A small world: How caste discrimination came to California

Like many recent arrivals to California, Prem Pariyar searched for work and a home within communities of fellow immigrants.

So when coworkers at a South Asian restaurant in Davis refused to room with him in an apartment his employer provided, he was shocked by their reason: his caste. Not his race, religion or nationality, but the centuries-old social hierarchies still prevalent in some South Asian societies.

Pariyar is Dalit, which means “broken” in Sanskrit and is considered the lowest-ranking caste, formerly known as “untouchables.” In Nepal, he said, his family faced violence and harassment.  He thought he had escaped that here.

“I was speechless,” he said of his coworkers’ actions, which left him depressed, traumatized and living in a van for a month in 2015 until he quit the restaurant. “Why did these people practice these kinds of things here in the U.S.?”

Today Pariyar, who won asylum and became a U.S. citizen, is one of California’s most vocal activists for a ban on caste discrimination. After successfully pushing for California State University to adopt a ban in 2022, Pariyar, a social worker in the East Bay, is focused on getting protections for so-called lower-caste people into the state’s fair housing and employment laws.

Legislation to do that is contentious. In April, it drew one of the largest public hearing turnouts for any bill before California’s Legislature this session. It would be the first statewide measure of its kind in the nation, although Seattle passed a similar ordinance in February.

While many Californians may never know anyone who experiences caste discrimination, or even what it is, for some, it’s both hidden and inescapable.

For many worshipers at Shri Guru Ravidass Temple on the outskirts of Sacramento, the issue is about their families’ futures: Will the discrimination they experienced as Dalits in India follow them to California? Will it stop their children from achieving the American Dream?

Followers of the Ravidass religion, which is related to Sikhism, belong to the Dalit caste but formed their distinct faith as a move against caste discrimination. On a recent Sunday, between services and a meal, members swapped anecdotes about discrimination they encountered, including in the U.S.

In social settings among other South Asians, they said, they’ve heard derogatory comments about Dalits. One man, a hospital janitor, believes he got tougher assignments because his supervisors and colleagues from upper castes played favorites.

Some said bosses, coworkers and classmates asked probing questions — about their last names, the temple they attended, their relatives’ jobs back home — that to an outsider may seem innocuous, but are common ways to discern someone’s caste background in India.

Several who spoke to CalMatters work as truck drivers. In many ways, they said, the legacy of the caste system had already shaped the trajectory of their lives, because it limits the jobs and education available to them both in India and now the U.S.

“It was really hard for our people to get up, to get a high-paying job and higher education,” said Raj Rohl, 40. “We struggled a lot. We don’t want that to happen here, so our kids struggle again here to get the education they want, to get the jobs they want.”

“Honestly, we don’t really deal with that many Brahmins here,” said Raj Vadhan, 50, referring to the highest caste classification. The bill, he said, would help more with “discrimination going on at the upper-level jobs, the higher-paying jobs.”

South Asians on the other side of the debate say the bill is unnecessary — and unfair.

“To tackle discrimination, we have very strong existing laws and existing protections under categories of ancestry and national origin. They can, and should, be used to deal with any issues of caste-based discrimination as they arise — and they have actually already been used,” said Samir Kalra, managing director of the Hindu American Foundation, an advocacy group opposing the bill.

“Creating an entire separate category and law that only applies to minority communities is inconsistent with our constitutional norms.”

The bill’s historical roots

Sen. Aisha Wahab, a first-term Democrat from Fremont, wants to add caste as a protected category to the state Unruh Civil Rights Act, the California Fair Employment and Housing Act and the state policy that bans discrimination in public schools.

“As our state and country become more and more diverse, our laws have to go further and deeper and clarify more specifically, what is being protected,” she told CalMatters. “And caste discrimination is something that should not take place here in the United States, let alone in California.”

The Senate approved her bill, SB 403, on a 34-1 vote on May 11, but advocacy groups opposed to the measure will try again to kill or change it in the Assembly. Senate Republican leader Brian Jones of El Cajon was the lone “‘no” vote, calling the bill “duplicative and unnecessarily divisive.”

The concept of the South Asian caste system has been in the U.S. since at least 1965, when a federal immigration law overhaul resulted in immigrants from more Asian countries receiving visas. But because those visas focused on skilled labor, the legacy of caste discrimination in India meant upper-caste Indian immigrants were able to establish themselves in the U.S. decades before lower-caste Hindus.

The issue became more prominent recently, partly because the rise of the Hindu nationalist movement in Indian politics reinforced caste divisions as it sought to unify and strengthen the Hindu identity in India.

One of the earliest examples of caste making headlines in California: In 1999, federal prosecutors charged Berkeley real estate magnate Lakireddy Bali Reddy, as well as his brother, sister-in-law and sons, for smuggling Indian women into the U.S. for illegal sexual activity. Prosecutors said Reddy “took advantage of casteism and economic class to exploit these women.” He was convicted of sex trafficking and spent eight years in federal prison before dying in Oakland in 2021.

Caste issues have surfaced prominently in Silicon Valley, where Indian workers with bachelor’s degrees made up 27% of tech workers in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties in 2021. In April 2021, the Santa Clara County Human Rights Commission held informational hearings about caste discrimination.

In 2020, what is now the state Civil Rights Department sued Cisco, the San Jose-based networking and cloud management company, and two engineers after an employee filed a complaint alleging he received less pay and fewer opportunities because he was Dalit. He also said the defendants retaliated against him when he spoke out.

The two engineers denied the allegations, saying in court filings they reject caste hierarchies and recruited the employee to Cisco with competitive pay and stock options. The state dropped its case against the engineers, but continues the suit against the company. The state and Cisco are in mediation talks. Attorneys for the company and the two engineers did not respond to requests for comment.

Legislating conflict

While caste discrimination is difficult for corporations to navigate, it’s also a thorny issue for politicians.

Rohit Chopra, a professor of global media and cultural identity at Santa Clara University, said some politicians don’t want to be seen as targeting any community — including the Indian community, which has political clout. That gives the opposition a window of opportunity, particularly those in the “Hindu right,” he said.

“Whatever organizations are sort of spearheading this … they keep appropriating this right to speak for all Hindus and all Indians,” he said.

Wahab, the first Afghan-American lawmaker in the Legislature, is not South Asian, but represents a district that is home to many. In response to the bill, she said she has been the target of threats and derogatory comments about her identity, as well as a recall campaign led by congressional candidate Ritesh Tandon, a San Jose-area former Cisco engineer. He says his platform includes protecting Silicon Valley jobs, addressing climate change and ending racial preferences in hiring.

There are two South Asians in the Legislature: Democratic Assemblymembers Ash Kalra from San Jose and Jasmeet Bains from Bakersfield.

Bains, who represents a large Sikh population, signed on as a co-sponsor to the bill in mid-April, but did not respond to requests for an interview on her reasons. Kalra, who is not a co-sponsor and represents part of Silicon Valley, declined an interview. Neither has had to vote on the bill yet.

Naindeep Singh, executive director of Jakara Movement, a community organizing group for Sikh Californians, said the group supports the bill because “while Sikh theology calls for caste abolitionism, still among some Sikh societies casteism is still practiced.”

While some opponents say the bill will make them targets for discrimination, Singh argues that much of the opposition is in bad faith. “The argument that the bill singles out South Asian communities is a canard,” he said. “It is rather simple: If you don’t discriminate against others based on caste, you have little to fear with SB 403’s passage.”

Kalra, of the Hindu American Foundation, pushed back on that argument.

“You’re already going to be assumed to be caste-ist just as a South Asian, so you are already facing suspicion. And if you are falsely accused, it’s a nightmare to go through that process,” he said.

The foundation has submitted amendments to the bill that would remove language such as “caste-oppressed,” which it says would result in racial profiling of South Asians, he said.

Amar Shergill, former chairperson of the California Democratic Party’s Progressive Caucus whose family is from India, said politicians have hesitated to discuss caste, but “thankfully, we are at that place now.”

“Let’s face it, this is a difficult issue to discuss,” he said. “Like so many issues of oppression within the community — whether it’s sex discrimination or child abuse or caste opppression —  folks don’t want to talk about the pain in their own community.”

It’s a small world

The caste bill is the latest flashpoint as immigrants bring conflicts from their home country to California.

The state is home to 10.5 million immigrants — 23% of the foreign-born population nationwide, according to the Public Policy Institute of California. Nearly a third of California’s population is foreign-born, and almost half of California children have at least one immigrant parent. The fall of the Soviet Union, wars and other global conflicts touched off new waves of migration to California.

Included in those waves are Asian Americans, who make up about 15% of the state’s population, according to the 2020 Census. In 2021, nearly 1 million in California self-identified as South Asian — from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan and Sri Lanka, according to an analysis by the University of Minnesota.

Data on subgroups of immigrants, such as by caste, can be more difficult to track.

A 2016 national survey by the Oakland-based activist group Equality Labs found that two-thirds of Dalit respondents said they had been mistreated at work, one-third said they experienced discrimination during their education and one half said they feared being “outed.” In a 2022 research paper Pariyar co-authored while studying at Cal State East Bay, 24 of 27 Dalit Nepalis interviewed in the Bay Area said they had experienced some form of caste-based discrimination, including two who said they were forced out by roommates or landlords when their caste was discovered.

Opponents of the bill say caste discrimination reports are overstated in the Equality Labs survey. They point instead to a broader 2021 survey of Indian Americans in the U.S. by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in which only 5% of respondents reported experiencing caste discrimination — though the study notes that the majority of respondents who were Hindu and identified with a caste reported being from an upper caste.

Scholars such as Audrey Truschke, a historian of South Asia and associate professor at Rutgers University, say California has set a precedent for addressing issues that affect even “micro-minorities.”

That may be due to California’s diverse population, which has long forced its lawmakers to confront broader issues.