Australia’s South Asians hail inclusion of caste discrimination in anti-racism framework

When Sydney-based IT professional Devi asked someone from her company for another colleague’s phone number last year, she was told that the colleague was from an upper-caste family, implying she should be mindful of his status before approaching him. “The response was uncalled for because I was not concerned about other people’s caste,” Devi, who goes by one name and originally hails from India’s Tamil Nadu state, told This Week In Asia. “It was specifically told to me because I belong to a caste-oppressed community.” Such taunts based on caste – a rigid social stratification system in South Asia that assigns individuals their social standing at birth – now face greater scrutiny in Australia due to new measures aimed at curbing them. Australia’s Human Rights Commission (AHRC) included caste discrimination in the national anti-racism framework for the first time last month. This enables the government, police, public institutions, businesses and community organisations to introduce measures against faith and caste-based discrimination and avenues for legal protections in areas such as housing, education and culture. Devi believes including caste discrimination in the anti-racism framework will encourage companies to address the issue in their human resource policies and empower employees facing discrimination to make formal complaints. “This framework will raise awareness, and those flaunting their caste at workplaces will stop doing it,” said Devi, who also sits on the executive committee of the Canberra-based advocacy organisation Periyar Ambedkar Thoughts Circle of Australia (PATCA), which aims to eradicate caste-based discrimination. In South Asia, Brahmins and Kshatriyas occupy the highest social tiers, while Dalits are at the bottom. Similar caste hierarchies exist among South Asian Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, and Buddhists. Among the 1-million-strong South Asian community in Australia, many have reported that they are still experiencing caste discrimination at workplaces, social gatherings, and places of worship despite having migrated from India, Nepal and other countries with an entrenched system of social hierarchy. Sydney-based IT professional Gokulan Gopal, 38, said that there were WhatsApp groups run by upper-caste academics, doctors and engineers with conversations revolving around their perceived caste superiority and barbecue lunches arranged among them to discuss the importance of teaching caste to children. “The ‘caste pride’ is deeply ingrained, even when people speak of [their caste status when] visiting temples or donating blood or raising funds for a social cause to create a prejudiced and exclusive community instead of becoming inclusive,” Gopal said. He expressed hope that the new anti-racism framework would raise awareness and make people hesitant to discuss “caste superiority”. The national anti-racism framework recognised the need to fight caste-based discrimination after consulting over 1,200 racialised people including caste-oppressed communities. Their experiences were documented by Ambedkar International Mission (AIM), Shri Guru Ravidass Sabha Sydney (SGRS), PATCA and other organisations before being submitted to the Federation of Ethnic Communities’ Councils of Australia (FECCA). Cases of documented discrimination include the exclusion of Hindus and Sikhs from temples and gurdwaras dominated by the upper caste, bullying of children in schools by upper-caste peers for eating meat, online hate campaigns against Dalit activists for protesting against the rape and murder of a Dalit girl in India, allegedly committed by upper-caste men and eviction of Nepalese students by upper-caste flatmates. “Such experiences have left people deeply wounded and traumatised,” said Selvaraj Velayutham, an associate professor in sociology at Macquarie University, who spoke to 26 caste-oppressed South Asians on behalf of PATCA. Velayutham said the anti-racism framework has recognised caste-based discrimination as a systemic issue, and such personal experiences could no longer be easily cast aside. “We can confront the issue directly and develop effective strategies. The framework provides a roadmap for public, private and business entities to address all forms of racism,” he added. Melbourne-based documentary filmmaker Vikrant Kishore, 48, co-author of a 2022 report advocating for caste as a legally protected category that was submitted to the AHRC for the anti-racism framework, said that incidents of discrimination were mostly “subtle and indirect”. “People have lost ‘friends’ or have been forced to feel ‘invisible’ in social spaces or being verbally abused with caste-based slurs, whenever they have revealed their caste,” he said. The experience of hearing a caste-based slur can be “traumatic”, according to Kishore, who has been making a film on caste discrimination among South Asians in Australia. Unlike the early Indian immigrants to the US and UK, the Indian diaspora who have moved to Australia were highly skilled and in a stronger position to challenge caste discrimination, he added. Many new Indian migrants were upper-class people from cities including Delhi, Mumbai, and Chandigarh, who were wooed as students by Australian universities in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Kishore said. Noting that caste has been intertwined with class division, Kishore added that while those among the upper caste considered racial discrimination by a segment of Australia’s white-majority population “problematic”, they would deny the existence of caste-based discrimination among South Asians. I have never taught my children about caste Radhika Kumar, a Melbourne resident formerly from Chennai Radhika Kumar, 44, grew up in Chennai without hearing discussions about caste in her Christian family and did not experience caste discrimination while in India. But since she moved to Melbourne in 2001, some parents of her upper-caste Indian Hindu friends have declined dinner invitations to her house, while her Christian friends would not invite her to prayer meetings led by upper-caste religious speakers from India. There have also been events organised by cultural clubs solely for attendees from the upper caste, she added. Recently, when her 15-year-old daughter asked her about their caste, she was shocked. “I have never taught my children about caste because I found it irrelevant, but she picked up caste-related conversations from social gatherings with Indian families, which is a cause of concern for me,” Kumar said. Citing the life and works of Babasaheb Ambedkar and Periyar, India’s famous advocates against the caste system, Kumar explained to her daughter that the caste system was “worse than apartheid”. Sydney-based engineer P.R., who asked to be identified by his initials due to concerns about upper-caste backlash, refused to enrol his daughter in her school’s special religious classes because the Hindu nationalist group that designed the course had included casteism in lessons. He plans to use the anti-racism framework to urge the education department to remove casteism from the curriculum. Kishore said that a stronger framework would enhance legal support for people subjected regularly to “otherisation and vilification” due to their caste.

Australia’s South Asians hail inclusion of caste discrimination in anti-racism framework

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}The framework will help fight caste discrimination by enhancing legal protections in areas such as housing, education and culture

The framework will help fight caste discrimination by enhancing legal protections in areas such as housing, education and culture