388, 2010 WL 11712777, at *5 (S.D.N.Y. July 13, 2010) (“What is relevant is that Plaintiff identifies himself as ‘of Jewish heritage’ — an assertion fully supported by the fact that his father is Jewish. That Plaintiff does not practice the Jewish religion does not prevent him from being of Jewish heritage — that is, a descendant of those who did so practice — or from being discriminated against on account of the religion of his forbears.”); Sasannejad v. Univ. of Rochester, 329 F. Supp. 2d 385, 391 (W.D.N.Y. 2004) (recognizing potential religious discrimination claim of a nonpracticing Iranian Muslim, in part because of the interrelationship between national-origin discrimination and religious discrimination).

^ For example, Wilkerson describes how access to religious institutions is a core feature of caste discrimination across caste systems: “Untouchables were not allowed inside Hindu temples . . . . [They] were prohibited from learning Sanskrit and sacred texts.” Wilkerson , supra note 10, at 128.

^ Additionally, it is not easy for individuals to simply withdraw or ignore their religious community — that can come with serious costs and perils. Moreover, as we have seen, moving to another religious community may not remove the mark of caste.

^ See supra note 117 and accompanying text.

^ See Sasannejad , 329 F. Supp. 2d at 391.

^ This Essay emphasizes the cross-religious nature of caste, in order to recognize that caste discrimination can take many forms and is not necessarily confined to those who are (presently) Hindu. At the same time, in particular cases, it may be more salient to recognize the nature of caste discrimination based on the religious identity of those party to the suit. That is, for example, if the employer and employee are both Hindu, then one can appeal to the form of caste discrimination between and among Hindus to strengthen the case of religious discrimination under Title VII.

^ See supra note 33 and accompanying text.

^ Krithika Varagur, Converting to Buddhism as a Form of Political Protest , The Atlantic (Apr. 11, 2018), https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/04/dalit-buddhism-conversion-india-modi/557570 [ https://perma.cc/5G85-R94D ].

^ In any situation where but-for causation isn’t satisfied, we will likely be able to satisfy the conceptual causation test — because the concept of Dalit Buddhist identity depends on the concept of Dalit ancestry.

^ Kimberlé Crenshaw, Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics , 1989 U. Chi. Legal F . 139, 140.

^ In some cases, as Crenshaw observed, this may be difficult because of the size of the class, especially if the claim is pursued on a disparate impact theory with use of empirical and statistical evidence. Id . at 143–46 (discussing Moore v. Hughes Helicopter, Inc., 708 F.2d 475 (9th Cir. 1983)). We share Crenshaw’s concerns on this front. We must continue to challenge how we recognize discrimination, beyond the formal models of causation in the law.

^ If they are not treated more severely, they may be able to pursue their claim separately under a disjunctive identity — that is, being Dalit or Buddhist. See Krishnamurthi & Salib, supra note 87 (discussing such examples and showing they are cognizable under Title VII).

^ In the United Kingdom, such legislation was floated but ultimately rejected, due to divides in the South Asian community as to the prevalence of caste discrimination. Prasun Sonwalkar, UK Government Decides Not to Enact Law on Caste Discrimination Among Indians, Community Divided , Hindustan Times (July 24, 2018, 12:22 PM), https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/uk-government-decides-not-to-enact-law-on-caste-discrimination-among-indians/story-HLDMdbZQhrNtoo4NKhxZOO.html [ https://perma.cc/4C9Q-AP98 ]. But of course, if caste discrimination actually doesn’t exist, then making caste discrimination unlawful should do little harm. Indeed, concerns of frivolous lawsuits are not new in Title VII; Title VII allows fee shifting for prevailing defendants “upon a finding that the plaintiff's action was frivolous, unreasonable, or without foundation.” Christiansburg Garment Co. v. Equal Emp. Opportunity Comm’n, 434 U.S. 412, 421 (1978); see also 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-5(k).

^ See supra note 107 for the discussion of understanding race discrimination as a type of caste discrimination.

• Civil Rights
• Discrimination
• Employment Law

June 20, 2021

Essay on Caste Discrimination in India

Students are often asked to write an essay on Caste Discrimination in India in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Caste Discrimination in India

Introduction.

Caste discrimination in India is a long-standing issue. It is a form of bias where people are divided into different social groups, known as castes. This system often leads to inequality and unfair treatment.

Origins of Caste System

The caste system began thousands of years ago in India. It was initially based on occupation, but over time, it became hereditary, causing deep-rooted divisions in society.

Effects of Caste Discrimination

Caste discrimination has negative effects, such as social exclusion, limited opportunities, and violence against lower castes. It hinders social development and unity.

It’s crucial to eradicate caste discrimination for a fair and inclusive society. Education, awareness, and strict laws can play a significant role in this process.

250 Words Essay on Caste Discrimination in India

Manifestations of caste discrimination.

Caste discrimination manifests in various forms, from social ostracism and economic deprivation to physical violence and educational disparities. The lower castes, often referred to as the Scheduled Castes or Dalits, face the brunt of this discrimination. They are denied access to public services, educational institutions, and job opportunities.

Legislative Measures and Their Effectiveness

India has enacted numerous laws to eradicate caste discrimination, such as the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989. However, the efficacy of these laws is questionable. Despite the legislation, the caste system remains deeply ingrained in Indian society, perpetuated by cultural norms, political manipulation, and economic disparity.

Caste discrimination in India is a complex issue that requires a multifaceted solution. Legal measures alone are insufficient; they must be supplemented by social reforms and educational initiatives. Moreover, a shift in societal attitudes is needed to truly eradicate caste-based discrimination. The fight against caste discrimination is not just a legal battle but a moral one, a fight for the very soul of India.

500 Words Essay on Caste Discrimination in India

Caste discrimination in India is a deeply rooted social issue that has been prevalent for centuries. This hierarchical system, initially intended for division of labor, has morphed into a tool of oppression, perpetuating inequality and social injustice.

The Caste System: A Historical Perspective

The caste system in India, dating back to around 1500 BCE, was initially based on individuals’ professions. Over time, it evolved into a hereditary system, with four primary castes or ‘Varnas’: Brahmins (priests and teachers), Kshatriyas (warriors and rulers), Vaishyas (farmers, traders, and merchants), and Shudras (laborers). Outside of this structure were the ‘Dalits’ or ‘Untouchables’, subjected to the most severe forms of discrimination.

Caste Discrimination and Human Rights

Caste-based discrimination is a gross violation of human rights. It contradicts the principles of equality and non-discrimination, fundamental to human dignity. International bodies like the United Nations have recognized caste-based discrimination as a form of human rights abuse and called for its elimination.

Legal Framework and Government Initiatives

The Indian Constitution prohibits caste discrimination and promotes social justice through affirmative action policies, like reservation quotas for lower castes in education and government jobs. However, the implementation of these laws and policies has been challenging due to deep-seated societal biases.

Challenges in Eradicating Caste Discrimination

Caste discrimination in India is a pressing issue that requires collective societal effort for its eradication. While legal measures are crucial, they must be complemented by social reforms. Education and awareness can play a pivotal role in challenging caste-based prejudices. The fight against caste discrimination is not just about legal and policy changes; it is about fostering a culture of respect, equality, and social justice. It is about transforming mindsets and challenging the status quo, to create an inclusive society where every individual is valued for their abilities, not their caste.

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Why Is Caste Inequality Still Legal in America?

By Paula Chakravartty and Ajantha Subramanian

Dr. Chakravartty is a professor of media and communication at New York University who has written extensively about race, migration and labor in the United States and India. Dr. Subramanian is a professor of anthropology and South Asian studies at Harvard University and has written extensively about caste and democracy in India.

Caste is not well understood in the United States, even though it plays a significant role in the lives of Americans of South Asian descent. Two recent lawsuits make caste among the South Asian diaspora much more visible. They show that oppressed castes in the United States are doubly disadvantaged — by caste and race. Making caste a protected category under federal law will allow for the recognition of this double disadvantage.

Caste is a descent-based structure of inequality. In South Asia, caste privilege has worked through the control of land, labor, education, media, white-collar professions and political institutions. While power and status are more fluid in the intermediate rungs of the caste hierarchy, Dalits, the group once known as “untouchables” who occupy its lowest rung, have experienced far less social and economic mobility. To this day, they are stigmatized as inferior and polluting, and typically segregated into hazardous, low-status forms of labor.

The Indian government has many laws to combat caste prejudice and inequality. But attempts to provide oppressed castes with protection and redress — through affirmative action, for example — are met with fierce opposition from privileged castes. The past 20 years have also witnessed the rise of Dalit political movements and the emergence of a nascent middle class that has benefited from affirmative action. However, oppressed castes’ claims to dignity, well-being and rights are still routinely met with social ostracism, economic boycotts or physical violence.

Caste continues to operate in America, among the South Asian diaspora, but in a very different legal and economic context. Immigrants from India and other South Asian countries began arriving in large numbers after restrictive immigration policies based on rigid racial hierarchies were changed starting in the second half of the 20th century. These reforms provided opportunities mostly for privileged castes, like our own families, who have used their historical advantages to become an affluent and professionally successful racial minority in the United States.

Oppressed castes are a minority within this minority, and they continue to be subject to forms of caste discrimination and exploitation, as the two lawsuits make clear. Together, these cases show how caste operates within America’s racially stratified work force to create largely hidden, yet pernicious patterns of discrimination and exploitation. In both, the litigants are members of the oppressed caste Dalits.

One case is a discrimination suit filed in June 2020 against the technology conglomerate Cisco Systems Inc. and two supervisors by the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing on behalf of a Dalit engineer. According to the lawsuit, Cisco failed to adequately address caste discrimination by two privileged-caste supervisors. The Dalit engineer alleges that one of the supervisors “outed” him as a beneficiary of Indian affirmative action. The lawsuit says that when he complained to the human resources department, both supervisors retaliated by denying him opportunities for advancement.

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Caste Discrimination Exists in the U.S., Too—But a Movement to Outlaw It Is Growing

I n late January, California State University added caste to its non-discrimination policy. With more than 437,000 students and 44,000 employees statewide, it is the largest academic institution to do so. But it is not alone. Brandeis University was the first to take this step in 2019. University of California, Davis, Colby College, Colorado College, the Claremont colleges, and Carleton University followed suit. In August 2021, the California Democratic Party added caste as a protected category to their Party Code of Conduct. And in December 2021, the Harvard Graduate Student Union ratified its collective bargaining agreement, which included caste as a protected category for its members.

What is caste? How is caste discrimination expressed? And why are protections against caste discrimination an urgent issue in the U.S.?

Caste is a descent-based structure of inequality in which privilege works through the control of land, labor, education, media, white-collar professions and political institutions. Some seventy years after independence from colonial rule, the specter of casteism continues to haunt South Asia. The unequal inheritances of caste shape every aspect of social life, from education to marriage, housing, and employment. Caste discrimination still plagues all South Asian societies, including India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. To this day, oppressed castes are subject to stigma on the basis of perceived social and intellectual inferiority, and often consigned to the most exploitative segments of the labor market. This is especially true of Dalits, which is the broad term for the community that occupies the bottom rung of the caste ladder and suffers the unique stigma of untouchability. Dalits continue to face pervasive violence, humiliation, and exclusion. The coronavirus pandemic has only amplified the practice of ‘untouchability’ through the segregating and shunning of stigmatized groups.

The ugly realities of caste inequality and discrimination also shape the lives of South Asian communities in the diaspora. In the U.S., two recent lawsuits have exposed the pervasiveness of caste dynamics far beyond the borders of South Asia.

The first lawsuit was filed in June 2020 against the software company Cisco Systems. Brought by the California Department for Fair Employment and Housing, it alleges that the company failed to address caste discrimination against an employee from the Dalit caste by two supervisors from more privileged caste backgrounds.

The second was filed in May 2021 against the Hindu trust BAPS (Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha), a nonprofit that since 2009 has had the status of a 501 (c)(3) organization. It was brought by lawyers representing a group of Dalits who claim that they were brought to the United States under the R1 visa for religious workers and forced into underpaid, exploitative construction work on a Hindu temple in New Jersey. Both lawsuits reveal practices of caste discrimination and exploitation within America’s racially stratified workforce.

These lawsuits reflect long-standing trends within U.S. immigration. The 1965 Hart-Cellar Act legalized a preference for professional class migrants, such as doctors and engineers, from all over the world, even as it sought to undo the racial prejudices of the immigration laws that it replaced. The shift in immigration policy ensured that South Asians from dominant castes—the ones with privileged access to education and white-collar professions—were overrepresented in the United States in comparison to the South Asian population at large. The caste inequities of Indian education have allowed these groups to use their privilege to immigrate and succeed professionally.

The highly selective character of the professional South Asian American population has therefore created the conditions for caste bias and discrimination in hiring and promotion. This is especially the case in the U.S. technology sector, which has significant privileged caste representation. Although the first to be made public, the experience of the Dalit employee in the Cisco case is not uncommon. Following the filing of the case, Dalit tech workers employed in some of the biggest companies have come forward to attest to rampant caste bias. Most feel compelled to conceal their caste identities and pass as non-Dalits in workplaces that they share with members of more privileged castes. They experience these workplaces as minefields where colleagues from privileged castes might probe their backgrounds to find out their origins and where a misstep can lead to exposure and stigma. These workers indicate a clear preference for non-South Asian supervisors whose ignorance of caste ensures fairer treatment. While such testimonies provide an important starting point for understanding the employment experiences of oppressed castes in the U.S., more data on caste demographics is needed to reveal the scale of the problem.

These lawsuits underscore the need for adding caste to the existing set of categories that are protected against discrimination under federal law. The legal recognition of caste as a protected category will destigmatize caste identification and ensure that vulnerable caste groups do not feel threatened when revealing their identities. Most importantly, making caste a protected category would recognize a form of discrimination that deeply affects marginalized South Asian caste groups—highlighting prejudices that have been invisible for too long.

However, there are some South Asian Americans who argue that the legal recognition of caste discrimination would be harmful to South Asians in the U.S. One of the most prominent groups that has come out against adding caste to U.S. anti-discrimination law is the Hindu American Foundation (HAF). HAF contends that doing so will “single out and target Indian Americans for scrutiny and discrimination.” In her testimony at an April 29 public hearing on a proposal to recognize caste discrimination in Santa Clara, California, HAF Executive Director, Suhag Shukla, characterized caste as “a stereotype.” She asserted that if caste were added as a protected category, it would be used to “uniquely target South Asians, Indians, and Hindus for ethno-religious profiling, monitoring, and policing.” HAF also opposes the legal recognition of caste on the grounds that doing so will “target” the Hindu religion.

But caste is not a mere stereotype about South Asian societies. It is a lived reality that promotes unequal access to life, livelihood, and the capacity for human flourishing. Furthermore, caste must not be conflated with a nationality, ethnicity, or religion. Scholars have long shown, and human rights reports document , that caste exists across all South Asian nationalities, ethnicities, and religions. Testimonies at the Santa Clara hearing also confirmed this reality by attesting to casteism among South Asian Christians, Muslims, and Hindus alike. Spurious arguments about “Hinduphobia” should thus not be used to shield caste from scrutiny.

HAF’s arguments assume that dignity and rights are a zero-sum game. Extending protections to oppressed castes will not scapegoat Hindus, Indians, and South Asians any more than extending protections to women scapegoats men. To the contrary, acknowledging the realities of caste discrimination and any actions for accountability and justice that follow upon it would only expand the commitment to equal rights, inclusion, and dignity.

Opponents of making caste a protected category also argue that it would force South Asian Americans and their children to think of themselves in terms of caste identity. At the Santa Clara public hearing, for instance, several individuals speaking against the proposal testified that, as Americans, they no longer identify as members of castes. Privileged castes in the United States may well insist that they do not see or believe in caste. They may well believe that caste classification would impose an identity that they do not claim. But just as race-blindness does not erase racial privilege or disadvantage, caste-blindness does not erase caste privilege or disadvantage. Indeed, the claim to being caste-blind is itself an expression of privilege. As is clear from Dalit testimonies, oppressed castes do not have the luxury of caste blindness.

Caste and race cannot and should not be conflated. Yet, a broad parallel may be drawn between the experiences of racial minorities and oppressed caste groups in the U.S. While members of South Asian American communities rightly draw attention to the long history of racial exclusion and discrimination they have experienced in the U.S., those of privileged caste backgrounds simultaneously resist acknowledging the abiding ugliness of caste discrimination within their communities.

Unfortunately, it is this very history of racial discrimination that is now being wielded against protections for oppressed castes. HAF even contends that making caste a protected category would perpetuate colonial violence. In his testimony in Santa Clara, HAF Managing Director, Samir Kalra, stated that caste is a “British created legal category” and an identity “that was forced on South Asians.” He and other HAF members insist that caste is a colonial invention that was and could again be used as a weapon of white supremacy. But caste is a power difference that existed well before colonialism and did not end with it. As noted in a recent scholarly article, caste has long been “ a total social fact ” in South Asian societies. The Indian Constitution recognizes the deep history of caste inequality and has enacted various laws to combat and correct it. The Cisco and BAPS lawsuits demonstrate that caste inequality and discrimination have been carried by South Asians to the United States. Should different rules apply here simply because South Asians are a racial minority?

The same South Asian American groups that equate caste protections in the US with “Hinduphobia” also oppose any criticism of Hindutva, or Hindu nationalism, the political movement that has captured state power in India. For instance, HAF’s founder, Mihir Meghani, is the author of “Hindutva – the Great Nationalist Ideology,” an essay that was published on the website of India’s ruling party, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party. After the election of Narendra Modi in 2014, HAF has also lobbied U.S. lawmakers to adopt pro-Indian Government positions on the abrogation of the special status of the State of Jammu and Kashmir and on the Citizenship Amendment Act, a discriminatory law targeting Muslims.

But just as caste protections are not anti-Hindu, neither is criticism of Hindutva. Hindutva is an authoritarian political ideology aimed at transforming India from a secular democracy to a Hindu majoritarian country where Muslims, Christians, and other religious minorities are relegated to second-class citizenship. Under the current Hindu nationalist government in India, there has been a precipitous rise in religious and caste violence targeting Muslims, Christians, and Dalits and widespread crackdowns on dissenters who are languishing in prison without due process. South Asian American groups like HAF are thus engaged in a form of double-speak: they weaponize religious and racial minority protections in the U.S. while defending majoritarianism in India.

By twisting anti-discrimination protections for oppressed castes into racial and religious discrimination, those who oppose making caste a protected category distract attention from the pressing problem of caste in America. This defense of minority rights might appear progressive but we must recognize it for what it is: a defense of caste privilege by diasporic South Asians who are its beneficiaries. As a minority within a minority in the U.S., oppressed castes must get the recognition and protection they deserve.

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Caste systems violate human rights of millions worldwide – new UN expert report

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“This is a global problem affecting communities in Asia, Africa, Middle East, the Pacific region and in various diaspora communities,” said UN Special Rapporteur Rita Izsák-Ndiaye in a news release , stressing that “caste-based discrimination and violence goes against the basic principles of universal human dignity and equality, as it differentiates between 'inferior' and 'superior' categories of individuals which is unacceptable.”

Ms. Izsák-Ndiaye warned that discrimination leads to extreme exclusion and dehumanisation of caste-affected communities, who are often among the most disadvantaged populations, experience the worst socioeconomic conditions and are deprived of or severely restricted in the enjoyment of their civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights.

The term 'caste' refers to a strict hierarchical social system often based on notions of purity and contamination. The expert report describes how people from 'lower castes' are often limited to certain occupations which are often deemed 'polluting' or menial by others, including manual scavenging, sweeping and disposal of dead animals.

“Unfortunately, in many cases, attempts to challenge these prohibitions or the unlawful consequences derived from caste systems, which are hereditary by nature, result in violence against caste-affected individuals and retaliation against their communities.” the Special Rapporteur said.

She emphasised that caste-affected women and girls are often the victims of caste-based and sexual violence, trafficking and are especially vulnerable to early and forced marriage, bonded labour and harmful cultural practices. Violence and the threat of violence against them frequently go unreported, allowing a culture of invisibility, silence and impunity.

“The shadow of caste and its stigma follows an individual from birth till death, affecting all aspects of life from education, housing, work, access to justice, and political participation” Ms. Izsák-Ndiaye said. “In many societies discussing these practices is taboo; we need not just legal and political responses but ways to change the mindset of individuals and the collective conscience of local communities.”

There have however been some positive developments, such as constitutional guarantees, legislation and dedicated institutions to monitor and overcome caste-based discrimination.

“I hope that my report will be used as an advocacy tool in supporting the efforts of caste-affected communities and others who are tirelessly working to relegate caste discrimination to history,” the Special Rapporteur concluded.

Independent experts or special rapporteurs are appointed by the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council to examine and report back on a country situation or a specific human rights theme. The positions are honorary and the experts are not UN staff, nor are they paid for their work.

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Religion in India: Tolerance and Segregation

4. attitudes about caste, table of contents.

• The dimensions of Hindu nationalism in India
• India’s Muslims express pride in being Indian while identifying communal tensions, desiring segregation
• Muslims, Hindus diverge over legacy of Partition
• Religious conversion in India
• Religion very important across India’s religious groups
• Near-universal belief in God, but wide variation in how God is perceived
• Across India’s religious groups, widespread sharing of beliefs, practices, values
• Religious identity in India: Hindus divided on whether belief in God is required to be a Hindu, but most say eating beef is disqualifying
• Sikhs are proud to be Punjabi and Indian
• Most Indians say they and others are very free to practice their religion
• Most people do not see evidence of widespread religious discrimination in India
• Most Indians report no recent discrimination based on their religion
• In Northeast India, people perceive more religious discrimination
• Most Indians see communal violence as a very big problem in the country
• Indians divided on the legacy of Partition for Hindu-Muslim relations
• More Indians say religious diversity benefits their country than say it is harmful
• Indians are highly knowledgeable about their own religion, less so about other religions
• Substantial shares of Buddhists, Sikhs say they have worshipped at religious venues other than their own
• One-in-five Muslims in India participate in celebrations of Diwali
• Members of both large and small religious groups mostly keep friendships within religious lines
• Most Indians are willing to accept members of other religious communities as neighbors, but many express reservations
• Indians generally marry within same religion
• Most Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and Jains strongly support stopping interreligious marriage
• India’s religious groups vary in their caste composition
• Indians in lower castes largely do not perceive widespread discrimination against their groups
• Most Indians do not have recent experience with caste discrimination
• Most Indians OK with Scheduled Caste neighbors
• Indians generally do not have many close friends in different castes
• Large shares of Indians say men, women should be stopped from marrying outside of their caste
• Most Indians say being a member of their religious group is not only about religion
• Common ground across major religious groups on what is essential to religious identity
• India’s religious groups vary on what disqualifies someone from their religion
• Hindus say eating beef, disrespecting India, celebrating Eid incompatible with being Hindu
• Muslims place stronger emphasis than Hindus on religious practices for identity
• Many Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists do not identify with a sect
• Sufism has at least some followers in every major Indian religious group
• Large majorities say Indian culture is superior to others
• What constitutes ‘true’ Indian identity?
• Large gaps between religious groups in 2019 election voting patterns
• No consensus on whether democracy or strong leader best suited to lead India
• Majorities support politicians being involved in religious matters
• Indian Muslims favor their own religious courts; other religious groups less supportive
• Most Indians do not support allowing triple talaq for Muslims
• Southern Indians least likely to say religion is very important in their life
• Most Indians give to charitable causes
• Majorities of Hindus, Muslims, Christians and Jains in India pray daily
• More Indians practice puja at home than at temple
• Most Hindus do not read or listen to religious books frequently
• Most Indians have an altar or shrine in their home for worship
• Religious pilgrimages common across most religious groups in India
• Most Hindus say they have received purification from a holy body of water
• Roughly half of Indian adults meditate at least weekly
• Only about a third of Indians ever practice yoga
• Nearly three-quarters of Christians sing devotionally
• Most Muslims and few Jains say they have participated in or witnessed animal sacrifice for religious purposes
• Most Indians schedule key life events based on auspicious dates
• About half of Indians watch religious programs weekly
• For Hindus, nationalism associated with greater religious observance
• Indians value marking lifecycle events with religious rituals
• Most Indian parents say they are raising their children in a religion
• Fewer than half of Indian parents say their children receive religious instruction outside the home
• Vast majority of Sikhs say it is very important that their children keep their hair long
• Half or more of Hindus, Muslims and Christians wear religious pendants
• Most Hindu, Muslim and Sikh women cover their heads outside the home
• Slim majority of Hindu men say they wear a tilak, fewer wear a janeu
• Eight-in-ten Muslim men in India wear a skullcap
• Majority of Sikh men wear a turban
• Muslim and Sikh men generally keep beards
• Most Indians are not vegetarians, but majorities do follow at least some restrictions on meat in their diet
• One-in-five Hindus abstain from eating root vegetables
• Fewer than half of vegetarian Hindus willing to eat in non-vegetarian settings
• Indians evenly split about willingness to eat meals with hosts who have different religious rules about food
• Majority of Indians say they fast
• More Hindus say there are multiple ways to interpret Hinduism than say there is only one true way
• Most Indians across different religious groups believe in karma
• Most Hindus, Jains believe in Ganges’ power to purify
• Belief in reincarnation is not widespread in India
• More Hindus and Jains than Sikhs believe in moksha (liberation from the cycle of rebirth)
• Most Hindus, Muslims, Christians believe in heaven
• Nearly half of Indian Christians believe in miracles
• Most Muslims in India believe in Judgment Day
• Most Indians believe in fate, fewer believe in astrology
• Many Hindus and Muslims say magic, witchcraft or sorcery can influence people’s lives
• Roughly half of Indians trust religious ritual to treat health problems
• Lower-caste Christians much more likely than General Category Christians to hold both Christian and non-Christian beliefs
• Nearly all Indians believe in God
• Few Indians believe ‘there are many gods’
• Many Hindus feel close to Shiva
• Many Indians believe God can be manifested in other people
• Indians almost universally ask God for good health, prosperity, forgiveness
• Acknowledgments
• Questionnaire design
• Sample design and weighting
• Precision of estimates
• Response rates
• Significant events during fieldwork
• Appendix B: Index of religious segregation

The caste system has existed in some form in India for at least 3,000 years . It is a social hierarchy passed down through families, and it can dictate the professions a person can work in as well as aspects of their social lives, including whom they can marry. While the caste system originally was for Hindus, nearly all Indians today identify with a caste, regardless of their religion.

The survey finds that three-in-ten Indians (30%) identify themselves as members of General Category castes, a broad grouping at the top of India’s caste system that includes numerous hierarchies and sub-hierarchies. The highest caste within the General Category is Brahmin, historically the priests and other religious leaders who also served as educators. Just 4% of Indians today identify as Brahmin.

Most Indians say they are outside this General Category group, describing themselves as members of Scheduled Castes (often known as Dalits, or historically by the pejorative term “untouchables”), Scheduled Tribes or Other Backward Classes (including a small percentage who say they are part of Most Backward Classes).

Hindus mirror the general public in their caste composition. Meanwhile, an overwhelming majority of Buddhists say they are Dalits, while about three-quarters of Jains identify as members of General Category castes. Muslims and Sikhs – like Jains – are more likely than Hindus to belong to General Category castes. And about a quarter of Christians belong to Scheduled Tribes, a far larger share than among any other religious community.

Caste segregation remains prevalent in India. For example, a substantial share of Brahmins say they would not be willing to accept a person who belongs to a Scheduled Caste as a neighbor. But most Indians do not feel there is a lot of caste discrimination in the country, and two-thirds of those who identify with Scheduled Castes or Tribes say there is  not widespread discrimination against their respective groups. This feeling may reflect personal experience: 82% of Indians say they have not personally faced discrimination based on their caste in the year prior to taking the survey.

Still, Indians conduct their social lives largely within caste hierarchies. A majority of Indians say that their close friends are mostly members of their own caste, including roughly one-quarter (24%) who say all their close friends are from their caste. And most people say it is very important to stop both men and women in their community from marrying into other castes, although this view varies widely by region. For example, roughly eight-in-ten Indians in the Central region (82%) say it is very important to stop inter-caste marriages for men, compared with just 35% in the South who feel strongly about stopping such marriages.

Most Indians (68%) identify themselves as members of lower castes, including 34% who are members of either Scheduled Castes (SCs) or Scheduled Tribes (STs) and 35% who are members of Other Backward Classes (OBCs) or Most Backward Classes. Three-in-ten Indians identify themselves as belonging to General Category castes, including 4% who say they are Brahmin, traditionally the priestly caste. 12

Hindu caste distribution roughly mirrors that of the population overall, but other religions differ considerably. For example, a majority of Jains (76%) are members of General Category castes, while nearly nine-in-ten Buddhists (89%) are Dalits. Muslims disproportionately identify with non-Brahmin General Castes (46%) or Other/Most Backward Classes (43%).

Caste classification is in part based on economic hierarchy, which continues today to some extent. Highly educated Indians are more likely than those with less education to be in the General Category, while those with no education are most likely to identify as OBC.

But financial hardship isn’t strongly correlated with caste identification. Respondents who say they were unable to afford food, housing or medical care at some point in the last year are only slightly more likely than others to say they are Scheduled Caste/Tribe (37% vs. 31%), and slightly less likely to say they are from General Category castes (27% vs. 33%).

The Central region of India stands out from other regions for having significantly more Indians who are members of Other Backward Classes or Most Backward Classes (51%) and the fewest from the General Category (17%). Within the Central region, a majority of the population in the state of Uttar Pradesh (57%) identifies as belonging to Other or Most Backward Classes.

When asked if there is or is not “a lot of discrimination” against Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes in India, most people say there isn’t a lot of caste discrimination. Fewer than one-quarter of Indians say they see evidence of widespread discrimination against Scheduled Castes (20%), Scheduled Tribes (19%) or Other Backward Classes (16%).

Generally, people belonging to lower castes share the perception that there isn’t widespread caste discrimination in India. For instance, just 13% of those who identify with OBCs say there is a lot of discrimination against Backward Classes. Members of Scheduled Castes and Tribes are slightly more likely than members of other castes to say there is a lot of caste discrimination against their groups – but, still, only about a quarter take this position.

Christians are more likely than other religious groups to say there is a lot of discrimination against Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in India: About three-in-ten Christians say each group faces widespread discrimination, compared with about one-in-five or fewer among Hindus and other groups.

At least three-in-ten Indians in the Northeast and the South say there is a lot of discrimination against Scheduled Castes, although similar shares in the Northeast decline to answer these questions. Just 13% in the Central region say Scheduled Castes face widespread discrimination, and 7% say the same about OBCs.

Highly religious Indians – that is, those who say religion is very important in their lives – tend to see less evidence of discrimination against Scheduled Castes and Tribes. Meanwhile, those who have experienced recent financial hardship are more inclined to see widespread caste discrimination.

Not only do most Indians say that lower castes do not experience a lot of discrimination, but a strong majority (82%) say they have not personally felt caste discrimination in the past 12 months. While members of Scheduled Castes and Tribes are slightly more likely than members of other castes to say they have personally faced caste-based discrimination, fewer than one-in-five (17%) say they have experienced this in the last 12 months.

But caste-based discrimination is more commonly reported in some parts of the country. In the Northeast, for example, 38% of respondents who belong to Scheduled Castes say they have experienced discrimination because of their caste in the last 12 months, compared with 14% among members of Scheduled Castes in Eastern India.

Jains, the vast majority of whom are members of General Category castes, are less likely than other religious groups to say they have personally faced caste discrimination (3%). Meanwhile, Indians who indicate they have faced recent financial hardship are more likely than those who have not faced such hardship to report caste discrimination in the last year (20% vs. 10%).

The vast majority of Indian adults say they would be willing to accept members of Scheduled Castes as neighbors. (This question was asked only of people who did not identify as members of Scheduled Castes or Scheduled Tribes.)

Among those who received the question, large majorities of Christians (83%) and Sikhs (77%) say they would accept Dalit neighbors. But a substantial portion of Jains, most of whom identify as belonging to General Category castes, feel differently; about four-in-ten Jains (41%) say that they would not be willing to accept Dalits as neighbors. (Because more than nine-in-ten Buddhists say they are members of Scheduled Castes or Scheduled Tribes, not enough Buddhists were asked this question to allow for separate analysis of their answers.)

About three-in-ten Brahmins (29%) say they would not be willing to accept members of Scheduled Castes as neighbors.

In most regions, at least two-thirds of people express willingness to accept Scheduled Caste neighbors. The Northeast, however, stands out, with roughly equal shares saying they would (41%) or would not (39%) be willing to accept Dalits as neighbors, although this region also has the highest share of respondents – 20% – who gave an unclear answer or declined to answer the question.

Indians who live in urban areas (78%) are more likely than rural Indians (69%) to say they would be willing to accept Scheduled Caste neighbors. And Indians with more education also are more likely to accept Dalit neighbors. Fully 77% of those with a college degree say they would be fine with neighbors from Scheduled Castes, while 68% of Indians with no formal education say the same.

Politically, those who have a favorable opinion of the BJP are somewhat less likely than those who have an unfavorable opinion of India’s ruling party to say they would accept Dalits as neighbors, although there is widespread acceptance across both groups (71% vs. 77%).

Indians may be comfortable living in the same neighborhoods as people of different castes, but they tend to make close friends within their own caste. About one-quarter (24%) of Indians say all their close friends belong to their caste, and 46% say most of their friends are from their caste.

About three-quarters of Muslims and Sikhs say that all or most of their friends share their caste (76% and 74%, respectively). Christians and Buddhists – who disproportionately belong to lower castes – tend to have somewhat more mixed friend circles. Nearly four-in-ten Buddhists (39%) and a third of Christians (34%) say “some,” “hardly any” or “none” of their close friends share their caste background.

Members of OBCs are also somewhat more likely than other castes to have a mixed friend circle. About one-third of OBCs (32%) say no more than “some” of their friends are members of their caste, compared with roughly one-quarter of all other castes who say this.

Women, Indian adults without a college education and those who say religion is very important in their lives are more likely to say that all their close friends are of the same caste as them. And, regionally, 45% of Indians in the Northeast say all their friends are part of their caste, while in the South, fewer than one-in-five (17%) say the same.

As another measure of caste segregation, the survey asked respondents whether it is very important, somewhat important, not too important or not at all important to stop men and women in their community from marrying into another caste. Generally, Indians feel it is equally important to stop both men and women from marrying outside of their caste. Strong majorities of Indians say it is at least “somewhat” important to stop men (79%) and women (80%) from marrying into another caste, including at least six-in-ten who say it is “very” important to stop this from happening regardless of gender (62% for men and 64% for women).

Majorities of all the major caste groups say it is very important to prevent inter-caste marriages. Differences by religion are starker. While majorities of Hindus (64%) and Muslims (74%) say it is very important to prevent women from marrying across caste lines, fewer than half of Christians and Buddhists take that position.

Among Indians overall, those who say religion is very important in their lives are significantly more likely to feel it is necessary to stop members of their community from marrying into different castes. Two-thirds of Indian adults who say religion is very important to them (68%) also say it is very important to stop women from marrying into another caste; by contrast, among those who say religion is less important in their lives, 39% express the same view.

Regionally, in the Central part of the country, at least eight-in-ten adults say it is very important to stop both men and women from marrying members of different castes. By contrast, fewer people in the South (just over one-third) say stopping inter-caste marriage is a high priority. And those who live in rural areas of India are significantly more likely than urban dwellers to say it is very important to stop these marriages.

Older Indians and those without a college degree are more likely to oppose inter-caste marriage. And respondents with a favorable view of the BJP also are much more likely than others to oppose such marriages. For example, among Hindus, 69% of those who have a favorable view of BJP say it is very important to stop women in their community from marrying across caste lines, compared with 54% among those who have an unfavorable view of the party.

CORRECTION (August 2021): A previous version of this chapter contained an incorrect figure. The share of Indians who identify themselves as members of lower castes is 68%, not 69%.

• All survey respondents, regardless of religion, were asked, “Are you from a General Category, Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe or Other Backward Class?” By contrast, in the 2011 census of India, only Hindus, Sikhs and Buddhists could be enumerated as members of Scheduled Castes, while Scheduled Tribes could include followers of all religions. General Category and Other Backward Classes were not measured in the census. A detailed analysis of differences between 2011 census data on caste and survey data can be found here . ↩

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Essay on Casteism in India for Students and Children

500 words essay on casteism in india.

India is a country which is known to be very cultural throughout the world. However, the culture rooted deep in the country also has various problems. We are a country that has a prevalent problem of Casteism. Casteism refers to discrimination based on the caste of a person. It is a great social evil that needs to be done away with. It is responsible for stopping the country from developing. Furthermore, it also causes oppression which is very bad for society.

Impact on Life

Basically, the religious and social circles dictate Casteism in India. Mostly, people living in rural areas are facing this problem tremendously. This problem is centuries old and needs time to be abolished completely.

During the early times, the villages were segregated on the basis of their caste. They were made to live in separated colonies. Even the place for buying food or getting water was segregated from those of the upper castes. For instance, the highest caste i.e. Brahmin never touched anything which belonged to a person of a lower caste. Moreover, they were denied entry into temples as they though them to be impure.

When we look at the present scenario, the impact may not be as severe as in the early periods, but it is still worrying. The people of the upper caste are very much looked up to and given access to all amenities. Whereas, on the other hand, the people of lower caste are not given such respect in certain areas even today. Sometimes, they don’t even get the same rights.

Furthermore, inter-caste marriage is considered such a taboo. It is almost a crime to marry someone you love from the other caste. While the people in urban areas have broadened their thinking, rural ones have still not. The villagers still do not believe in this concept and it also gives rise to honor killings.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

A Social Evil

Casteism is a great social evil that must be fought against. We need to get rid of this unjust system. Moreover, it only exploits the lower caste sector and mends out ruthless treatment. The lower caste people are working hard and making a place for themselves in society today.

We need to abolish this social evil right away for a progressive India. Just because a person is born into a lower caste family, does not mean it will determine their value. Caste is nothing but a concept with no reference to the worth of a person. Therefore, we must not discriminate on the basis of a caste of a person.

The government also tries to help the lower caste people through their reservation system. As they do not get equal opportunities, the government ensures they get it through the reservation. However, it also has its negative points. It kills the opportunity for deserving people and hampers the growth by barring actual talent.

FAQs on Casteism in India

Q.1 How does Casteism impact life?

A.1 Casteism impacts the quality of life of a person. It deprives them of equal opportunities. Further, it also discriminates against them and makes them feel isolated from society. People don’t feel like they belong when we discriminate against them. Moreover, people also kill others in the name of honor killing due to Casteism.

Q.2 How is Casteism a social evil?

A.2 Casteism is a social evil which hinders the growth of a country. You see it is a very regressive concept that determines a person’s worth based on their value, giving no attention to their talent and qualifications. It also causes violence and hatred amongst communities.

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• Caste Discrimination

What is caste discrimination

Caste discrimination affects an estimated 260 million people

Caste discrimination affects an estimated 260 million people worldwide, the vast majority living in South Asia. It involves massive violations of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights. Caste systems divide people into unequal and hierarchical social groups. Those at the bottom are considered ‘lesser human beings’, ‘impure’ and ‘polluting’ to other caste groups.

They are known to be ‘untouchable’ and subjected to so-called ‘untouchability practices’ in both public and private spheres. ‘Untouchables’ – known in South Asia as Dalits – are often forcibly assigned the most dirty, menial and hazardous jobs, and many are subjected to forced and bonded labour. Due to exclusion practiced by both state and non-state actors, they have limited access to resources, services and development, keeping most Dalits in severe poverty.

They are often de facto excluded from decision making and meaningful participation in public and civil life. Lack of special legislation banning caste discrimination or lack of implementation of legislation, due to dysfunctional systems of justice and caste-bias, have largely left Dalits without protection. Despite policy development and new legislation in some countries, fundamental challenges still remain in all caste-affected countries.

The progress that has been made is, to a large extent, a consequence of the tireless work of Dalit civil society groups in South Asia. They have also – through IDSN and by other means – managed to place caste discrimination firmly on the international human rights agenda. UN bodies and EU institutions are paying increasing attention to this issue.

The division of a society into castes is a global phenomenon not exclusively practised within any particular religion or belief system. In South Asia, caste discrimination is traditionally rooted in the Hindu caste system, according to which Dalits are considered ‘outcasts’. However, caste systems and the ensuing discrimination have spread into Christian, Buddhist, Muslim and Sikh communities. They are also found in Africa, other parts of Asia, the Middle East, the Pacific and in Diaspora communities.

Caste and untouchability

A central feature of caste discrimination is the so-called “untouchability practices”. It stems from the notion that different caste groups have varying degrees of purity and pollution, with Dalits and other caste-affected groups being so impure that they can pollute other groups.

Paradoxically, sexual abuse and rape against  Dalit women is not considered polluting to men from dominant castes.

If Dalits and other caste-affected groups challenge the untouchability practices, they often face violent sanctions and social boycott. Massive violations of human rights occur in relation to untouchability practices and other forms of caste-based discrimination.

Common untouchability practices:

• Segregation in housing, schools and cremation grounds
• De facto prohibition of inter-caste marriage
• Limitation or prohibition of access to public places such as roads, temples and tea houses
• Denial or limitation of access to public services such as water taps, health care and education
• Restrictions on occupation; assignment of the most menial, dirty and dangerous jobs as defined by the caste hierarchy
• De facto prohibition of access to ownership of land

The effect of untouchability practices and indeed the sexual abuse of “untouchable” women is that Dalits and other “untouchable” groups are kept powerless, separate and unequal.

Find out how these untouchability practices also constitute human rights violations

IDSN has created an extensive database on caste-based discrimination.

Click here for all documents on untouchability

Other resources

Untouchability in Rural India by Shah, Mander, Thorat, Deshpande & Baviskar (2006)

Understanding Untouchability – A Comprehensive Study of Practices and Conditions in 1589 Villages by Navsarjan Trust and the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice & Human Rights (2010)

Anthropology of Caste (from the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, 2008)

Vidoes – Untouchability practices

Click here to view IDSNs YouTube channel with a selection of videos dealing with untouchability practices

Caste and human rights

Caste discrimination involves massive violations of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights. Caste-affected communities are denied a life in dignity and equality.

According to a comprehensive UN study on discrimination based on work and descent , a number of human rights violations occur in relation to caste discrimination:

• The right to physical security and life and the right to be free from violence
• The right to equal political participation
• The right to fair access to justice
• The right to own land
• The right to equal access to public and social services
• The right to freedom of religion
• The right to marriage on free will
• The right to education
• The right to cultural identity
• The right to equal opportunity and free choice of employment
• The right to equal, just and favorable conditions of work
• The right to be free from forced or bonded labour
• The right to be free from cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment
• The right to health
• The right to adequate food, water, sanitation, clothing and housing

Impunity for the perpetrators of crimes against caste-affected groups and non-implementation of legislation permeates the justice and law enforcement systems. Dalit cases are often not reported, investigated or prosecuted properly. Policemen, lawyers and judges often belong to dominant castes and they are unwilling to investigate, prosecute and hear cases of crimes against Dalits. Very few cases of crimes against Dalits lead to conviction.

The United Nations Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination  recommends with specific reference to caste-affected communities that all states “take the necessary steps to ensure equal access to the justice system for all members of descent-based communities as well as ensure the prosecution of persons who commit crimes against members of descent-based communities and the provision of adequate compensation for the victims of such crimes.”

Learn more about our work on international level to adress the human rights violations that stem from caste discrimination

Learn more about how we work with the business sector on corporate social responsibility

See the Human Rights Correspondence School lessons on caste discrmination here

Caste, race and descent

IDSN considers caste (and related discrimination and exclusion) to be a unique phenomenon – though widely spread in different geographical regions and cultural contexts. Among other unique aspects of caste systems are the association with (traditional) occupation, beliefs concerning purity and pollution, and ‘untouchability’ practices. Although caste is distinct from the concept of race, both types of discrimination produce comparable forms of political, economic, and social exclusion.

Precisely because of its unique nature – as well as the vast numbers of people affected globally and the severity of associated human rights violations – IDSN believes that caste discrimination warrants separate and distinctive treatment in the UN human rights system.

IDSN considers the argument about whether caste is similar to race to be an unproductive debate on semantics. States have the principal duty to promote, protect and respect the rights of citizens affected by all forms of discrimination, including caste discrimination, in accordance with existing international human rights obligations. States must avoid serious implementation gaps of their obligations in order to adhere to the fundamental principles of equality and non-discrimination, regardless of the grounds on which discrimination is exercised.

Download full version of IDSN position paper on caste, race and descent

Commmittee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination

In 2002, CERD adopted General Recommendation 29 on the term “descent” in article 1(1) of the Convention, which reaffirmed that caste-based discrimination falls within the scope of the Convention and therefore constitutes an effective framework to improve analysis and reporting on governments’ performance.

Read about UN treaty body observations on caste discrimination

UN Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism

The UN Special Rapporteur has several times reaffirmed the position of CERD that discrimination on the grounds of caste falls within the scope of existing instruments, in particular the International Convention on the Elimination of Alls Forms of Racial Discrimination.

Read about the UN Special Rapporteur on racism and caste

Durban Declaration and Programme of Action

Read about the Durban Review Conference, DDPA and caste discrimination

More information:

IDSN recommendations to the Human Rights Council

UN Principles and Guidelines on the effective eliminate of discrimination based on work and descent

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Latest: caste discrimination, caste & untouchability.

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• Report to the SP on violence against women and girls in sports (GFoD Submission April 2024)
• Joint Submission to the UN CEDAW 2024 – Caste and Gender Justice in Nepal
• UN rights review calls for stronger anti-discrimination measures in Bangladesh (IDSN News – 2024)
• PROTECTING MINORITY RIGHTS: A Practical Guide to Developing Comprehensive Anti-Discrimination Legislation (OHCHR and Equal Rights Trust)

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• Historical Context

Forms of Caste System Discrimination

• Impact of Caste Discrimination
• Legal and Policy Frameworks
• Challenges to Caste Discrimination

International Perspectives on Caste System Discrimination

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Caste System Discrimination: Meaning and Its Consequences

Caste system discrimination occurs when someone is excluded because of their castes’ social standing. Within a system that has such designations, people inherit their caste position through family descent.

In the Hindu caste system, people are put into “varna” and “jati,” social groups within a strict hierarchy, passed down through family lines. Historically, these castes did not intermingle and caste carried the right to practice certain occupations.

These are a form of segregated society, according to human rights activists. They argue that in Africa and Asia, caste is co-terminous with—or has the same meaning as—racism. The bias experienced by those in the caste system can be severe, carrying implications for an individual’s whole life. Tragically, vicious caste violence—especially against women—wreaks havoc and has even caused suicide.

Key Takeaways

• Caste system discrimination describes when someone is excluded because of the caste or jati they were born into.
• Even in countries in which it is illegal, caste discrimination is linked to poor outcomes in education, access to public resources, and health.
• Some believe that without more identity-based policies, caste will not be overcome.

Historical Context of Caste System Discrimination

The modern caste system developed in India. Fragmentation of the Mughal Empire led, in the centuries prior to the British Raj, to the increasing popularity of caste archetypes as a way to cement political legitimacy and social status. These drew on ancient Hindu social stratifications that many scholars believe traded on notions of ritual purity and contamination. During British rule, caste became a convenient and useful shorthand for the complexities of the region.

By the time of the India independence movement, attempts to topple caste dynamics had gained ground. In 1950, India’s constitution banned caste discrimination and launched a quota system meant to rectify historical injustices against the lowest castes.

However, many argue that caste discrimination still persists in far-reaching ways to this day.

Caste encourages exclusion, which critics warn produces or worsens inequality for those who find themselves at the bottom of its hierarchy. Within the Indian caste system, occupations were historically inherited. That, combined with social stratification—especially through endogamy, where people only marry within caste distinctions—created a rigid system.

Although perceptions of outright discrimination within India are low, there’s evidence that these rigid social distinctions continue to play a role in contemporary life.

There are stark examples of discrimination, too.

Those in disfavored jatis, particularly in rural areas, have reportedly been forced to sell their children into debt bondage —in places where legislation against the practice isn’t fully imposed—or can find themselves otherwise forced into low-paying work like cleaning waste. Further, the segregation inspired by caste discrimination is linked to worse education, poorer health, and even deficient access to humanitarian relief after disasters.

Impact of Caste System Discrimination on Individuals and Communities

For someone living within it, a caste system can restrict education, occupation, and the ability to practice one’s religion. It may also hinder whom a person can eat with, live with, or marry. Practically, at the community level, this means caste can fuel inequality, as the system allows for the control of resources by a few castes.

There is a strong gender element to the ramifications of caste as well. For example, women who belong to a “scheduled caste”—one that falls lower in the hierarchy—suffer higher incidents of domestic violence, according to a study in the National Library of Medicine.

The cumulative effect can be brutal, and there have been suicides attributed to the caste system’s effects.

Legal and Policy Frameworks Addressing Caste System Discrimination

B.R. Ambedkar, an early critic of caste inequality, wanted to reshape Indian society on democratic and egalitarian principles. For him, this meant an “annihilation” of caste, an oppressive hierarchy that led necessarily to inequality by controlling resources and opportunities within a closed system. Ultimately, for Ambedkar, ending caste meant breaking away from the traditional beliefs that justified it, something that would happen through a mix of reforms, laws, education, and marriages between castes.

Ambedkar was instrumental to making caste discrimination illegal in India. He also influenced “reservation,” a form of affirmative action for public jobs written into India’s constitution that seeks to redress caste discrimination.  

The reservation system was shifted in 2019 to focus more on economic status than caste designations.

Some researchers and academics have found evidence that caste continues to influence life outcomes, something that was perhaps worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic . For instance, Ashwini Deshpande, a professor of economics at Ashoka University in India, has argued that data from India concerning job losses during the pandemic suggested, from 2019 to 2021, that differences in job losses between castes could not explained by education, industry, or occupation. This data suggests, Deshpande and her co-author wrote, that “caste is not merely a proxy for class, and identity-based policies might be essential to overcoming these disparities.”

Challenges and Resistance to Caste System Discrimination

Within the caste system, a group known as “Dalits” occupied the lowest rung of the hierarchy. Post-independence, electoral politics have given Dalits a means to relieve some of the ill effects of caste. But many within the country feel that these have insufficiently weakened the impact of caste.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, there have been a number of forms of resistance outside of democratic politics.

One example: Discrimination has aroused religious conversion from Hinduism, with which the caste system is popularly affiliated, particularly into both Christianity and Islam.

Violence against Dalits has occasionally inspired more radical political groups, such as the Dalit Panthers, a social and political organization popular in the second half of the 20th century that modeled itself on the Black Panther Party in the United States.

International observers tend to emphasize the role of caste discrimination in furthering inequality.

Human Rights Watch, a nonprofit human rights advocacy group, has called caste “a hidden apartheid of segregation, modern-day slavery, and other extreme forms of discrimination, exploitation, and violence.” Elsewhere, advocates have likened belonging to an “untouchable” jati as suffering a “social disability.”

There are some, such as Rita Izsák-Ndiaye, a former United Nations Special Rapporteur on minority issues, who believe that castes violate international principles of universal human dignity and equality because they subjugate some groups of people below others while fortifying poor socioeconomic circumstances for “lesser” castes.

Recently, Western governments have started to consider legislation that would add caste to legal protections where it would be treated akin to categories like race and sex. The city of Seattle, Washington, passed the first such law outside of Asia in 2023. California’s legislature passed similar legislation that same year, making it the first state to do so. But the bill was vetoed by California Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2023.

Prejudice produced by caste distinctions has become a management concern as well, with notable corporations beginning to address the issue. Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Dell, and X (formerly Twitter) have policies on caste discrimination.

Is Caste Discrimination a Problem Outside of Asia?

Diaspora communities have noted that caste discrimination continues to harm their lives, with several legislators in Western countries moving to add caste to the protected lists for their countries. Large corporations have also looked to spell out anti-caste discrimination policies.

What Role Does Caste Play in People’s Lives?

Caste can shape someone’s access to resources, as well as access to other opportunities—from what occupations they can work to whom they may marry.

Does India Have Affirmative Action?

India has a quota-based affirmative action program, usually called “reservations” within the country, that is written into its constitution. The program was intended to alleviate the inequality suffered by disfavored “jatis.” In 2019, the program was altered to reserve resources more broadly for “economically weaker groups.”

Caste system discrimination turns a system of stiff social stratification into meaningful exclusion. For those at the bottom of the caste hierarchy, that can mean facing severe deprivation. This includes poorer outcomes in health, access to fewer resources, and less attractive job opportunities. In extreme cases, such as in rural communities—where proscriptions against caste discrimination are not enforced—this can even mean debt bondage.

United Nations Human Rights, Office of the High Commissioner. “ Report of the Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues .” (Download required.)

Human Rights Watch. “ The Context of Caste Violence .”

David Mosse, via SOAS Digital Collections, University of London. “ The Origins of Caste and the Notion of ‘Untouchability’ .” Creating a Dialogue: Text, Belief and Personal Identity (Valmiki Studies Workshop 2004), February 2004, Pages 6–10 (Pages 18–22 of PDF).

Indian Institute of Legal Studies. “ The New Reservation System .”

Pew Research Center. “ Attitudes About Caste .”

Human Rights Watch. “ ‘Untouchability’ and Segregation .”

Human Rights Watch. “ Caste Discrimination: A Global Concern .”

Sourav Chowdhury et al., via National Center for Biotechnology Information. “ Decomposing the Gap in Intimate Partner Violence Between Scheduled Caste and General Category Women in India: An Analysis of NFHS-5 Data .” SSM—Population Health , Vol. 19 (September 2022).

Ishita Roy, via Sage Journals. “ Caste Environment and the ‘Unthinkability’ of ‘Annihilation of Caste’ .” Contemporary Voice of Dalit (February 2022).

Anup Hiwrale, via Sage Journals. “ Caste: Understanding the Nuances from Ambedkar’s Expositions .” Journal of Social Inclusion Studies , Vol. 6, No. 1 (November 2020), Pages 78–96.

Ashwini Deshpande and Rajesh Ramachandran, via Wiley Online Library. “ Covid-19 and Caste Inequalities in India: The Critical Role of Social Identity in Pandemic-Induced Job Losses .”  Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy , Vol. 45, No. 4 (December 2023), Pages 1982–1997.

The Seattle Times. “ Seattle Bans Caste-based Discrimination, Becoming First U.S. City to Do So .”

The New York Times. “ Newsom Vetoes Bill Banning Caste Discrimination .”

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT Sloan Management Review. “ What Managers Everywhere Must Know About Caste .”

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Essay on Caste System for Children and Students

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Caste system is a social evil that is present in the Indian society since the ancient times. It has been criticized immensely by the people over the years. However, it still has a strong hold on the social and political system of the country. A number of social evils have been prevalent in the Indian society since centuries and caste system is one of them. The concept has undergone certain changes over the centuries and is not as stringent as it was in the earlier times. However, it still impacts the religious, social and political lives of the people in the country.

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Long and Short Essay on Caste System in India in English

We have provided below short and long essay on caste system in India for your knowledge and information.

After going through these essays you will know where from the caste system originated and its impact on the society and nation’s growth.

You will also know what steps should be taken to eliminate caste discrimination.

You can choose a Caste System in India Essay from the following and present it during your school/college events where you need to write an essay, take part in a debate, give speech etc.

Caste System in India Essay 1 (100 words)

Caste system in India has been prevalent since the ancient times. However, the concept has been moulded and evolved over the centuries by those in power. It underwent a major change particularly during the Mughal Rule and the British Raj. Nevertheless, people were and are still treated differently based on their caste. The social system basically has two varied concepts – Varna and Jati.

While Varna refers to the four broad social divisions namely Brahmins (teacher/priests), Kshatriyas (kings/warriors), Vaishyas (traders) and Shudras (labourers/servants), it got degenerated into Jatis, determined by birth. Jati is generally derived from the trade or occupation of the community, and is known to be hereditary.

Caste System in India Essay 2 (150 words)

India has been under the spell of the evil caste system since centuries. This system finds its roots in the ancient times and has undergone change over the time. The rulers of medieval, early modern and modern India moulded it to suit their convenience. Those belonging to the higher castes treated with high regard and those from the lower caste looked down upon all along.

In today’s times, caste system in India has become the basis of reservation when it comes to acquiring education and securing jobs.

The social system in India basically comprises two different concepts, Varna and Jati. Varna is said to be the class of the person. Under this there are four categories – Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas and Shudras. Jati on the other hand said to be a person’s caste and finds reference to a person’s birth. There are thousands of Jatis and these generally determined by the traditional occupation of a community.

Caste System in India Essay 3 (200 words)

The origin of caste system in India dates back to the ancient times. There are two different perspectives for its origin in the country. These are either based on socio-economic factors or ideological factors.

The first school of thought is based on the ideological factors and as per this, caste system finds its base in four Varnas. The perspective formed centuries ago was especially common among the scholars from the British colonial era. This school of thought categorises people based on their class. There are basically four classes – Brahmins (teachers/priests) , Kshatriyas (kings/warriors), Vaishyas (traders) and Shudras (labourers/servants).

The second school of thought based on the socio-economic factors and as per this the system rooted in the political, economic and material history of India. This perspective was common among the post-colonial era scholars. This school of thought categorises people based on their caste, which determined by the traditional occupation of their community.

Caste system has had a strong hold in India and continues to do so. Today, this system has become the basis of reservation in education and jobs. Due to political reasons where castes constitute vote banks for parties; the reservation system is still intact in the country.

Caste System in India Essay 4 (250 words)

Caste System in India divides people into four different categories – Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas and Shudras. It believed that these groups came into being from Brahma, the Hindu God of creation. Priests, intellectuals and teachers come under the category of Brahmins. They stand at the top of the hierarchy and it believed that they came from Brahma’s head. Next in line are the Kshatriyas who are the rulers and warriors. These apparently came from God’s arms. Merchants, traders and farmers come under the Vaishya category and said to have come from His thighs and the labour class forms a part of the fourth category that Shudras – these said to have come from Brahma’s feet.

These main categories further divided into as many as 3,000 castes and 25,000 sub-castes, based on their occupation.

As per Manusmriti, the most significant book on the Hindu laws, Varna system came into being to establish order and regularity in the society. The concept said to be 3,000 years old and distinguishes people based on their dharma (duty) and karma (work).

The religious as well as social life of the people in the country has influenced largely by the caste system since centuries and the trend continues today, with political parties misusing it for their own ends.

Caste System in India Essay 5 (300 words)

Caste system has been prevalent in our country since time immemorial and continues to have a strong hold on the society and political system. People have divided in four different categories of class – Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas and Shudras. Historically it believed that this social system came into being in the country in around 1500 BC with the arrival of the Aryans. It said that Aryans introduced this system in order to control the local population at that time. In order to make things systematic, they defined main roles and assigned them to groups of people. However, in the 20 th century, this theory dismissed as it stated that Aryans never invaded the country.

As per Hindu theologians, it said that this system came into being with the Hindu God Brahma who known as the creator of the universe. As per this theory, the people who hold the highest stature in the society that is the priests and teachers came from Brahma’s head, the ones from the second category were the warriors who came from God’s arm, those belonging to the third category, that is, the traders and merchants came from God’s thighs and the peasants and workers, that is, those belonging to the lowest category came from Brahma’s feet.

The actual origin of the caste system thus not known yet. Manusmriti, the most ancient text on Hinduism, however has cited this system in 1,000 BC. In the ancient times, the communities followed the class system stringently. While the people from the upper classes enjoyed several privileges, those from the lower class deprived of many things and thus suffered immensely. Though not as stringent as in the earlier times, even today a lot of discrimination done based on a person’s caste.

Caste System in India Essay 6 (400 words)

India has been under the clutches of the evil caste system since the ancient period though the exact origin of this system isn’t known as there are different theories that state different stories about its initiation. As per Varna system, people broadly divided into four different categories. Here is a look at the people who fall under each of these categories:

• Brahmins – Priests, Teachers and Scholars
• Kshatriyas – Rulers and Warriors
• Vaishyas – Farmers, Merchants and Traders
• Shudras – Labourers

The Varna system later got degenerated into caste system. The society divided into 3,000 castes and as many as 25,000 sub-castes based on the occupation of the community that a person was born into.

As per one theory, the Varna system initiated in the country as the Aryans arrived here in around 1500 BC. It said that Aryans introduced this system to have control over people and make things work more systematically. They assigned different roles to different groups of people. As per the Hindu theologians, on the other hand, the system initiated with Brahma, the Hindu God who known as the creator of the universe.

As Varna system degenerated into caste system, a lot of discrimination done on the basis of caste. People belonging to the higher castes treated with great respect and enjoyed several privileges while those from the lower classes scorned at and deprived of several things. Inter-caste marriages strictly forbidden.

The caste system in urban India today has declined immensely. Though, people from the lower classes still not respected in the society as the government offers several benefits to them. Caste has become the basis of reservation in the country. People belonging to lower classes have a reserved quota in the education sector and also when it comes to securing government jobs.

After the departure of the British, the Constitution of India banned the discrimination based on the caste system. It is then that the quota system introduced for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes. BR Ambedkar who authored the Constitution of India was himself a Dalit and the concept of social justice for protecting the interests of these communities on the lower rung of society considered to be a great move in the Indian history, though now it misused for narrow political reasons by different parties in the country.

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Article Contents

Caste as a social reality: recentring the historical study of the subcontinent from dalit-bahujan, pasmanda and adivasi (indigenous) perspectives, naturalisation of caste as ‘native custom and law’: placing racial hierarchy in the british colonial encounter in the nineteenth century, inscribing caste in the racial hierarchy of international legal order: international lawyers, colonial officers and their assistants, conclusion: the casteist state as part of a racialised civilisational hierarchy in a global legal order, acknowledgements.

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‘English in taste, Indian in blood’: caste hegemony in the making of British international legal thought

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Ahmed Memon, ‘English in taste, Indian in blood’: caste hegemony in the making of British international legal thought, London Review of International Law , Volume 12, Issue 1, March 2024, Pages 23–45, https://doi.org/10.1093/lril/lrae005

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In this article, I argue that caste was a central factor in the development of British international legal thought in the subcontinent. Specifically, I contend that British international legal thought entrenched caste hegemony into the broader racial civilisation hierarchy of international law in the nineteenth century.

The concept of caste has been recognised primarily within international legal forums in the form of a liberal human rights approach. 1 With the exception of civil society activism, this recognition which dates back to the League of Nations 2 has remained relatively underexamined in the international legal sphere. 3 Taking its cue from the Convention of the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, the current conversation on caste frames the issue as one to be dealt with by international human rights mechanisms. 4 Beyond liberal concepts of human rights, even critical conversations within the field of international law focus on caste as an issue to be resolved or studied through the involvement of global governance mechanisms. 5 In the past few decades, caste discrimination, particularly within the South Asian subcontinent—most notably in India—has been the focus of critical literature on development in the Third World, 6 UN special rapporteurs, UN treaty bodies and most notably the UN’s Universal Periodic Review. 7

In this article, I suggest that caste ought not to be viewed simply as a form of social discrimination that can be solved through a human rights or constitutional framework of legal protection. In this mode—as with other human rights abuses—the international legal system is used as a vehicle to address, put a spotlight on and shame countries as a tactic of internationalisation of a localised social issue. Instead, I ask if and how caste was intertwined with early understandings of the international legal order, serving as part of global racialised hierarchies. This argument thus utilises TWAIL methodologies to show how specific forms of imperialism are co-constitutive of the making of international legal conceptions of world order. 8 This exploration also contributes to the crucial literature on race making as central to early developments of international law, 9 where the question of how caste fits within these developments has not yet been explored.

In this particular instance, I explore the histories and theories of caste within the subcontinent as part of British international legal thought. This approach goes beyond histories of Victorian conceptions of international law in recent years by critical historians of international law. By focusing on caste, I emphasise and build on Burra’s suggestion to take into account colonialisms within colonialisms and argue that ‘native’ elites have a more complicated relationship to the development of international legal regimes than previously recognised by work on international legal history within the subcontinent. In the context of broader histories of international law, this has been suggested in the case of Latin America. 10 Similarly to these histories that echo the complexity of racialisation through the role played by native elites in international law-making, I focus instead on the system of caste in the context of the subcontinent. The purpose of this article is to further this argument from the vantage point of the Indian subcontinent in specific relation to Victorian conceptions of international legal order. 11

What this article does not do, however, is centre anti-caste figures or histories of resistance, or specifically point to Brahmin/Upper caste leaders to deromanticise them by unveiling their participation in and perpetuation of caste violence and the caste system. Instead, it focuses on deconstructing the caste-blind narrative of international legal history during this period. I aim to open up the conversation for further provocations that follow these threads towards an anti-caste analysis of race and caste. More importantly, this article takes the primary concern of anti-caste theory—caste as the central oppressive force in the subcontinent—as a springboard for a more complex question: not only the relationship between race/racialisation and caste but the place of caste in the history and theory of international law.

In the argument that follows, I show how the caste hegemony that existed in pre-colonial subcontinental society was further ingrained and re-entrenched within the development and deployment of British international legal thought throughout the colonial encounter in the nineteenth century subcontinent. This entrenchment of caste further naturalised the category of race as part of a civilisational hierarchy. The entrenchment and then naturalisation of caste into racial hierarchy in British colonial governance also became part of how the international legal order as a racialised hierarchy was conceptualised by British colonial administrators and international legal jurists in the twentieth century.

In the first part of the article, I explain the social category of caste as a central social reality of the pre-colonial subcontinent. In the second section I explore how the British colonial encounter with the subcontinent and its construction of the relationship between caste and race was developed by other European colonial powers. In particular, I look at how European notions of racial hierarchy helped to naturalise the idea of ‘caste’ as a natural social order of the ‘subcontinent’ which is part of its ‘culture’ and ‘native law’. In explaining this naturalisation of caste, I focus specifically on the role of key early anthropologists who acted as colonial officers, known as Sanskritists and Indologists . In the third section, I explore how the early work of these colonial officers drew connections between racial hierarchy and caste supremacy, making them a ‘natural’ part of the subcontinent. I suggest this work became not only relevant to but a key part of how international legal order was understood as a racialised hierarchy in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In particular, I trace how British international legal theorists both drew on discourses on the naturalisation of caste and racial hierarchy in presenting their vision of British international legal order and also then influenced how colonial officers and colonial governance systems operationalised their account of caste and racial hierarchy in the subcontinent.

In the concluding section, I explore what this redescription of the place of caste within international legal history might mean for contemporary discussions on race, imperialism and international law, specifically in the field of critical international law and Third World Approaches to International Law. Finally, I consider how this redescription of the linkages between racial hierarchy and caste supremacy can create new political and intellectual possibilities for a post-race and post-caste discourse.

Caste was and has remained a social reality in the subcontinent. 12 The study of the idea of caste has primarily taken place within sociology, literature, history and anthropology, with some more recent conversations in international relations, development and politics. While a wide-ranging literature considers caste as an object of analysis of specific study, however, anti-caste theory emphasises ‘caste’ not just as an object of study but as a theoretical, epistemological perspective through which we think through the study of social relations in the subcontinent and the world. The intellectual traditional of ‘dalit’ theory or anti-caste theory, as well as Adivasi (Indigenous) theory, explains that any study of the subcontinent, in any disciplinary form, is already informed by its own epistemological precepts, and seeks to provide a distinct lens through which to understand social relations. This article, and the argument, made therein, is informed by anti-caste theory and literature as well as Adivasi theory specifically due to the intervention I am making within international critical legal literature on caste.

It is important to clarify then first, what is caste defined as a social system through the perspective of anti-caste theory and how it differs, significantly, from analysis that is embedded within postcolonial or subaltern studies. Beginning from an ‘Ambedkarian’ perspective—owing to Bhim Rao Ambedkar, the anti-caste and anti-colonial leader of the Dalit-Bahujan community—a contemporary understanding and struggle against caste oppression and the caste system starts exactly within the internationalisation period of international legal order. Ambedkar’s theory, informed by his own lived experience as a man from a ‘lowered caste’ 13 Mahar community, was a direct response to the oppressive naturalisation of ‘caste’ perpetuated by upper caste and Brahmin leaders and landowners.

Ambedkar’s explanation of caste formation is as a socio-political reality of the subcontinent rather than simply a religious source. Specifically, Ambedkar explains it as an ‘artificial chopping off of the population into fixed and definite units, with each prevented from fusing in the other through the custom of endogamy’. Endogamy, or the paternal lineage of carrying ‘name’ as an identification of fixed social position in a hierarchy of ‘labourers’, is for Ambedkar how the structure of caste is formed. 14 While caste structure has historically evolved and taken different forms, and political meanings, historians agree that it remains at the heart of the social and political fabric of the subcontinent. Regardless of its historical or spatial temporality, a simpler formulation of understanding caste structure may be to understand it as an already existing socio-economic graded hierarchy, slowly encoded in primarily Vedic scripts (later homogenised in the ‘Hindu’ religion) created and collated between 1500 and 1000 BCE. 15 What were identified as ‘religious’ communities, later on, were clan-like endogamous groups maintaining socio-political, spiritual hierarchies (based on purity/pollution), passed through paternal hereditary lineages to gain material benefit and claim superiority. 16 While centred primarily on ‘Brahminism’, the priestly caste, as well as in some contexts through the ‘Kshatriyas’ or warrior-king caste, caste-like structures have also permeated other pre-colonial communities, such as those who claimed ancestry from a warrior-clan or Brahmins as a way to reassert their positions in the Mughal courts and to gain social and material capital. 17 More importantly, in both the Mughal and Brahmin or Kshatriya kingdoms, those deemed ‘lower’ (ie, ‘sudra and atisudra’) have often maintained labour or servicing to upper caste communities while the most shunned or deemed untouchable were described as ‘ Averna’ (ie outside the verna or caste system) as they were ‘outside’ the caste hierarchy. These were specifically indigenous communities present in subcontinent pre-caste system and who were mostly the Adivasi (indigenous) or Dravidians. 18

In more conceptual terms, anti-caste theorists emphasise and reiterate the continued importance of caste oppression as a pre-British reality of the subcontinent that has continued to exist to today in post-colonial India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri-Lanka, as well as other parts of the world. 19 Its theoretical genealogy is generally derived from Ambedkar’s text on Annihilation of Caste , 20 though anti-caste histories are further divided into older movements/struggle and moments in the history of the subcontinent that pre-date Ambedkar. 21 Ambedkar insisted on not just explaining caste as a central organising principle, which, in the context of increasing Hindu reformism, was tied to self-determination discourses within the subcontinent, but also as a way for social justice, equity and role of law in achieving a just society. 22 Ambedkar’s emphasis in these conversations was on understanding the role of ‘Brahmin’ and the system of ‘Brahminism’ created by caste hierarchy as the most significant barrier to achieving equity. 23 For Ambedkar, the Brahmin caste communities—as an intellectual class playing a key role in forming knowledge of ‘caste’ itself—would never let go of the power that Brahminism as a system provides them. As long as there was Brahminism, there would be caste oppression. 24

Emerging from the centrality of caste oppression as the primary concern of a pre-British history of the subcontinent, anti-caste theory emphasises the absences of caste relations in conversations on the colonial encounter and the post-colonial reality of India or Pakistan. According to anti-caste theory from a Dalit perspective, any theoretical and methodological claim about a ‘subcontinent’ identity that does not consider caste as a central ordering principle is an erasure of thousands of years of historical and systematic oppression. The richest contribution to anti-caste theory emerges from a tradition that Gail Omvedt describes as ‘Dalit Vision’. 25 Drawing on figures, symbology, histories and focusing on an anti-Brahminical social order, this literature analyses caste as the basis of inequality within the subcontinent. Scholars since Ambedkar within the Dalit Vision have taken this understanding of anti-caste movement and theory forward through different disciplinary mechanisms including literature through lived experience and autobiographical accounts as knowledge, 26 sociological lenses on food, 27 gender, 28 or architecture, 29 caste as embedded with class, 30 and specific sociological frames through which caste as a lived reality can be seen within names, 31 as a phenomenon 32 and as an everyday social experience. 33 This particular anti-caste theory, which is the richest and most detailed social analysis on caste in post-colonial India, argues that ‘Brahminism’ itself is the core oppressive, class/caste/patriarchal force. 34

Other anti-caste theory advances Ambedkar’s notion of Brahminism as the core social force. Most notably, Adivasi theory adds a framework of ‘double colonialism’ to the history and sociology of the subcontinent. 35 Virginius Xaxa describes both ‘Brahminism’ and therefore casteism and racialisation of Indigenous peoples of India (‘Adivasi/tribal’ communities) by British colonialisation as perpetuating a simultaneous and concurrent violence on them. 36 Beyond questions of Brahminism, understanding caste as a central oppressive social force within other contexts such as those propounded by anti-caste theory within Pasmanda Muslim scholarship places emphasis on complicating the colonial presumptions of homogenising ‘Muslims’, showing that this is both an orientalised racialisation but also a caste-oppressive typology. 37 Pasmanda scholarship, or scholarship that focuses on lowered-caste Muslim communities in particular, builds on an Islamic anti-caste theory 38 and history. 39

In particular, the histories and theories of social ‘life’ in the subcontinent that anti-caste theory deploys includes figures, moments, processes that are starkly different from ‘postcolonial’ studies. 40 The categories of ‘Indigenous’ and ‘Native’ or ‘colonised’ in these theoretical frameworks complicate the binary notions of ‘South/North’, or ‘colonised/colonising’ referred to in postcolonial and subaltern theory. 41 Instead of focusing on a homogenous notion of ‘culture’, anti-caste theory specifically celebrates pre-existing tribal, Indigenous communities such as Mohenjo-Daro, 42 Dalit revolts, 43 and continuing cultural cosmopolitan anti-caste/anti-Brahminical alternative practices. 44 This significant difference is most acutely articulated in relation to postcolonial or subaltern theory as not taking into account the historical, sociological lens through which anti-caste theory views the world, but instead enacting a naturalisation of ‘caste’ by viewing it as an object of analysis that is either an ‘unfortunate’ consequence of a cultural or natural identity to subsume it into a ‘subaltern’ consciousness. 45 A more stark issue that emerges from relying simply on postcolonial theory in relation to international law is the absence of understanding the construction of race as tied to a pre-Euro-modern colonial social category such as ‘caste’.

The revitalisation of Dalit-Bahujan and Adivasi—as well as increasingly Pasmanda— histories of the subcontinent are a key part of how anti-caste theory reconceptualises the sociological categories through which we understand the place of the subcontinent in today’s time. Taking anti-caste theory seriously helps us re-evaluate how knowledge and analysis of the subcontinent produces a particular subjectivity that depends on how the literature historicises the British colonial encounter in the subcontinent.

The British came to know the subcontinent as a place where the economic, social and political powers were dispersed amongst a range of caste communities, as opposed to a series of ruling families. 46 This is why scholars like Bernard Cohn have described the British encounter as a ‘slow conquest of knowledge’. 47 Beginning with the East India Company’s relationship with the north western Mughal rule, this relationship was one of primarily trade as well as—and most importantly—revenue. 48 Kshatriyas and/or Brahmins negotiated their place as royal guards, intermediaries between the peasant caste/labourers and the royal courts of Mughals, and designated themselves as ‘Rajput’ or ‘Nayara’ or in Punjab as ‘Jutt’. 49 The logic of caste structure was thus facilitated through the Mughal rulers, more so by Akbar, Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb, to the extent that the ‘Rajput’ assumed positions of land ownership (zamindars) for revenue collection from labourers and peasantry. 50 As historian Śekhar Bandyopadhyay argues, Mughal rule was dependent and contingent on caste formations, namely through the intermediary caste of Rajputs, Jatts, or Nayaras, to function militaristically, economically and administratively. 51

As a rent collector and commercial/military force, the Company already had to work within the pre-existing system of Mughal economic and political structure. 52 As most of this structure was organised through caste bifurcations, the British relied on those communities already in these positions of power. This ranged from recruiting former royal guards, ‘Rajputs’ as soldiers of the Company, 53 to hiring ‘munshis’ as assistants 54 to facilitate tax collection, to revenue collection through licencing merchant caste communities. 55

As the Company came to acquire a vast stretch of territory from the Mughals, property ownership of the Company became embedded and entrenched within yet another structure: hereditary ‘zamindari’ or feudal ownership of land. The discourse of sovereignty here took a more complicated turn as local zamindars who claimed hereditary rights over land—even uncultivated land—contested absolute control over property by the Company officials. As a matter of both convenience and governance, the Company’s stance, particularly in Madras, was to assert themselves as co-owners who respected the rights of upper-caste zamindars. 56 What was important for the Company was control over the land and allegiance of the upper caste zamindars rather than unfettered absolute sovereignty, particularly to deal with contested ownership between the lowered-caste labourers and peasants and upper caste zamindars. 57 In most of these cases, caste was entrenched into land ownership, sales and disputes whereby the Company officials almost always favoured hereditary claims based on caste.

In the above case of Madras, FW Ellis, a colonial officer and tax collector, attempted—with the help of his Brahmin assistant Shankaria—to justify this co-ownership with zamindar upper castes by describing lower caste labourers as ‘natural slaves’. 58 Using transatlantic slavery as an analogous example, Ellis described the zamindars ( mirasis ) as holding a hereditary right over land which justified the ‘gentle’ form of slavery where unfree labour was ‘kin’ and not other. 59 Thus, for the Officers of the Company, it was not only imperative to work with the existing structure of caste, but also to become conscious of it, draw parallels and utilise it for their own governance in the territories they now occupied and ruled and shortly after expanded.

Increasingly, as the Company began to operate like a state, 60 this existing structure became a basis for the colonial knowledge formation for the Company. Cohn, for example, states that it was based on the idea that knowledge of the subcontinental culture needed to be constructed beyond a reliance on ‘native’ individuals to translate documents, laws, customs about caste structures. 61 The role of colonial officers as amateur anthropologists and linguists to make sense of—by learning the language—and translating, categorising the knowledge themselves became crucial for the operation of the East India Company. 62 It was crucial for Company officers who later assumed posts as judicial or administrative officers to understand the caste system as a way of a maintaining jurisdictional control while creating flexibility in governing over local affairs. While intermediaries such as Brahmin assistants and translators became crucial to this task, colonial officers remained frustrated in trying to find a consistent, homogenising approach to local law, primarily because there was no such thing as a singular codified Hindu Law. This required something more than analogies to race in order to understand caste. It required a ‘translation’ of the society without ‘Brahmin’ intermediaries. Therefore, although attempts like Ellis’s contextualised local ‘customs’ in certain settings, it was not until William Jones’ attempts to learn, translate and train other officers in Sanskrit that a more homogenising effort to compile ‘Hindu Law’ started. 63 William Jones was an orientalist and classical scholar whose appointment as a Judge to the Crown Court in Calcutta in 1783 motivated him to pursue learning Sanskrit.

While still relying on a group of Brahmin scholars, William Jones became the first to disseminate translations of a ‘Hindu’ Religion in the Victorian Society including the ‘Code of Manu’ and ‘Bhagavad Gita’. 64 These efforts to create the first cadre of company officers who were ‘Sanskritists’ were so influential that Warren Hastings followed in Jones’s steps and became adept in Sanskrit. Hastings also promised monetary remuneration to those officers who could learn both the language and the customs of the Indian society. 65 For Jones, building knowledge of caste was a matter of juridical determination of the community the Company was not familiar with, racially and socially. As a judge, Jones’ concern was mostly certainty in laws that determined the status of being ‘ hindu ’ which shifted on a case to case basis. Working with his Brahmin assistants, who advised him when answers from Persian-translated texts of Vedas did not yield an answer, decisions were considered on a case-by-case basis and frustrated him. This was especially so because, on the other hand, he claimed to have a familiarity with ‘Mohammadens’. 66 This concern of a ‘Hindu’ population and their laws was central to the gradual building of an anthropological fantasy of the subcontinent as a land of the Hindus.

In attempting to assert its own form of quasi-sovereignty through ownership which tolerated and accommodated upper caste communities, the knowledge around caste built by the British was intimately tied to their own conceptions of race as a natural category. Here, white British held themselves to be racially distinct from their ‘native elite’ interlocutors (ie Brahmin and Kshatriya rulers) which led to the anthropological fantasy about the ‘origins’ of Indian society. Sanskritist colonial officers like Jones asserted the Aryan invasion theory based solely on drawing linguistic similarities of older Roman Latin and Sanskrit. This theory asserted that a particular social hierarchy of Aryans (closer to the ‘white’ or British/European race) invaded and conquered the local Indigenous populations and constituted the caste hierarchy. 67 Brahmin and upper-caste communities were thus deemed to be the descendants of these ‘Aryan invaders’. This particular theory became central to colonial officers’ creation of the anthropological fantasy of upper caste dominance and reliance in the subcontinent on the more civilised castes—though none as civilised as the British. This era and group of early Indologists and Sanskritists laid the foundations for colonial knowledge of the social life of the subcontinent, and through this, its governance. 68

Before any gradual and eventual takeover of the subcontinent by the British Empire, the Company had already built and developed through commerce, managing of land revenue and co-ownership, and building a caste consciousness within the Company’s military cadre. At the same time, the caste consciousness of company officers did not exist in a vacuum from analogies to race—in case of both the hiring of soldiers 69 but also of conceiving an understanding of zamindars. 70

As historian Susan Bayly rightly observes, it was not so much that the British ‘invented’ the existing social caste stratifications and system, as that their presence intensified the already existing violence. 71 In the subcontinent, already existing social stratification provided an opportunity for mutual benefit which later translated to indirect rule over the subcontinent, 72 and—as I argue here—the development of Victorian notions of international liberal legal order. It also formed the basis of naturalising caste as part of the social order for what the British imperial state later claimed was rule by respect to ‘cultural difference’ through imperial pluralism. 73

The importance of caste as a racial category carried into the eventual takeover of the subcontinent by the imperial state. There were important discontinuities on the discourse of how to govern, 74 and the push and pull between the jurisdictional battle between the Company and the state. 75 Nonetheless, there were crucial continuities of colonial knowledge that had already been built and institutionalised through Fort Williams College and the Royal Asiatic Society founded by William Jones. So deeply engrained was the colonial knowledge on caste and Indian society that company officers such as Hastings had a policy of remunerating officers who learnt about the local culture, and led a concerted effort to build Fort Williams College for the education of East India Company officers on the local culture of the subcontinent. 76 Despite becoming the lynchpin of ‘despotic’ rule by the Company, Hastings’ college influenced colonial state officers that led the governance of the subcontinent in the nineteenth century, notably, TB Macaulay.

In the era of liberal imperialism over the subcontinent, ‘pluralism’ as a ‘cultural difference’ for a more benevolent rule 77 fitted with notions of the ‘Indian’ society Jones—amongst other Indologists—had suggested. Macaulay’s reform policies that pushed for codification as part of better government over colonies as ‘trust’, needed to be homogenised as a matter of ‘respect’ for the social life and culture of the colonies. 78 In the context of the subcontinent, this became an extension of the bedrock of caste consciousness and the anthropological imagination of the subcontinent laid by the Company. Except, this time, it was carried forward as a proper science that encoded the knowledge of this society into Anglophonic juridical form for colonial governance. 79

The push for codification, led by TB Macaulay, resulted in the Charter Act 1833. 80 Macaulay argued against the British commission in England as they would not fully understand the language, customs and situation of native people. 81 Macaulay argued that codification did not mean complete assimilation of native customs, but that he would remain sensitive to existing rules and customs by maintaining an understanding of difference. 82 This sensitivity to ‘existing’ rules was of course to the ones provided by the dominant caste leaders and communities. The goal for Macaulay was a uniformity in law that would lead to greater regulation and government over the native population by the British Crown, even if it was indirectly through the Governor General, judges and codified legislation in India. 83

The phrase attributed to Macaulay about civilising the subjects of the British Raj, ‘Indian in colour and blood, British in taste, in attitude and intellect’ has had different iterations of its context. 84 Within the context of broader colonial knowledge making around caste in the subcontinent, I argue that it refers to selecting and advancing dominant caste communities who were already seen as the ‘literate’ of the land. 85 In another instance, he also describes these literate natives as ‘persons fit to serve the state in the highest function, and in no ways inferior to the most accomplished men who adorn the best circles in Paris and London’. 86 Macaulay specifically carried on the notion of a Hindu land as he thought that interpretation of ‘Vedic scripts’ could advance the Indian civilisation closer to the British. 87 In the imperial orientalist imagination of Macaulay, the native elite dominant caste leaders were part of the British civilisational ladder of racial hierarchy, which was underpinned by liberal imperialism.

Codification in this sense then did work to bring together casteist notions of hierarchy in the subcontinent together with racist Victorian notions of civilisation. Notably here, the concepts of state ownership, control over land, and governing of populations through ‘public’ and ‘private’ spaces made it imperative to create laws whereby these distinctions incorporated the exclusion of indigenous tribes and ‘trans-communities’ in the subcontinent through the Criminal Tribes Act 1871. The Criminal Tribes Act 1871 was enacted not only in conformity with an existing hierarchy of Brahminical knowledge provided by a native elite dominant caste, but also with expedient reasons for criminalising marginalised caste communities, Adivasi (Indigenous) communities, and other communities deemed ‘immoral’. 88 In this sense, the Act incorporated Brahminical varna logics, in which some non-Brahmin castes are born in ‘sin’, along with British Victorian ‘universal’ morals on criminality and who is a ‘good citizen’. 89 The dominant caste landlords were assigned as those who would notify and be notified of any ‘tribe, gang, class’ of person who was believed to be ‘criminal’. 90 Descriptions of who was to be a ‘criminal’ were not exact but depended on profession, residence and conditions. 91 The notifications for identifying criminals was entirely based on identifying social practices which happened to be lower caste, trans-community people and itinerant communities which did not fit both the Brahminical and Victorian notion of ‘civilised’.

These penal logics based on control of land for use were used against Adivasi communities in princely states indirectly governed by the British, particularly forest-dwelling communities in Chattisgarh, in order to extract timber during the late nineteenth century. A key instrument though which this was achieved was the Forest Act 1878. 92 While initially introduced as a way to ‘preserve’ the forest, it was essentially an attempt to manage the resources of the forest for their uses by the British along with their dominant caste zamindars, who mostly associated themselves with Brahmin/Khastriya caste (Rajputs), and who acted as intermediaries between the Indigenous Adivasi community and the British administrators. 93 The Forest Act was a way for the British to interact with the otherwise isolated, tribal communities who depended for their livelihood on the resources of the forests, through dominant caste intermediaries, to ultimately control access to the forest and extraction of specific resources. 94 These restrictions had left many Adivasi communities displaced and were met with resistance from 1855 to 1895. 95

Notably, it is here that we also observe what Rupa Viswanath calls the exceptionalisation of caste as a social, religious cultural form ‘specific’ to the subcontinent which was used by the British to justify exempting the slavery of marginalised castes from the abolition of slavery in England and other colonies in 1833. 96 This allowed the British to extract as much tax revenue as they could from the peasantry caste 97 which also served the landowners whose economic, social and political dominance depended on the maintenance of the ‘caste hierarchy’. In Madras, at this time, this included the Parayar, Pallar and Chakkiliyar caste, all of whom were categorised as ‘Pariah’ by the British—a derogatory term to assert connotations of ‘outcast’ or not fit for society due to their lower ‘intelligence’. 98 Thus the caste hierarchy in which they were placed by the local native elite dominant caste leaders also became part of the British empire’s institutionalised ‘civilising’ mission. 99

The criminalisation of ‘tribes’ as well as ‘castes’, followed by the rebellion of 1857, resulted in the exceptionalisation of caste or the ‘fencing’ of caste within the ‘Hindu’ religion. British policy after 1859 was not to intervene in ‘native religion’. 100 Following the construction of the ‘Hindu’ religion by the dominant caste elite leaders and communities, native religion was characterised as ‘Hindu’ and ‘Muslim’. 101 Consequently, the British utilised the construction of ‘religious’ identity in the subcontinent to fit the aims of indirect rule. However, this construction of religious identity then also became an administrative matter delegated to judicial courts where, due to the influence of dominant caste interpretations of ‘codified’ law, violence against the marginalised caste found legal authority. Thus, any complaint of caste violence was considered to be a ‘native religious’ issue, and not suitable for resolution by British administrators, even as those administrators were complicit in codifying and constructing the ‘religious’ identity. 102

This codification of ‘pluralistic’ laws that served the interest of both the British and the native elite caste communities was consistent with how the idea of property was conceptualised as a ‘trust’ which extended concepts of ‘imperial citizenship’, ‘loyalty’ and proximity to ‘British values’ to the governance of the subcontinent. Macaulay’s emphasis on juridification, education and the institutionalisation of the subcontinent were consistent with older anthropological fictions created by Indologists, and in fact, were also consistent with how race within international legal hierarchy intersected with the question of caste—particularly those that were advanced by a new group of colonial officers and international legal theorists.

The process of codification ultimately relied on the constructions of the society on the ground through the orientalist imaginations of British anthropologists or Indologists. Some of the most concerted efforts in doing so were through the collection of data on caste through the 1881 census, surveys in villages and imperial gazettes. 103 This data was based on pre-existing conceptions built throughout the preceding years of Company rule in a similar fashion at the district level with the help of Brahmin assistants. 104 This data was relied on in years to follow by colonial anthropologists such as William Crooke, Edgar Thurston, and HA Rose, 105 and by the more influential Herbert Risley and Denzil Ibbetson, in order to compile volumes on caste and tribes of India. 106

The data collected gave both a ‘scientific’ illusion to the construction of naturalising caste and actively facilitated in the colonial governance of the subcontinent through codified law. Juridifying caste by means of codification made sense in accordance with British policy of ‘respecting’ the difference in culture but ‘guiding’ it through racialised perceptions of Victorian morality. Beyond simple codification of ‘Hindu Law’ and ‘Mohammaden’ Law, disciplining the populations by embedding race and caste became a governing tool. Caste became a category of analysis and a unit of measurement 107 that informed and could fit within the broader Victorian notions of liberal imperialism beyond the subcontinent. At the forefront of this inscribing of caste into empire’s law were international lawyers and colonial officers, alongside their assistants, who utilised the pseudoscience of anthropometry to conceptualise caste and race in the subcontinent. Across different registers, these actors formed discourses which further inscribed caste into the broader international legal hierarchy of racialisation at the time.

While the question of caste does not take a central position in this particular legal discourse around the law of nations broadly, in the context of the subcontinent, I emphasise the idea of ‘difference’ as a signifier of race and caste working together throughout these legal discourses on law of nations or international law as it was already coined by Bentham at the point. 108 The inclusion—and thus naturalisation of caste—as part of a hierarchy of race, was a corollary to how international law was constructed as a natural racialised global legal order. The work of Indologists to theorise caste in similar fashion to constructing—and naturalising—racial hierarchy was reflective and apparent in the work of international lawyers of the time: notably, James Mackintosh, Henry Sumner Maine and James Lorimer.

James Mackintosh was one of the earlier Scottish enlightenment scholars whose writings influenced British political identity in the nineteenth century. 109 His discourses on the law of nations were reflective of his experiences through the era of Scottish enlightenment as well as his time as a judge in Bombay, India. 110 In thinking about the law of nations as part of the common nature of man, his writings were influenced by Grotius’ natural law thinking about the idea of private property as part of the nature of man. 111 He emphasised the importance of the cultivation and labour of ‘private property’ as an ethic of intercourse between men. 112 More importantly, Mackintosh emphasised this ethic of intercourse as a means to an end for the progress of man. 113 Gust argues that this idea of progress for Mackintosh was specifically drawn from the context of Scottish enlightenment in the Highlands, 114 where ideas of the civilisation of the Highlands were accompanied by a notion of progress based on ‘enabling agricultural improvement through enclosures, building churches, schools, prisons’. 115 The concept of property, Mackintosh argued, is the central subject that marks the progress or stage of civilisation because property needs to exist for the wellbeing of mankind. 116 As a marker of civilisation, it needs to be developed from the ‘transient occupancy of a savage’ to the ‘comprehensive minute code of property which is the result of the most refined civilization’. 117 Additionally, this progress can only be made by the institution of the state and its ancillary administrative functions of legislation, judiciary and police. 118

As a judge in the Courts of Bombay, Mackintosh became interested in the process of codification and what that could bring to the ‘civilisation’ and development of the subcontinent. In this he was heavily reliant on William Jones’s Indology and particularly its focus on the ‘native customs’ of the subcontinent. 119 Mackintosh’s approach to understanding the context of the subcontinent was based on understanding the Sanskrit language, culture, and customs and owed much of his own approach to Jones. 120 He was amongst one of the key founders of Scottish orientalism of the subcontinent, and founded the Asiatic Society of Bombay. 121 Despite differences in his understanding of the role of caste in the subcontinent from other Indologists, 122 Mackintosh reiterated the naturalisation of caste as part of the ‘custom’ of the subcontinent. He emphasised that one of the most significant roles British played in developing laws for the protection of property was to ‘protect the eminent or ancient commercial families of native Indians’. 123 He maintained a similar myth of Brahminism as Jones of returning ancient India to its ‘former’ glory through the guidance of English civilisation—though one which focused on the land being a native Hindu land invaded by Muslims. In his essay on Lord Cornwallis, he describes Cornwallis’s defeat of Tipu Sultan as ‘a just defence of an ally’ and further that when the ‘nations of India turn their eyes to his monument, rising amidst fields with his paternal care has restored its ancient fertility, may those who have suffered violence at the hands of who unjustly call themselves “Great”, at length learn to love and revere the good’. 124 He was also particularly interested in the linguistic comparisons of Sanskrit as well as Brahmin philosophy as part of understanding ‘ancient India’. 125 While decrying the effects of caste hierarchy, Mackintosh’s understanding of the subcontinent emphasised a civilisational role of the British towards the native—while maintaining, understanding and guiding ‘local’ customs which were inadvertently based on Brahminism and the naturalisation of caste itself—as part of the racial global order.

The legal theories of James Lorimer, another jurist of international law who extended Scottish Enlightenment thinking, can also be seen as reflecting not just orientalist and racialised notions of the global order at the time, 126 but as intricately tied to ideas of caste and the ‘Aryan races’ of the Indian subcontinent. Lorimer’s The Institutes of Law of Nations creates a civilisational hierarchy of the law of nations based on racial and religious affinity to the British civilisation. 127 In doing so, Lorimer refers also to the extent to which other ‘creeds’ may be recognised ‘inter-ethnically’ 128 if not internationally. In the case of the Indian subcontinent where ‘native populations are far different from the English’, with reference to ‘anglicizing these races’, Lorimer discusses the possibility of a ‘gradual development of some oriental form of political organisation not known in history’. 129 Here, Lorimer explicitly refers to that possibility applying only to ‘Brahminism’ and ‘Buddhism’ but not ‘Mohammadens’. Lorimer’s orientalising of the subcontinent, while dismissing Brahminism as a ‘superstitious’ creed, nonetheless leads him to regard it as an ‘Aryan’ race. Specifically, towards the end of the second volume of the Institutes , Lorimer ends with a markedly different shift in tone as to the future of British Empire—particularly in the Indian subcontinent.

Lorimer refers again to the ‘education of natives’ bringing them ‘much closer’ to ‘break down the barriers of religious and social prejudice that have separated the conqueror from the conquered’. 130 Referring again to ‘creed’, ‘barring Mohammadens’, Lorimer thinks that there is nothing in the ‘fundamental creed of Hindus and Buddhists’ that should ‘hinder progress along the lines of that ethical creed which forms the basis for all religions’. 131 His approach takes the notions of pluralism and ‘anglicization’, extending them to the ‘aryan races’ of India, which draws a racial and religious commonality closer to the English than to those other races such as ‘negroes, Mongolian, semitic, Polynesian’. 132 Lorimer quite explicitly places these ‘Aryan’ races of India close to the position of the British Empire within a global racial hierarchy, while at the same time orientalising them. In extending his ‘embrace’ and notions of ‘friendship’, Lorimer ends the book with a metaphor apt for the inclusion of Brahminism within the white English racial hierarchy. He states that ‘in these circumstances, it is not inconceivable that in his next avatar Vishnu should assume the form of Hymen-the Uniter’. 133

This ‘future’ that Lorimer refers to is also not one conceived through ‘force of arms’ alone. He further states that ‘what is impossible to Mars, may be possible to Venus’, suggesting a gendered racist orientalisation. 134 This is clearer when he refers to the inheriting of an empire through the following analogy: ‘when the pupils of zenana missions issue from seclusion adorned with the graces of east, and the culture of west, they may conquer the conquerors as the Anglo-Saxon heiresses conquered the Norman nobles, a race may spring up to inherit an empire ruled by a woman’. 135 Lorimer’s canonical contribution to the law of nations thus ends with an incorporation of a form of perversely racialised and gendered Brahminism as part of the superior global racial order.

The English international legal jurist Henry Sumner Maine had a direct influence on colonial officers and their perceptions of caste in the subcontinent. He also lived in the subcontinent for a number of years as a magistrate. In particular, the colonial anthropologists Risley and Ibbetson were heavily influenced 136 by Maine’s social evolutionary thinking on law and customs in the context of the subcontinent. 137 Maine’s work on India was extensive and reflected his general theory of international law, based on his perspective of a natural social progression of society in history. 138 Maine relied heavily on Roman jurisprudence and its influence on Grotian ideas of law of nations to the extent that he believed ‘we cannot overstate the value of the Roman jurisprudence to International Law’ and that ‘if we fail to comprehend the influence of certain Roman jurisconsults on the mind of Hugo Grotius, and then the influence of the great book of [Hugo] Grotius on International Jurisprudence, we lose all chance of comprehending the body of rules which alone protects the European Commonwealth from permanent anarchy’. 139 His approach to law generally emphasised a historical reflection of social progress and Roman law was his recurring central historical example that demonstrated this progress. In particular, his time in the subcontinent writing on ‘Villages in the East and West’ 140 as well as reflections on Hindu law in historical lectures on ‘Ancient Law and Customs’ were both attempts to understand the legal history of ‘indian society’. 141

In doing so, he relied heavily on William Jones’s construction of the history of the subcontinent, the Aryan invasion theory, thereby justifying the hierarchy of hereditary castes. 142 This explained ‘Hindu’ Law—in much the similar way as those that had sought to codify it—as a linguistic, scholarly system of theological rites taught by and through Brahmins akin to Roman theological precepts. 143 In a broader sense then, Maine’s writing on international law reiterated and reinforced his approach to understanding caste and reliance on anthropological fantasy created by preceding anthropologists—both Indologists and Sanskritists. Maine set out a particular racial understanding of ‘less advanced’ people—referring to upper-caste Brahmin scribes—in his conceptualisation of the nature of the ‘Code of Manu’, 144 thus reiterating and maintaining a particular European exceptionalism in the racial hierarchy. 145 He maintained a distinction between European Aryan and their less civilised counterpart in the East. 146 Maine further distinguished between how sovereignty ought to be understood in its ancient feudal form as indivisible, and its present form in Europe as a reflection of the social progress that civilised European communities have made. 147 This progress had yet to be internalised in the less advanced peoples of the East, ie the subcontinent. 148

Maine’s writings were not just highly influential on the two most prominent colonial anthropologists, Risley and Ibbetson, but actively approved of the work of the former. Risley presented a theory of caste that took the preceding data collected by various colonial officers—most of them part of the Indian Civil Services—and applied what was at the referred to as the ‘science’ of anthropometry. 149 Based in a racial eugenicist pseudoscience, anthropometric methods of classifying castes through photography, measurement of face and body to make deterministic ‘naturalised’ claims became a usual occurrence from surveys done by colonial officers that were published in imperial gazettes following 1840. 150 The first use of anthropometry by Risley was the result of an ethnographic survey of Bengal, which consolidated the work of former colonial ethnologists, in the form of a two volume book titled Tribes and Castes of Bengal . 151 Risley’s first appointment as the Assistant Director of Statistics in 1875 during WW Hunter’s term as the Director for the first general statistical survey of the subcontinent in 1869 allowed him to employ anthropometry for the first time utilising the ethnographic data of officers before him. 152 Risley’s most expansive work on the anthropometry of the subcontinent was enabled by his appointment as the Honorary Director of the Survey of India and later as he led the census commission of 1899. 153

His foremost archive of anthropometric studies was consolidated and theorised—influenced also from Maine’s hypothesis of social progress within the subcontinent—in his book The Peoples of India , which he sent to several prominent Indologists and orientalists from whom he received approval, including, notably, Henry Sumner Maine. 154 Like Maine and Lorimer, Risley classified humanity in the subcontinent in accordance with where they fit within the broader racial hierarchy. Using anthropometry, he described racial types in subcontinent to be mainly divided between ‘Aryans, Mongolians, [and] Dravidians’. 155

For Risley, this hierarchy of Aryans of India having a higher civilisation status to Dravidians was futher solidifed by ‘scientific’ means. 156 His approach—through photography—was to use a pseudoscience of measurement to naturalise the racial superiority of the Indo-Aryan over the Dravidian, thus making ‘caste’ as natural a social reality as ‘race’ is for the purposes of hierarchy of civilisation.

The above image is from Risley’s The People of India , where he describes the archetype of the ‘Brahmin’ caste. 157 Reflecting his hierarchical views of where Aryan races within India, such as the Brahmin, stood in the racial hierarchy, his descriptions of those considered civilised were carefully framed. In this case, to evoke a description of the so-called learned nature of the Brahmin, along with the impression of orientalist notion of ancient civilisation of the ‘east’, a Brahmin Priest is photographed sitting squarely with beads in his hand, described as ‘old-fashioned, learned’. The categorisation of the Brahmin caste then, for Risley, is approximated to other more ‘primitive’ Brahmin caste that have isolated themselves more—whereas the Brahmin of Northern India have ‘lived for centuries under foreign governments’. 158 Even within the categorisations of caste, the closeness to ‘westernisation’ becomes necessary for Risley to ‘grade’ the Brahmin that is ‘less’ or ‘more primitive’—therefore attaching a racialising logic to presenting the caste position of the Brahmin.

This pictorial representation of the Brahmin and their position vis-à-vis ‘foreign governments’ is further put into context in the picture of lowered-caste family (below). In this particular photograph, Risley describes the Sutar caste, a lowered labour caste in a completely different frame to the Brahmin, both textually and visually. Framed as a family, with a wider lens from a greater distance focusing more the abjection of the family as a whole rather than the closer frames of Brahmin priest who was sitting, Risley describes them immediately as in juxtaposition to the Brahmin Caste: ‘Brahmin will not take water from their hands’. 159 Placing them immediately as those from ‘indigenous’ or ‘neo-aryan’ races, Risley describes them as worshippers of a ‘white man with three eyes’. 160 In the context of broader conversations of racial hierarchy in the subcontinent, of civilisation and caste, these two pictures describe how Risley viewed the position of lowered caste communities and Brahmins or Aryan races within the English racial hierarchy and caste hierarchy in the subcontinent. In both the framing, the textual description, and use of metric, Risley categorises caste positions as natural scientific ‘reality’ which exists as part of the ‘natural’ racial hierarchical order.

In the latter part of the nineteenth century, these ethnographic data, visual and textual, on ‘native’ castes and tribes were instrumental in the codification process which were tools of colonial governance embedding caste into the broader racial hierarchy imagined by the British conception of their ‘social trust’ to civilise the subcontinent. Beyond being used to construct matriculated bio-essentialist notions of ‘race’ and ‘caste’, these methods of collecting data on ‘native tribes and castes’ were instrumental to ascertain ‘social traits’ which informed the governance of the subcontinent. Most notably, in drafting of manuals of military recruitment and policy, 161 classification of social traits associated to ‘caste’ and ‘tribes’ was for the purposes of criminal law (such as the aforementioned Criminal Tribes Act 162 ) in categorising, keeping record and developing ‘fingerprints’ of specific criminal tribes, castes based on anthropometric data, 163 revenue settlement and collection. 164

Photograph representing the Brahmin Caste. Source: Herbert Risley, The People of India (2nd edn, Thacker, Spink & Co 1915).

Of the above areas, it was in revenue settlement and land allotment that Ibbetson’s ethnological study of Punjab 165 was instrumental to naturalise caste-based associations for the purposes of governance. Ibbetson was influenced in his time at Punjab as a census commissioner in 1881 by Maine’s own work in Punjab where he served as a Magistrate. 166 In particular, Ibbetson described the ‘scavenger castes’ as the ‘lowest of the low’, homogenised different lower caste communities into ‘scavenger caste’ whose position in the social organisation of the province of Punjab was dependent on working for other castes, and made their position one of ‘service’ to others. 167 Thus, as Waqas Butt describes, the distinction of higher caste to lower caste was based on those ‘who ruled’ and those who were ‘political subject[s]’. 168 In the recordkeeping of land, colonial officers kept and organised data that included, amongst other information, dues from ‘menial’ service or rent from ‘village servitude’. Such data registered or naturalised Ibbetson’s assumptions by designating lowered-caste farmers as tenants of land where upper-caste land owners were given—by recording of data—hereditary claims to private land ownership. 169

Photograph representing the Sutar Caste. Source: Herbert Risley, The People of India (2nd edn, Thacker, Spink & Co 1915).

The colonial encounter of the British Empire—first through the commercial company and then through the Empire itself—is a negotiation of overlapping powers in which the native dominant caste elite ultimately continues to thrive in its caste dominance while gaining capital through subsuming itself under the racialising logic of the coloniser. Being closer to British values and civilisation was also particularly important to the maintenance of caste hierarchy and superiority since the dominant caste were deemed ‘closest’—though never equal—to British civilisation.

It is also crucial to point here, as caste historians observe, that the same ideas used for imperial governance by the British and caste elites to continue their dominance were also then used to create resistance movements by the marginalised caste people. ‘Dalit’ politics, as Anupama Rao points out, 170 used ideas of minority representation, access to public office, and the army as a way to seek their own self-determination in a period where dominant caste elites had already secured political and administrative positions in the colonial government. Thus, the reliance on broader notions of ‘rule of law’ or liberal legal notions like civil rights and protection became and remain important avenues for discussing the relationship of caste discrimination and legal reform. 171 However, the question of whether juridification of caste discrimination also limits anti-caste aims and at times perpetuates caste is often left unanswered. 172 In this sense, it is also possible to look at the argument of this article as pointing to a double edge of Dalit politics: as a form of emancipation and limitation that is also inherent within the paradox of international law in the twentieth century, that is, the offer both of hope and of doubt. 173

As to international legal history, what remains missing in conversations on race and international law, and distinctive to the subcontinent, is how exactly the ‘dynamic of difference’ fits within already differentiated pre-European society. 174 Here the ‘dynamic of difference’ was not, I argue, simply a case of racial differentiation but of placing the internal difference of caste into the broad global hierarchy of difference, namely race. This relationship between caste and race within a history of the early law of nations and Victorian international law is particularly important as it is also the time period which foreshadowed the rise of the international society, 175 the imperial nation state and the formalisation of international law as a codified body of jurisprudence. 176

Following this, it is worth then thinking and perhaps problematising the concurrent emergence Dalit politics during this very time period, keeping in mind the groundwork laid by the British and upper-caste communities in engraving, entrenching and juridifying caste into a liberal imperial order. This is particularly important given the critical arguments within Dalit political philosophy that imagine the postcolonial ‘secular’ state of India as a Brahminical political and legal order. 177 Anti-caste scholars have continuously pointed out the limitations of subaltern and postcolonial theories. In particular, scholars such as Kancha Illiah Sheppard, 178 Gopal Guru, 179 and Gail Omvedt 180 point towards a lack of focus on social movements led by marginalised caste leaders and communities, as opposed to Brahmin and upper-caste leaders. In thinking about the historical linking of caste within the broader racial hierarchy of international legal order, we can also rethink and reframe contemporary politics of the subcontinent and the issues of Dalit, Adivasi and Pasmanda resistance, taking into consideration the presumptions and limitations that form when thinking only through the lens of a legal liberal world order.

This reconceptualisation of the construction of race embedding caste within it—thereby both inscribing its violence in the emerging global legal order and concealing its operation through liberal notions of state governance—can lead to other possibilities of addressing inequalities of caste and race. In a sense then, my argument also opens up opportunities for us not just to think about the role of race in international law, but how to think about addressing other forms of discrimination beyond a siloed form of liberal human rights, or ontological categories that need to be fixed, and instead understanding them as constitutive of racial global order.

The nature of race and caste, though important to understand separately, needs also to be understood as embedded through the British colonial encounter within international legal history. Here, we have further space to explore alternate epistemologies from the Global South that do not necessarily homogenise the history and sociology of the ‘Global South’. This makes way for us to think more sensitively about Dalit, Adivasi and Pasmanda approaches to international legal history and international legal theory can be consistent with theories of race and international law. One example would be anchoring Ambedkar’s thought on ‘annihilation of caste’ 181 beyond interpretations of Ambedkarian thought within constitutional reform in a liberal legal order. 182 Another intervention could be that we might give more consideration to Periyar’s approach to the construction of the ‘village’ 183 in broader anti-caste developmental thinking. The inclusion of Dalit Feminist theory, 184 for example, has the ability to make its mark in telling us about the anti-caste movement’s contribution to anti-colonialism in the subcontinent—without objectifying caste as a fixed category of culture. Adivasi thought on developmentalist history, 185 counter-narration and counter-visuality could be explored in conjunction with the role of caste and race in the making of international law. Pasmanda thought complicates liberal narratives of minority rights further in both the context of post-colonial Pakistan 186 and India, 187 pushing us to think beyond theories and critiques of human rights from the location of peripheries within the Global South.

These possibilities do not simply complicate, but enrich, the furthering of TWAIL scholarship. Taking up the attention to caste as interlinked with the construction of race allows us to explore these possibilities through specific contexts and local histories of the subcontinent and leads to new pathways of thinking about how international law is developed, actualised and adopted within these contexts. Existing interventions within TWAIL and broader critical international law that rely on subaltern studies, 188 postcolonial feminist theory 189 and critical literature on law, gender and development, 190 while addressing questions of race and even Indigeneity, do not contextualise it within the central social category of the subcontinent: caste. This article therefore, most importantly, gives critical international legal theorists and historians the possibility of not essentialising processes of racialisation in a way to subsume or undermine caste as a social construction, but to understand how their histories intersect and continue to connect in contemporary forms. It allows us to think further on how the abolition of race 191 and the annihilation of caste are prefigurative liberatory goals that do not contradict each other, but need to be understood together.

I would like to acknowledge the incisive feedback of the peer reviewers, and thank the Asian Society of International Law for giving me the opportunity to present this paper at the Junior Scholars Workshop in 2022. I would also like to give a special thanks to Professor Srinivas Burra for his detailed comments on an earlier draft of this piece as well as to Dr Martin Clark for providing key insights on some of the British international legal theorists mentioned in this piece

D Keane, Caste-Based Discrimination in International Human Rights Law (Routledge 2016); J Donnelly, ‘Traditional Values and Universal Human Rights: Caste in India’ in C Welch (ed), Asian Perspectives on Human Rights (Routledge 2021); A Waughray,  Capturing Caste in Law: The Legal Regulation of Caste Discrimination (Taylor & Francis 2022).

L Cabrera, ‘Ambedkar and Du Bois on Pursuing Rights Protections Globally’ in M Curtin, R Falk and V Faessel (eds), On Public Imagination (Routledge 2019); JF Cháirez-Garza, ‘BR Ambedkar, Partition and the Internationalisation of Untouchability, 1939–47’ (2019) 42 South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 80.

C Bob, ‘“Dalit Rights are Human Rights”: Caste Discrimination, International Activism, and the Construction of a New Human Rights Issue’ (2007) 29 Human Rights Quarterly 167.

A Waughray and D Keane, ‘CERD and Caste-Based Discrimination’ in D Keane and A Waughray (eds), Fifty Years of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (Manchester University Press, 2017).

Srinivas Burra’s critique of TWAIL for example, relies on the history of the internationalisation of caste as a lost opportunity for TWAILers to focus on colonialisms within colonialism. S Burra, ‘TWAIL’s Others: A Caste Critique of TWAILers and Their Field of Analysis’ (2016) 33 Windsor Year Book of Access to Justice 111.

D Mosse, ‘Caste and Development: Contemporary Perspectives on a Structure of Discrimination and Advantage’ (2018) 110 World Development 422.

The transnational Dalit advocacy group International Dalit Solidarity Network (IDSN) has for decades collected data, represented and pushed forward conversations on caste oppressed communities in international legal forums. In a document archiving all references to caste discrimination within UN bodies, IDSN lays out the country reports on Universal Periodic Review, UN treaty bodies, ICERD, CESCR, CEDAW, CRC, CAT and CCPR, and UN Special Rapporteurs. See International Dalit Solidarity Network, ‘Caste Discrimination and Human Rights’ (January 2022) < https://idsn.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/UNcompilation-Jan-2022-Web.pdf >. All URLs last accessed 21 September 2023.

Burra (n 5).

See most notably, A Anghie,  Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law (Cambridge University Press, 2005). And specifically, C Gevers, ‘“Unwhitening the World”: Rethinking Race and International Law’ (2020) 67 UCLA Law Review 1652.

See, eg, L Obregón, ‘Between Civilisation and Barbarism: Creole Interventions in International Law’ (2006) 27 Third World Quarterly 815; A Becker Lorca, Mestizo International Law (Cambridge University Press 2014).

From a burgeoning literature on Victorian conceptions of international law, see especially J Pitts, Boundaries of the International (Harvard University Press 2018); D Bell, Victorian Visions of Global Order: Empire and International Relations in Nineteenth-Century Political Thought (Cambridge University Press 2007); C Sylvest, ‘International Law in Nineteenth-Century Britain’ (2005) 75 British Year Book of International Law 9.

S Bayly, Caste, Society and Politics in India from the Eighteenth Century to the Modern Age (Cambridge University Press 2001).

Ambedkar’s caste position as a Mahar was deeply influenced by the particular history of oppression of sudra caste , deemed ‘lower’ in the graded hierarchy of caste. Therefore the term ‘lowered’ is used to denote the social construction of caste hierarchy and its oppression, rather than ‘lower’ which denotes an oppressive naturalisation of caste structure as part of ‘culture’.

See also the explanation of caste formation by BR Ambedkar in BR Ambedkar, Castes in India: Their Mechanism, Genesis and Development (Patrika 1916).

Bayly (n 12).

ibid. For a conceptualisation of caste mobility and fluidity in the history of the subcontinent, see M Srinivas, ‘A Note on Sanskritization and Westernization’ (1956) 15 Far Eastern Quarterly 481. See also K Kannabiran, ‘Sociology of Caste and the Crooked Mirror: Recovering B R Ambedkar’s Legacy’ (2009) 44 Economic and Political Weekly 35. On caste as a social political reality of Muslim communities in the subcontinent, see J Levesque, ‘Debates on Muslim Caste in North India and Pakistan: From Colonial Ethnography to Pasmanda Mobilization’ (2020) HAL Open Science < https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02697381/ >.

For specific examples beyond the subcontinent, see G Laurence and J Levesque, ‘Introduction: Historicizing Sayyid-Ness: Social Status and Muslim Identity in South Asia’ (2020) 30 Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 383; and within the African continent, R Dilley, Islamic and Caste Knowledge Practices among Haalpulaaren in Senegal: Between Mosque and Termite Mound (Edinburgh University Press 2019); S Yengde, ‘Global Castes’ (2022) 45 Ethnic and Racial Studies 340; N Amalu, Y Abdullahi, and E Demson, ‘Caste Conflict in Nigeria: The Osu/diala Experience in Igboland, 1900–2017’ (2021) 20  Global Journal of Social Sciences 77.

BR Ambedkar, Annihilation of Caste: Annotated Critical Edition (Verso Books 2014 [1936]).

V Kumar, ‘Dalit Assertion and Different Shades of Movements Defining Dalits: From Accorded Nomenclature to Asserted One’ in V Sachdeva, Q Pradhan and A Venugopalan (eds), Identities in South Asia (Routledge 2019). See also G Omvedt, Seeking Begumpura: The Social Vision of Anticaste Intellectuals (Navayana 2008).

Ambedkar (n 20).

G Omvedt, Understanding Caste: From Buddha to Ambedkar and Beyond (Orient Blackswan 2011).

For a critical essay on Dalit autobiography, see S Rege, ‘Dalit Women’s Autobiographies’ in S Arya and A S Rathore (eds), Dalit Feminist Theory (Taylor and Francis 2019); S Singh, ‘Representation of Dalit Women in Dalit Men’s and Women’s Autobiographies’ (2014) 1 Delhi University Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences 39.

KI Shepherd, Buffalo Nationalism: A Critique of Spiritual Fascism (Sage 2019); G Guru, ‘Food as a Metaphor for Cultural Hierarchies’ in B de Sousa Santos and M Meneses (eds), Knowledges Born in the Struggle: Constructing the Epistemologies of the Global South (Routledge 2019).

S Arya and AS Rathore (eds), Dalit Feminist Theory: A Reader (Taylor & Francis 2019).

S Thiranagama, ‘Rural Civilities: Caste, Gender and Public Life in Kerala’ (2019) 42 South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 310.

A Teltumbde, The Republic of Caste: Thinking Equality in the Time of Neoliberal India (Navayana Publishing 2018); A Teltumbde, ‘Dichotomisation of Caste and Class’ (2016) 51 Economic and Political Weekly 34.

S Paik, ‘Mahar–Dalit–Buddhist: The History and Politics of Naming in Maharashtra’ (2011) 45 Contributions to Indian Sociology 217.

S Sarukkai, ‘Phenomenology of Untouchability’ (2009) 44 Economic and Political Weekly 39.

G Guru and S Sarukkai, Experience, Caste, and the Everyday Social (Oxford University Press 2019).

Omvedt (n 25).

V Xaxa, State, Society, and Tribes: Issues in Post-Colonial India (Pearson Education India 2008).

S Umar, ‘The “Other” Muslim: Spatial-Temporal Cartographies of the Gendered Muslim World’ (2021) 11 Religion and Gender 113. For a recent special issues on this see J Levesque, and S Niazi, ‘Caste Politics, Minority Representation, and Social Mobility: The Associational Life of Muslim Caste in India’ (2023) 31 Contemporary South Asia  413.

MA Falahi, Hindustan Mein Zaat Paat Aur Musalman (Ideal Foundation 2006); I Ahmad, ‘Is There Caste among Muslims in India?’ (2015) 68 Eastern Anthropologist  1.

KA Ansari, ‘Rethinking the Pasmanda Movement’ (2009) 44 Economic and Political Weekly 8.

For example, Omvedt describes in her vast body of work the symbolic value of leaders/thinkers of ‘Dalit’ vision ie Guru Kabir, Guru Naanak, Bhudda, Periyar, Phule and different historical events such as Birsa Munda, Battle for Koregaon: Omvedt (n 25).

For three key texts critiquing the absence of caste in postcolonial and subaltern theory, see S Sarkar, ‘The Decline of the Subaltern in Subaltern Studies’ in D Ludden (eds), Reading Subaltern Studies: Critical History, Contested Meaning and the Globalization of South Asia ’ (Anthem 2002); U Bagade, Y Jogdand and V Bagade, ‘Subaltern Studies and the Transition in Indian History Writing’ (2023) 11 Critical Philosophy of Race 175; G Guru, ‘How Egalitarian are the Social Sciences in India?’ (2002) 37 Economic and Political Weekly 5003.

A Teltumbde, Mahad: The Making of the First Dalit Revolt (Taylor & Francis 2022).

Bagade, Jogdand and Bagade (n 41).

R O’Hanlon, ‘Colonialism and Social Identities in Flux: Class, Caste and Religious Community’ in DM Peers, and N Gooptu, India and the British Empire (Oxford University Press 2012).

BS Cohn, Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India (Princeton University Press 1996) ch 2, ‘The Command of Language and the Language of Command’.

CA Bayly, The New Cambridge History of India: Indian Society and the Making of the British Empire (Cambridge University Press 1988).

C Bayly, Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars: North Indian Society in the Age of British Expansion 1770–1870 (Cambridge University Press 1988).

ibid 25–26.

Ś Bandyopadhyay, From Plassey to Partition: A History of Modern India (Orient Blackswan 2004) 31–32.

Bayly (n 49).

PJ Stern, ‘Soldier and Citizen in the Seventeenth-Century English East India Company’ (2011) 15 Journal of Early Modern History 83; K Roy, ‘The Hybrid Military Establishment of the East India Company in South Asia: 1750–1849’ (2011) 6 Journal of Global History 195.

M Alam and S Subrahmanyam, ‘The Making of a Munshi’ (2004) 24 Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 61.

Stern (n 53); Bayly (n 49).

B Raman, ‘Sovereignty, Property and Land Development: The East India Company in Madras’ (2018) 61 Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 976.

See ibid for more on how the British quelled any counter approach by lowered caste communities to appropriate lands through gardening boundaries of land.

Raman (n 56).

S Pahuja, ‘Public Debt, the Peace of Utrecht and the Rivalry between Company and State’ in AHA Soons, The 1713 Peace of Utrecht and Its Enduring Effects (Brill Nijhoff 2019) 156; PJ Stern, The Company-State: Corporate Sovereignty and the Early Modern Foundations of the British Empire in India (Oxford University Press 2011).

Cohn (n 47).

R Rocher R and L Rocher, The Making of Western Indology: Henry Thomas Colebrooke and the East India Company (Routledge 2014); R King, ‘Orientalism and the Modern Myth of “Hinduism”’ (1999) 46 Numen  146.

See specifically K Raj, ‘From Merchants to Imperial Bureaucrats? Commerce, Territorial Administration and East India Company, 17 th –19 th Century’ in JC Caravaglia and C Lamouroux (eds), Serve the Power(s), Serve the State: America and Eurasia (Cambridge Scholars Publications 2016); GG Raheja, ‘India: Caste, Kingship, and Dominance Reconsidered’ (1988) 17 Annual Review of Anthropology 497.

For this see specifically Henry Summer Maine citing Jones in HS Maine, On Early Law and Custom (J Murray 1890).

Raj (n 65); K Mohan, ‘The Colonial Ethnography: Imperial Pursuit of Knowledge for Hegemony in British India (Late 19th to Early 20th Century) Proceedings of the Indian History Congress (JSTOR 2002).

Cohn (n 47); NB Dirks, Castes of Mind (Princeton University Press, 2011).

K Roy, ‘The Hybrid Military Establishment of the East India Company in South Asia: 1750–1849’ (2011) 6 Journal of Global History 195; P Barua, ‘Inventing Race: The British and India’s Martial Races’ (1995) 58 Historian 107.

For phenological assertion about zamindars by company officers, see, eg, CJ Fuller, ‘British India or Traditional India? An Anthropological Problem’ (1977) 42 Ethnos 95.

See most starkly the argument provided by K Mantena, Alibis of Empire: Henry Maine and the Ends of Liberal Imperialism (Princeton University Press 2010).

For the idea of cultural difference and imperial pluralism as a crucial liberal notion of British imperial rule, see, eg, Anthony Pagden, ‘Imperialism, Liberalism and the Quest for Perpetual Peace’ (2005) 134(2) Daedalus 46.

On the transitions from Company governance to imperial state governance, see, eg, M Mukherjee ‘Justice, War, and the Imperium: India and Britain in Edmund Burkes Prosecutorial Speeches in the Impeachment Trial of Warren Hastings’ (2005) 23 Law and History Review 589; C Boisen, ‘The Changing Moral Justification of Empire: From Right to Colonise to Obligation to Civilise’ (2013) 39 History of European Ideas 335. See also C Boisen, ‘Triumphing over Evil: Edmund Burke and the Idea of Humanitarian Intervention’ (2016) 12 Journal of International Political Theory 276.

Pahuja (n 60).

Raj (n 65).

Boisen (n 73).

S Den Otter, ‘The Legislating Empire: Victorian Political Theorist, Codes of Law and Empire’ in D Bell (ed), Victorian Visions of Global Order: Empire and International Relations in Nineteenth-Century Political Thought (Cambridge University Press 2007).

P Burroughs, ‘Imperial Institutions and the Government of Empire’ in Andrew Porter (ed), The Oxford History of the British Empire Vol 3: The Nineteenth Century (OUP 1999).

Cited in BR Mani,  Debrahmanising History: Dominance and Resistance in Indian Society (Manohar 2007) 199; G Viswanathan, Outside the Fold: Conversion, Modernity, and Belief (Princeton University Press 1998); A Rao,  The Caste Question: Dalits and the Politics of Modern India (University of California Press, 2009); R O’Hanlon,  Caste, Conflict and Ideology: Mahatma Jotirao Phule and Low Caste Protest in Nineteenth-Century Western India (Cambridge University Press, 2002); G Ayyathurai, ‘Foundations of Anti-Caste Consciousness: Pandit Iyothee Thass, Tamil Buddhism, and the Marginalized in South India’ (Doctoral Dissertation, Colombia University 2011). Viswanathan in particular states how English education was a broader colonial objective of making non-Hindu, Hindus and non-Muslim, Muslims. Mani, Rao, Bayly, O’Hanlon and Ayyathurai place this education policy as being deliberately welcomed by the dominant caste, Brahmin and Ashraf (Muslim) communities in order to secure better positions in the colonial government.

Dirks (n 68); Cohn (n 47).

Cited in Viswanathan (n 84) 9.

A Tariq, ‘Indology and Indologist: Conceiving India during Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries’ (2019) 5 Journal of Indian Studies 17.

M Radhakrishna,  Dishonoured by History: ‘Criminal Tribes’ and British Colonial Policy (Orient Blackswan 2001).

M Kumar, ‘Relationship of Caste and Crime in Colonial India’ (2004) 39(10) Economic and Political Weekly 1078.

A Verghese, ‘British Rule and Tribal Revolts in India: The Curious Case of Bastar’ (2016) 50 Modern Asian Studies 1619.

S Mukherjee, ‘Historical Legacies of Colonial Indirect Rule: Princely States and Maoist Insurgency in Central India’ (2018) 111 World Development  113.

On the Forest Act 1878, see R Guha, ‘An Early Environmental Debate: The Making of the 1878 Forest Act’ (1990) 27 Indian Economic & Social History Review 65.

R Viswanath, The Pariah Problem (Columbia University Press 2014).

ibid 4. See also O’Hanlon (n 84) who notes how Dalit leader Jotirao Phule criticised both the Brahmin landed elites as well as the British for increased tax collection, greater interests on money lending, control of and access to rivers, forests, and leaving any caste violence to be dealt with by Brahmin caste elites.

Of particular importance here is the contested positions of Protestant missionaries who arrived as a result of British administrative takeover, forming Pariah-protestant alliances for mass conversions in south India which gave the marginalised caste escape from the dominant caste violence and lack of protection of colonial government. See, eg, Viswanath (n 96) 3.

ibid; Fuller (n 70).

Viswanathan (n 84) 9. Viswanathan in particular states how English education was a broader colonial objective of making non-Hindu, Hindus and non-Muslim, Muslims. The idea of the religiously distinct Hindu and Muslim identity also found purchase in racialising Muslims as inherently ‘violent’ and ‘rebellious’: see, eg, IRM Fuerst,  Indian Muslim Minorities and the 1857 Rebellion: Religion, Rebels and Jihad (Bloomsbury Publishing 2017); S Patel, ‘Sociological Study of Religion: Colonial Modernity and 19th Century Majoritarianism’ (2007) 42 Economic and Political Weekly  1089.

Mohan (n 67).

CJ Fuller, ‘Anthropologists and Viceroys: Colonial Knowledge and Policy Making in India, 1871–1911’ (2016) 50 Modern Asian Studies 217.

Raheja (n 65).

MW Janis, ‘Jeremy Bentham and the Fashioning of “International Law”’ (1984) 78 American Journal of International Law 405.

O Gust, ‘Remembering and Forgetting the Scottish Highlands: Sir James Mackintosh and the Forging of a British Imperial Identity’ (2013) 52  Journal of British Studies  615.

W Christian, ‘James Mackintosh, Burke and the Cause of Reform’ (1973) 7 Eighteenth-Century Studies 193. Another factor to which the British East India Company connection to Mackintosh and Burke is instructive is that Mackintosh was appointed Recorder at the Bombay Supreme Court in India after his meeting with Burke. During which time he wrote law of nations and nature. His influence of the Scottish enlightenment thinking, along with his engagement with Grotius and Burke, resonated in his time in colonial India. More so because he was also surrounded by intellectual thinkers who were moving towards an argument for greater State control of Company territories.

J Mackintosh.  A Discourse on the Study of the Law of Nature and Nations (Pratt 1843).

J Mackintosh, ‘The Opening of the Literary Society of Bombay’ in J Mackintosh, Miscellaneous Works of Sir James Mackintosh (Appleton 1871) 399–400.

J Rendall, ‘Scottish Orientalism: From Robertson to James Mill’ (1982) 25 Historical Journal 43.

J Mackintosh, ‘A Charge Delivered to the Grand Jury in Bombay’ in Miscellaneous Works (n 115) 506.

J Mackintosh, ‘Charles, First Marquis of Cornwallis’ in Miscellaneous Works (n 115) 236, 238.

Rendall (n 120). Scottish Orientalism found its home in the Asiatic Society of Bombay, specifically focusing on producing a new cadre of Sanskritists. For example, in the vein of William Jones, Arnold Berriedale Keith continued this particular tradition and translated the Rigvedas: see AB Keith, Rigveda Brahmanas: The Aitareya and Kaushitaki Brahamas of the Rigveda (1922) 31 Philosophical Review 409. Keith believed Indian ‘philosophy’ (ie Brahminical) texts were key to understanding a rich ancient system of the subcontinent.

Gevers (n 9).

M Koskenniemi, ‘Race, Hierarchy and International Law: Lorimer’s Legal Science’ (2016) 27  European Journal of International Law  415. See also S Tierney and N Walker, ‘Through a Glass, Darkly: Reflections on James Lorimer’s International Law’ (2016) 27 European Journal of International Law  409.

J Lorimer,  The Institutes of the Law of Nations: A Treatise of the Jural Relations of Separate Political Communities (WW Blackwood and Sons 1883) vol I, 93.

ibid vol I, 100.

ibid vol II, 298.

ibid vol II, 299.

Fuller (n 106).

D Alan and A Diamond HS Maine, The Victorian Achievement of Sir Henry Maine: A Centennial Reappraisal (Cambridge University Press 1991).

C Landauer, ‘From Status to Treaty: Henry Sumner Maine’s International Law’ (2002) 15 Canadian Journal of Law & Jurisprudence 219.

HS Maine, Village-Communities in the East and West (H Holt 1876).

Landauer (n 139).

Maine (n 140).

The Code of Manu is a Vedic text that explicitly inscribes caste system as a social/spiritual hierarchy in the form of legal social codes for a society. For more on this see A Sanil, ‘Revisiting Inequality and Caste in State and Social Laws’ (2023) 4  CASTE: A Global Journal on Social Exclusion  267.

C Pinney, ‘Classification and Fantasy in the Photographic Construction of Caste and Tribe’ (1990) 3 Visual Anthropology 259. Photography itself assumed a more central role after the 1857 Rebellion in the governance of the subcontinent. It became a generative tool for managing, categorising, recreating through the lens of the colonial photographer the ‘reality’ of the subcontinent. On this see, eg, C Pinney,  Camera Indica: The Social Life of Indian Photographs (University of Chicago Press 1997); Z Chaudhary,  Afterimage of Empire: Photography in Nineteenth-Century India (University of Minnesota Press 2012); EM Hight and GD Sampson (eds),  Colonialist Photography: Imag(in)ing Race and Place (Routledge 2013); R James,  Picturing Empire: Photography and the Visualization of the British Empire (University of Chicago Press 1997).

Pinney (n 149); C Bates, ‘Race, Caste and Tribe in Central India: The Early Origins of Indian Anthropometry’ in P Robb (ed), The Concept of Race in South Asia (Oxford University Press 1995). Imperial surveys were a common practice of colonial officers in both the Company and later on, although they assumed a more systematic form after 1857.

H Risley,  The People of India (2nd edn, Thacker, Spink and Co 1915) xiii.

Risley (n 151).

ibid plate XXV.

ibid, plate XXVI.

P Barua, ‘Inventing Race: The British and India’s Martial Races’ (1995) 58 Historian  107; M Des Chene, ‘Military Ethnology in British India’ (1999) 19  South Asia Research  121.

L Ravichandran, ‘Colonial Construct of Criminal Tribes—Piramalai Kallar and Narikoravar of Tamil Nadu’ in MC Behera (ed), Tribe–British Relations in India (Springer 2021).

For this see specifically, C Anderson, ‘Voir/Savoir: Photographing, Measuring and Fingerprinting the Indian Criminal’ in C Anderson (ed) Legible Bodies: Race, Criminality and Colonialism in South Asia (Bloomsbury 2004); MR Waits, ‘The Indexical Trace: A Visual Interpretation of the History of Fingerprinting in Colonial India’ (2016) 17 Visual Culture in Britain  18.

D Ibbetson,  Punjab Castes: Races, Castes and Tribes of the People of the Panjab (Cosmo Publications 1916).

WH Butt, ‘Beyond the Abject: Caste and the Organization of Work in Pakistan’s Waste Economy’ (2019) 95 International Labor and Working-Class History  18.

Rao (n 84).

See most notably M Mitta, Caste Pride: Battles for Equality in Hindu India (Westlands Publication, 2023).

This is a point where an equivalent to critical race theory has not yet found its foundation in the context of caste except for another recent provocation on developing a critical caste studies by G Ayyutharai, ‘Is It Time for a New Subfield? Critical Caste Studies’ South Asia @ LSE Blog < https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/southasia/2021/07/05/it-is-time-for-a-new-subfield-critical-caste-studies/ >. At the time of writing, this remains a framework mentioned largely within the confines of sociology and education.

Here I am referring to the arguments on the political possibilities and limitations as well as the inherent agnosticism of the international legal system, as pointed out by S Pahuja,  Decolonising International Law: Development, Economic Growth and the Politics of Universality (Cambridge University Press 2011).

Here I am referring to Antony Anghie’s ‘Dynamic of Difference’ in A Anghie, ‘The Evolution of International Law: Colonial and Postcolonial Realities’ (2006) 27 Third World Quarterly  739.

D Gorman,  The Emergence of International Society in the 1920s (Cambridge University Press 2012).

M Koskenniemi,  The Gentle Civilizer of Nations: The Rise and Fall of International Law 1870–1960 (Cambridge University Press 2001).

G Omvedt, Dalits and the Democratic Revolution: Dr Ambedkar and the Dalit Movement in Colonial India (SAGE Publications 1994); G Omvedt, Dalit Visions: The Anti-Caste Movement and the Construction of an Indian Identity (Orient Blackswan 2006).

KI Sheppard, The Weapon of the Other: Dalitbahujan Writings and the Remaking of Indian Nationalist Thought (Pearson Education India 2012).

G Guru, ‘Dalit Vision of India: From Bahishkrut to Inclusive Bharat’ (2004) 36 Futures 757.

Omvedt (n 177).

B Chakrabarty,  The Socio-Political Ideas of BR Ambedkar: Liberal Constitutionalism in a Creative Mould (Routledge, 2018).

EVR Periyar, ‘Towards the Complete Destruction of the Old Order’ (2020) 4 Prabuddha: Journal of Social Equality  1.

Arya and Rathore (eds) (n 28).

V Xaxa,  State, Society, and Tribes: Issues in Post-Colonial India (Pearson 2008). See also the Tribal Collective of India Publications; RR Ziipao,  Infrastructure of Injustice: State and Politics in Manipur and Northeast India (Taylor & Francis 2020); SR Bodhi, ‘Tribes and State Policy in India: Revisiting Governing Principles from a Decolonial Social Work Perspective’ (2020) 50 British Journal of Social Work  2372; SR Bodhi and RR Ziipao, Land, Words and Resilient Culture: The Ontological Basis of Tribal Identity (Tribal Intellectual Collective India 2019).

G Asif, ‘Jogendranath Mandal and the Politics of Dalit Recognition in Pakistan’ (2020) 43  South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies  119; S Mahmood, ‘From Untouchable to Dalit: Narratives and Strategies of Assertion among the Scheduled Castes of Pakistan’ (2022) 2  Journal of Sindhi Studies  1; G Hussain, ‘“Dalits are in India, Not in Pakistan’: Exploring the Discursive Bases of the Denial of Dalitness under the Ashrafia Hegemony’ (2020) 55 Journal of Asian and African Studies 17.

KA Ansari, ‘Pluralism and the Post-Minority Condition: Reflections on the “Pasmanda Muslim” Discourse in North India’ in B De Sousa Santos and BS Martins (eds), The Pluriverse of Human Rights (Routledge 2021).

P Singh, ‘Indian International Law: From a Colonized Apologist to a Subaltern Protagonist’ (2010) 23  Leiden Journal of International Law  79. I am also referring here to references to Baxi, Chakrabarty, and Spivak within law, international law and its history: A Orford, ‘Feminism, Imperialism and the Mission of International Law’ (2002) 71  Nordic Journal of International Law  275. See further more regional conversations on international law, race, class in the context of India or Pakistan: B Rajagopal,  International Law from Below: Development, Social Movements and Third World Resistance (Cambridge University Press, 2003); BS Chimni, ‘The Self, Modern Civilization, and International Law: Learning from Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj or Indian Home Rule’ (2012) 23 European Journal of International Law  1159.

Most notably Orford (n 188); K Grewal, ‘Can the Subaltern Speak within International Law? Women’s Rights Activism, International Legal Institutions and the Power of “Strategic Misunderstanding”’ in N Dhawan, E Fink, J Leinius and R Mageza-Barthel (eds), Negotiating Normativity (Springer 2016).

For example the seminal work of Ratna Kapur: R Kapur,  Gender, Alterity and Human Rights: Freedom in a Fishbowl (Edward Elgar 2018); R Kapur, ‘Gender, Sovereignty and the Rise of A Sexual Security Regime in International Law and Postcolonial India’ (2013) 14  Melbourne Journal of International Law 317. Kapur however does imagine postcolonial feminism as addressing how intersections of race, caste, sexuality, religion can inform our understanding of gender—through the category or the construction of caste within the context of the subcontinent historically remains an open question, particularly through Dalit feminist perspectives.

I am referring here to the established scholarship extending the thesis of racial capitalism towards abolitionism; RW Gilmore,  Abolition Geography: Essays Towards Liberation (Verso Books, 2022).

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