Hindus debate the legacy of caste in America

by | Dec 10, 2024 | Religion

(RNS) — Nearly a decade ago, a newly migrated Karthikeyan Shanmugam, an IT engineer from Tamil Nadu, in southern India, was puzzled, to say the least, at the caste conversations among the Hindus he met in the Bay Area.
As they discussed the California Department of Education’s 2016 battle with Hindu advocacy organizations over mentions of India’s hierarchy of hereditary social classes in the state’s social studies textbooks, Shanmugam realized, he said in a recent interview, that some of his fellow Hindus were unconvinced that the caste system needed to be addressed at all.
Shanmugam is among those American Hindus who believe that the Indian diaspora has grown to the point that caste needs to be addressed out of its context in India. “Caste is something very apparent as part of the Indian perspective,” Shanmugam told RNS. “It has to be taught, and it has to be taught properly, the right way. If you try to hide caste, then there is no solution to it.”

Disagreements about whether caste originated from the Hindu religion or South Asian history more generally came to a fever pitch in California last year, when a landmark bill designating caste as an official category of discrimination was vetoed by Gov. Gavin Newsom after intense lobbying.
More than a dozen universities, colleges and companies have adopted caste as a protected category …

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