Activist Thenmozhi Soundararajan spoke to Brut about rampant caste bias among the Indian diaspora in the United States.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00One in four Dalits had experienced some form of physical or verbal assault.
00:06One out of three had experienced educational discrimination.
00:11Two out of three experienced workplace discrimination.
00:20Everywhere South Asians go, they bring caste with them.
00:30This is not news to anyone who's Dalit who's working in, you know, tech or in any other
00:58professional settings.
00:59You know, again, wherever South Asians go, they take caste and that really is also the workplace.
01:13People that experience workplace discrimination don't really have a lot of remedies.
01:17Most folks are very intimidated about going to HR.
01:20One Dalit said to us was like, you know, why on earth would I report this?
01:24Like they could barely find India on a map.
01:27Do you think they're going to understand caste?
01:34In the United States, most of the tech workers are on a particular visa called the H-1B visa.
01:39And that makes it very difficult to complain because your visa is based on your workplace.
01:46And so if you're in conflict with your employer, that could actually lead to you not only losing your job,
01:52but also your immigration status.
01:57You know, again, this is not unlike the Me Too movement in that there are so many Dalits that are experiencing
02:10this discrimination, but very few feel safe to be able to come forward.
02:15Unfortunately, people experience, you know, sexual harassment and also, you know, a diminishment of their,
02:23you know, their skills because people thought that they were lesser than both because they were Dalit and they were women.
02:38When caste is a protected category, we're able to collect data, we're able to do trainings, we're able to just remedy it.
02:45And so when someone is on the opposite end saying, I don't want caste as a protected category,
02:51or I don't believe that Dalits should have equity, you have to really think about what they're saying and what they're standing for.
02:57And, you know, you are for a discriminatory apartheid that is centuries in the making.
03:03That does not look well in a historical position.
03:11I think the need of the hour now is for dominant caste people to call in their aunties, their uncles, their friends, their families.
03:19They need to put a stop to the impunity of caste apartheid.
03:23You need to really sit down and think about like, where am I complicit with this system?
03:27Where has my silence and my miseducation contributed to the harm against hundreds of millions of people?