Exploring Caste in America | Grand Tamasha

Later this summer, California could be first American state to ban discrimination on the basis of caste. California’s move, and the moves by universities, cities, and towns across the country, to raise issues of caste discrimination has generated a massive controversy that is roiling the Indian American community in the United States.
One reporter, the freelance journalist Sonia Paul, has been doggedly pursuing this story for years, even before it became a mainstream news issue. Sonia is an award-winning journalist, writer, producer and story editor based in Oakland, California, and she is the daughter of immigrants from India and the Philippines.
Sonia joins Milan on the show this week to talk more about her reporting and the state of caste in America. Sonia and Milan discuss the difficulties of reporting on caste in America, the coded ways in which discrimination often takes place, and the debates in the Indian American community over moves to add caste as a protected category. Plus, the two discuss the fierce contest over California’s draft legislation.
Episode notes:
Sonia Paul, “The hidden caste codes of Silicon Valley,” BBC, April 18, 2023.
Sonia Paul, “Trapped in Silicon Valley’s Hidden Caste System,” Wired, March 1, 2022.
“California Could Become the First State to Ban Caste Discrimination,” KQED “The Bay” (podcast), June 5, 2023.
Sumitra Badrinathan, Devesh Kapur, Jonathan Kay, and Milan Vaishnav, “Social Realities of Indian Americans: Results From the 2020 Indian American Attitudes Survey,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, June 9, 2021.
Maari Zwick-Maitreyi, Thenmozhi Soundararajan, Natasha Dar, Ralph F. Bheel, and Prathap Balakrishnan, Caste in the United States: A Survey of Caste Among South Asian Americans (Equality Labs, 2018).
Sonia Paul, “From Black Lives Matter, activists for India’s discriminated Dalits learn tactics to press for dignity,” The World, November 12, 2015.
Patrick Cox, “Which version of Indian history do American school students learn?,” The World, April 27, 2017.

Sign up to receive Carnegie invitations: bit.ly/3Bfsca5
Like and subscribe to our channel: bit.ly/38sljlH
The Carnegie Endowment advances international peace by leveraging its global network to shape debates and provide decisionmakers with independent insights and innovative ideas on the most consequential global threats and opportunities.
Support Carnegie’s work: carnegieendowm...
Visit our website: carnegieendowm...
Like us on Facebook: / carnegieendowment
Follow us on Twitter: / carnegieendow
Follow us on Instagram: / carnegieendow
#foreignpolicy #CarnegieEndowment

[@annjoyce579]

Ancient Hindu text," I was born a Brahman (rich), but i lived my life as an untouchable (poor, oppressed), then-- I returned to Brahman. "

[@jovianjollity5244]

A display of ignorance and condescension about India’s ancient dharmic society, mixed with 20th century class conflict theories, blended in with 21st century outrage against meritocracy, rolled into a hodge-podge analysis that neither shows erudition about Hindu philosophy nor about history or sociology! The word “caste” is not Hindu at all! It is of Portuguese origin to denote class because that’s what Europe exported through colonialism, along with racism and slavery. India only had communities or “jathis” which was not a hierarchy. It was the British colonial government that changed it into a hierarchy along class lines when they conducted the first census in colonial India in 1901. The discussants don’t seem to know that “varna” or occupation was not determined by birth in Hindu society. It was not someone from the “priestly class”, (to use the term mentioned by Sonia Paul), who wrote the Vedas (an important Hindu religious text), but sage Vyasa, whose mother came from the fishing community. Nothing blue-blooded in her origins! Sage Vyasa also wrote the Mahabharata, the great Hindu epic. Similarly, the author of the Ramayana, another great Hindu epic, was not from the “priestly class”. He was a reformed bandit who earned the name Valmiki, due to his penance! The discussants should perhaps read the Hindu text, the Bhagavad Gita, to understand that, Krishna, the avatar of Vishnu the deity, explained that one”s “varna” is not determined by birth, but by one’s abilities and attributes ( “gunas”). Also, Krishna was raised by a clan of cowherds ( Yadavas) and did not belong to the “priestly class.” Krishna was very dark-skinned, yet is a revered deity. So was Rama, another avatar of Vishnu, and protagonist of the Ramayana. So no racism or “caste” there! Sonia Paul seems to be parsing woke concepts such as, 'critical race theory', as ‘critical caste theory’ and equating African Americans who were enslaved, with Dalits, as if the latter belonged to another race and injustices toward them were meted out on that basis. So called "scholarship" on such social theories seem to be manufactured spuriously and as easily as statistics can be manipulated to suit an agenda. Historically it was colonialism (and the industrialization of Britain) and its unabashed use of India's raw materials and resources that created this class of the marginalized, who were once artisans, and farmers. One has only to read the U.S. historian, Will Durant's 'The Case for India,' to understand how British colonialism caused the impoverishment of India and its communities. The "priestly class" was made to work as clerks and bureaucratic minions, spouting lines of Shakespeare instead of sanskrit, for their white masters who sipped their martinis in their exclusive white clubs, while doing a hatchet job of partitioning undivided India. However, since India's independence in 1947, there has been a system of reservations (affirmative action programs) in university admissions and government jobs, that were meant to be temporary, but has continued for decades. Such an irony that Sonia Paul brings up the “caste” system with which to flog Hindus, represented by the Modi government, though he came from a humble social background. He was certainly not from the “priestly class.” Actually, some of the worst “casteists” are from the Christian and Muslim communities (where slavery and racism originated!), who treat converts from lower social strata as less equal. One hears that Christian Dalits are not allowed to even sit in the same pews in churches, as those from higher social strata. Similarly, Muslim converts from the lower social strata known as “pasmandas” are treated contemptuously as “inferior” by their ashraf brethren. As for Equality Labs and their fake surveys, their claim of “caste discrimination” in the U.S., will, no doubt, be thoroughly examined in court. The vote on “caste discrimination” by the Seattle City Council is already being challenged in court. There is no basis for such a law passed on the findings of a frivolous survey and voted in by surreptitious means, without open evidence-based discussions. The same goes for the frivolous case against Cisco. The membership of Equality Labs (led by a Thenmozhi Soundararajan, a spinner of caste theories, who is reportedly a second generation woke activist and the daughter of immigrants who are doctors from India) includes members with links to Pakistan’s intelligence agency, ISI, (including a Houma Dar and her daughter, Natasha Dar) just as their funding points to some questionable sources, as well as the Soros Foundation that constantly disseminates fake news about the Modi government and about hindutva. In short, Equality Labs is an organization originally constituted mainly by non Hindus ( actually by some Muslims from Pakistan and Bangladesh) to conduct spurious surveys about “caste discrimination” by Hindus in the U.S. and manipulate city councils into passing caste discrimination laws. The names of these original board members of Equality Labs have recently been effaced from their website, perhaps to purge anything incriminating. The fact that a bill against “caste discrimination” was introduced by an Afghan-American (Muslim) state senator from California, by the name of Ayesha Wahab, further attests to its religiously biased origins. As for the knowledge and expertise of Thenmozhi Soundararajan on the subject of “caste discrimination” in the U.S., one has to simply observe her use of profanities on video to realize that she is deficient in any serious scholarship on an issue that she crusades. Strangely, neither Equality Labs nor the Soros Foundation have anything negative to say against Pakistan’s severe religious persecution of its non Muslims, particularly Hindus and Sikhs. The same is true of the condition of Hindus in Bangladesh and of Sikhs in Afghanistan. Nor do such crusading groups have an unkind word to say about China’s treatment of its Uighur Muslim minority that is imprisoned in labor camps (much like the Jews under Nazi Germany) with no rights and treated as slaves. Yet the arbiters of equality point fingers at the oldest religion in the world that sees the divine in all living beings and believes that divine, universal truth that can be attained by many paths. It has never had a history of anti semitism, unlike abrahamic religions. Nonetheless, the arbiters of equality see themselves as the truth sayers. That’s like the wicked queen in Snow White whose magic mirror tells her that she’s the fairest of them all!

[@zeitgeistx5239]

lol homie with the straw man using American political buzzwords as red herring. Classic example of propaganda. Take a subject foreign to your reader and weave it in their political conspiracies and culture war. This guy literally starts off arguing about the origin of the word caste when India is not part of the Anglo Saxon world. Nice try.

[@HafizeQuranAwesomeMunir]

Sonia Paul is absolutely the perfect fit to talk about this issue. Not!! Also,wasn't this a show dedicated to talk about issues in India.

[@srijandatta287]

Are you educated enough to talk about the issue??

[@hammadqureshi1763]

It's only in India.

[@RD-pp9ds]

It's everywhere wherever Indians reside

[@echosmith5256]

@@RD-pp9ds A black man show a pregnant asian woman in seattle today - clear hate crime against race and class. But the JNU trained moron running the city is busy banning brahminniacal patriarchy and white supremacy. And all this retarded drama is based on one IITian in Oracle who picked on his batchmate

[@srijandatta287]

An absolute waste of time.