Canadian MP Don Davies recently introduced a motion in the country’s Parliament to recognize and prohibit caste-based discrimination in Canada. Motion M-128 calls for changes to the country’s Human Rights Act to add caste as a prohibited ground of discrimination.
The politicization of caste has become a massive issue in Western countries like the US and Canada. Hindu advocacy groups in the West assert that Hindus in the West are being singled out and harassed in the name of prohibiting caste discrimination. If one looks at the issue factually, no concrete evidence of caste discrimination exists whatsoever either in the US or Canada. Yet, that hasn’t stopped legislators in these countries from introducing Bills and motions in Parliament to ostensibly ban caste discrimination.
Seattle became the first city in the US to pass a law exclusively banning caste discrimination. A similar law was passed by the State Assembly of California in 2023, but the Bill was eventually vetted by California Governor Gavin Newsom on the grounds that ample legal provisions already existed in California to prohibit all kinds of discrimination including one based, on ancestry, race, and place of origin.
According to various Hindu advocacy groups active in the US and Canada, such Bills and Motions are being introduced in the Parliament solely based on a study done by a rabid anti-Hindu organization called Equality Labs in 2018. A cursory look at the website of this organization is sufficient to corroborate this; it’s full of value-laden statements on Hindus and Hindu Dharma claiming that members of the South Asian diaspora carry with them caste wherever they go. Even though they don’t associate the word caste with Hindus directly, the way they define the caste system, it’s pretty much evident they are targeting only Hindus.
At a time when Hindus in the US and Canada are becoming increasingly vulnerable to anti-Hindu hate crimes, Hindu temples are getting vandalized, and Hindus are being increasingly targeted by Khalistani extremists, it’s rather strange that the authorities in these countries are busy singling out Hindus in the name of banning “caste discrimination” rather than undertake strong legal measures to address the issue Hindu community in these countries faces as a whole.
Hindus in Canada are already being subjected to caste profiling; caste sensitization workshops are being conducted in Canadian schools and universities where Hindus are singled out as the whole class is taught stuff that amounts to labeling Hindus as casteists and guilty of practicing an “oppressive” and “inhumane” practice. One cannot even begin to imagine the kind of horrendous effect this has on the psyche of Canadian Hindu kids and young people who are made to feel guiltily about something they probably have no clue about.
In the wake of Motion M-128 to prohibit caste discrimination being introduced in the country’s Parliament, the US and Canada-based Hindu advocacy group Coalition of Hindus of North America ( CoHNA) organized an online awareness session, focusing on explaining the background and context of the politicization of caste in Canada and the sequence of events leading up to a Motion being introduced in the Canadian Parliament to ostensibly ban caste discrimination.
The online discussion was hosted by Pushpita Prasad, part of the board of CoHNA. Speakers included Rishabh Saraswat, President of CoHNA Canada, Sudha Jagannathan who is also on the board of CoHNA, and Shawn Binda, a Canadian Hindu who is the host of a YouTube channel called Hindu Lifestyle.
In March 2023, the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) became the first school board in Canada to recognize caste-based discrimination in the city’s schools and asked a provincial rights body to help create a framework to address the issue. The TDSB voted in favor of a motion to that effect, which was introduced by board trustee Yalini Rajakulasingam.
During the online discussion session hosted by CoHNA, Rishabh Saraswat, President of CoHNA Canada, spoke at length about the backdrop of the anti-caste discrimination motion passed by the TDSB.
“TDSP brought about its motion against caste discrimination in February and March 2023. It came as a surprise and it specifically mentioned the Seattle and California past policies. We know that Seattle and California’s caste policies were sponsored by hate groups Equality Labs. And it happened at the time when Hindu Canadians were celebrating Holi, one of the biggest festivals. But parents and the community members, all together and we put forward our concerns about the motion itself”, he said.
Rishabh Saraswat also pointed out how those who introduced the motion in the school board had no idea how to identify the caste of Canadian Hindu kids. Thus, they ended up indulging in blatant stereotyping of Canadian Hindu kids, based on rather arbitrary criteria, he said:
“First of all, that motion which TDSP produced, it had the potential to isolate and discriminate against Hindu community because it singled out south Asian students based on so many false stereotypes, based on people’s last name, skin color, food choices, and what not. At some point, cursory mention of the marital choices were also made, not for the school kids but when generally talking about it outside in the media. Of course, there was a lack of data in that and there were many more concerns we mentioned. We talked about how already, caste is a protected category and TDSB’s motion agreed on that. That is, caste discrimination is already covered under the Ontario Human Rights Commission by the laws of ancestry”.
Rishabh further pointed out how a survey amongst Canadian Hindu school kids was conducted where students were asked if the students belonged to the Kashmiri, Punjabi, Adivasi, or Bahujan communities, as distinct races and identities. Rishabh emphasized that CoHNA questioned the need for using these rather motivated categories to assess the identity of students and that his kind of labeling certainly smelt of an agenda.
He also spoke about how CoHNA conveyed its concerns to the school board trustees regarding the transparency of the motion. There was complete secrecy regarding the stakeholders involved, the short-term goals of the motion, and its long-term goals, Rishabh asserted.
Hindu Canadian Shawn Binda spoke about his experiences growing up as a Hindu in Canada, and how and when he first came across the term “caste”. He also spoke of his reactions when he first heard about the motion to prohibit caste discrimination being passed in the Toronto District School Board.
“When I first saw it as a tweet, I started smiling to myself because remember everything that happened in California, and I started thinking back to the first time I heard this word caste. And I kid you not, I am working on my next video and I literally sat down, and I was 16 years old when I first heard this word caste, and you want to know where I heard it, in the high school, through a textbook. 16 years being Hindu in Canada, my dad founded Hindu mandirs here in the city, we participated in poojas, we did so much work as Hindus growing up. The first time I hear this word caste, it is in a grade 11, World Religions Class that I am doing”, he said.
According to Hindu advocacy groups in Canada, caste is an almost non-existent issue in these countries, and most Hindus have no idea what caste they belong to. In such a scenario, the politicization of caste in these countries by anti-Hindu lobbies is going to end up isolating the Hindu Canadian community and subject future generations to an acute sense of identity crisis as they will get aggressively targeted with all the caste questions, if the current scenario persists, say the Canadian Hindu groups.
“This whole caste issue is a non-issue. When you see things like these, what my biggest fear right now is that my own kids who are 3 years old and 6 years old they are going to have a target on their back because people are going to see them as being young Hindu boys and then if all of this caste policies and issues come in, they are going to have a bull’s eye on their back. The first question they are going to get is not where you are from or anything like that but which caste are you because that means you are part of this caste, therefore, you treat this person wrong, therefore we need to do something about that. That is the biggest issue”, as Shawn put it during the discussion session.
Sudha Jagannathan, who is a part of the CoHNA board and identifies herself as Bahujan said that the caste politics of anti-Hindu groups in the US and Canada is essentially premised on making Hindus feel guilty about the “caste” narrative. That is, anyone who dares to oppose a legal measure claiming to prohibit caste-based discrimination is automatically labeled “Hindu upper caste”, she emphasized.
“If you are a Hindu, stand up as a Hindu and you oppose these kinds of things, you are automatically labeled upper caste without any research or detailed look into that particular person’s profile. But the thing is, you can’t tell a person’s caste by looking at them. Of course, if you look at my name today, I put Bahujan there and I have to say it’s something new for me. I started to put that because at CoHNA, we have a few leaders who are very outspoken on this particular issue. We stand up as Dalit and Bahujan. The reason we do that is because these promoters of caste all over the world, particularly North America, co-opt Hindu identities for their own purposes of hate-mongering and targeting Hindus”, she said.
“To counter that, we stand up and say that you don’t speak for us. We can very well speak for ourselves. I stand up as a Bahujan because we are also part of an organization called APNADB in California which is started by Dalit Hindu leaders and the reason they have to form that organization is to counter this accusation that anyone opposing caste policy is an upper caste. We are not upper caste. And who cares about caste. I have lived in California for 40 years, raised two kids here. My kids have no idea about this topic. I myself, I did not have any idea either, I just lived my everyday life. But now I am standing up with these identities because it’s specifically taken to shame us”, she further added.
Wrapping up the session, Rishabh Saraswat said that he would like to ask Canadian MP Jon Davies to do a caste survey in Canada and come up with the required laws if the Hindus in Canada are indeed found guilty of practicing systematic caste discrimination, otherwise, they should be just left in peace.
The most important thing that the speakers emphasized is that none of these Bills and Motions being presented in either the US or Canada are based on scientific evidence. Their sole reference point is a 2018 survey conducted by the Equality Labs which was unscientific and anecdotal, the speakers said. They also pointed out that many people coming out with claims of undergoing caste discrimination do not necessarily belong to the Hindu community any longer and that they might have “Dalit” ancestry, but they no longer follow the Hindu Dharma.
