In a significant judgment for the Hindu American community and Cisco Systems, a US court pronounced a landmark judgment in the 4-year-old Cisco Systems caste discrimination lawsuit.
The court penalized the US Civil Rights Department (CRD) in its high-profile caste discrimination lawsuit filed on behalf of a Dalit employee at Cisco – a case infamous as the “Cisco castegate”.
The May 2024 verdict imposed a symbolic 2,000 USD sanction on the CRD; even though the penalty is a minor one, it signifies a victory for the Silicon Valley and Bharatiya American civil rights activists.
Most importantly, it diminishes the value of the bogus narrative created around the issue of caste in the US, with so-called “upper caste” Hindu Americans being accused of routinely practicing caste discrimination, based on an unscientific and anecdotal report by an organization called Equality Labs that has a history of propagating anti-Hindu hatred and prejudice.
CRD or CaIDFEH, the Department of Fair Employment and Housing faced criticism for unfairly targeting two Bharatiya American managers, Sundar Iyer and Ramana Kompella, force-identifying them as Hindu Brahmins. A whistleblower’s website captured CRD’s abuse and prosecutorial overreach.
According to various Hindu advocacy groups in the US, the court’s verdict penalizing the CRD is a huge win for the Hindu American community as well as the tech sector; the CISCO case has been used as a strategic weapon by anti-Hindu groups like Caste Files to peddle false narratives implicating Bharatiya Americans who constitute a major chunk of the tech workforce in the U.S. and by extension, also attacking the country’s tech sector, they say.
Richa Gautam, the Founder of CasteFiles said, “There was a big agenda riding on Cisco Castegate – an entire community is being tarnished in media-PhD thesis, and books are copiously recording this faulty case as evidence of caste discrimination in US, aggressive push for caste legislation was attempted in California and Seattle – that’s why this token penalty has impact for Indian Americans”.
Abhijit Bagal who joined the think tank CasteFiles, following the SB403 caste bill bruhaha, said, “It alarmed us that any Indian American could be framed using the caste card as it seemed like the two Indian American managers did not get a fair hearing at the CRD.”
Bagal revealed that until Castegate produced hard evidence, Hindu Americans defended themselves by saying that two discriminatory managers don’t reflect on the entire community. “Imagine how shocking it was to find that this was all a frame up,” he added.
A major breakthrough in the Cisco case came on April 10, 2023, when the CRD was forced to withdraw the case against Cisco managers Sundar Iyer and Ramana Kompella. The April 2023 dismissal of charges against Iyer and Kompella was a moment of celebration for the Bharatiya American community in Silicon Valley. “It is rare that advocacy work can have such direct result and impact – it can only happen because CRD abused due process, the justice system in the US still works, and because we have truth on our side”, added Richa Gautam.
The Cisco case verdict imposing a penalty on the CRD is a significant win for the Hindu American community that has been at the receiving end of vicious stereotyping and demonizing along with bogus and unsubstantiated allegations of caste discrimination.
A slew of motivated Bills targeting the Hindu American community have come in the past year; these Bills claim to espouse the noble cause of banning caste discrimination but scratch forth the veneer, and one would find that what these actually seek to do is create an atmosphere for extreme vigilance and racial profiling of Hindu Americans. Hindu advocacy groups in the US have repeatedly emphasized that passing exclusive laws banning caste discrimination in the US doesn’t make any sense since there already exist ample provisions in the US constitution to prohibit all kinds of discrimination including ones based on ancestry.
Also, motivated cases like the Cisco castegate try to create the perception that so-called “upper caste” Hindus and Dalits are perennially at loggerheads, thus strengthening the colonial narrative that sought to divide the Hindi society on caste lines. The reality is that Dalit activists played a significant role in the Bharatiya American civil rights groups’ campaign against legislation like the California Anti-Caste Discrimination Bill.
In a major victory for the Hindu American community, the Bill passed by the State Assembly of California was vetoed by California Governor Gavin Newsom on the grounds that ample legal provisions already existed in California to prohibit “discrimination based on race, colour, religion, ancestry, national origin, disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, and other characteristics”, and therefore “this bill is unnecessary”.
The most important thing here is that there was a broad-based representation of Dalit activists who opposed the California Anti-Caste Discrimination Bill. A substantial number of Dalit Americans were a part of the peaceful protests and advocacy efforts initiated by these organizations.
The Ambedkar Phule Network of American Dalits and Bahujans was at the forefront of opposing the California Anti-caste Discrimination Bill. Milind Makwana, a prominent Dalit activist from the US died of a heart attack in July 2023 while he was campaigning against the Bill. Yet, strangely enough, none of the mainstream media reports of that time mentioned the significant contribution of Dalit activists in campaigning against the California Anti-Caste Discrimination Bill.
Anti-Hindu organizations like Equality Labs, in a bid to fulfill their vested interests, have attempted to present Dalits as a unified anti-Hindu lobby. Unfortunately, such motivated organizations have been presented as the sole authority on caste issues in mainstream media space. Hindu advocacy groups in the US are often painted as “motivated cohorts of upper-caste Hindus”. They are outrightly dismissed as a privileged lot and not even given a chance to put forth their point of view.
Thus, the ruling of the Cisco case in favor of Iyer and Kompella exposes the vicious caste narrative targeting Hindu Americans. It also puts to scrutiny the rather flimsy and prejudiced research of an organization like Equality Labs, which is widely presented as evidence of caste discrimination in the US. Based on the Equality Labs Caste Discrimination in the US report, a law banning caste discrimination was passed in Seattle in 2023, making it the first American city to prohibit caste-based discrimination.
Of the numerous facts that came to light during the Cisco case trial, one of the most interesting ones is that the CEO Sundar Iyer, while he did not promote the Dalit complainant to leadership roles within Cisco, coincidentally promoted another “meritorious” Dalit. This quashed the complainant’s claims that he was targeted due to his Dalit identity. This information has been shared in an X post by Castefiles and the facts are also reportedly listed on the website castegate.org. The X post says that the real issue was the Dalit complainant’s work ethic which the team was reportedly concerned about.
The Cisco case exposes the dark side of identity politics. While genuine cases of caste discrimination should certainly be investigated and justice should be delivered, no matter which part of the world these cases come from, the issue of “caste” becoming a weapon in the hands of anti-Hindu lobbies is something that needs significant attention.
