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Sumedha Kota: Caste in San Francisco

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Sumedha Kota has seen the ramifications of caste discrimination play out in her community. She brings us this Perspective.

In the months since Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill proposed to ban caste discrimination in California, outraged right wing groups and caste organizations have calmed down. However, it has remained at the back of my mind, and of many others’ too.

The bill was vocalized by many South Asian community members, who were part of the Dalit community, historically seen as “lower caste.” They were a simultaneously invisible and visible minority in San Francisco’s tech community, and this bill would have finally lent credence to the discrimination that Dalit people face, even in the Diaspora.

I cannot speak for Dalit people, but I can speak to the all-encompassing nature of caste in Indian-American communities. Because caste may have been abolished in India, but it still exists in the mindsets of Indians and Indian-Americans alike. I have witnessed people that I know subtly asking “who are they” every time they meet someone new within the community. When people ask that question, it is often exclusively about caste, or jathi. The word is unsaid but still understood.

In our day-to-day lives and cultural activities, caste remains a fixture. The closest friend groups, and personal-professional connections are often made up of people from the same caste, usually of “higher castes.” And within all these connections, people of the “lower castes” are forgotten and refused, not all that different from when Dalit people were not allowed into Hindu temples.

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Today, when I see prominent Hindu associations stating that allowing the bill would create a sense of “reverse prejudice” or Hinduphobia, all I can think is that maybe, they don’t want to confront that prejudice. Maybe it has benefitted them for too long to let go of now.

Confronting the problem of casteism, and creating institutional mechanisms to confront it would require serious reflection and acknowledgement, something the South-Asian American community itself is still fractured about.

With a Perspective, I’m Sumedha Kota.

Sumedha Kota is an independent student journalist from the Bay Area.

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