Recognizing Caste Discrimination in the American Context - Sonja Thomas

In this episode of ReligionWise, we talk with Sonja Thomas, Associate Professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Colby College. In addition to her work on caste, class, and racial privilege in Kerala, India, Dr. Thomas has become a leading voice arguing against caste discrimination in the United States. This conversation considers caste alongside of race, gender, sexual identity, and religion as cite of discrimination and the efforts that are being made to confront it.

Show Notes:

• Privileged Minorities: Syrian Christianity, Gender, and Minority Rights in Postcolonial India (https://uwapress.uw.edu/book/9780295743844/privileged-minorities/)

Transcript

Chip Gruen: 0:03

Welcome to ReligionWise, the podcast where we feature educators, researchers and other professionals discussing topics on religion and their relevance to the public conversation. My name is Chip Gruen. I'm the director of the Institute for Religious and Cultural Understanding at Muhlenberg College, and I will be the host for this podcast. In this season two of ReligionWise, we will continue to consider a broad variety of religious and cultural beliefs and practices, and try to understand their place in the contemporary conversation. If you like what you hear, I encourage you to explore the 12 episodes from season one that are available in your favorite podcast app. Also, we would love to hear from you with your questions, comments, or suggestions for future episodes. To reach us, please visit our website at religionandculture.com. There you will find our contact information and also have the opportunity to support this podcast and the work of the Institute. Today's conversation features Sonja Thomas who's an Associate Professor of Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Colby College. She teaches courses on South Asian feminism, transnational feminism, gender and human rights, feminist theory and post colonial and native feminism. Her book is entitled "Privileged Minorities, Syrian Christianity, Gender, and Minority Rights in Postcolonial India." As you can tell from this title, she's very interested in the idea of social status and privilege and the identities that go into that in a modern and contemporary India. So that being said, she's also interested in how the legacy of caste and identity and privilege in India translates to South Asian American communities in the contemporary United States. Though she self describes as being associated with the dominant caste of Syrian Christians, and more on that in the conversation, it doesn't mean immediately what it sounds like it means she has really felt the call to shine a light on the echoes of casteism. And in fact, what she describes as caste discrimination in the United States. I think, particularly for those who are not members of the South Asian American community, it is important to recognize that this is a very delicate subject, that conversations about caste and casteism, not only in India, but in the United States, are controversial, with many members of this community denying that this is an important distinction to make in the contemporary United States that that is something from the old world that has not translated over. You will hear that Dr. Thomas's analysis is far different from that and sees caste discrimination is a particular impediment particularly to lower caste or people who are outside the caste system altogether, but are nonetheless from South Asian descent. It is telling that if you follow the news, you will see that there have been a few institutions recently that have introduced caste discrimination as a recognized category within their discrimination policies. Likewise, we've started to see municipalities, cities across the country start to consider this issue, caste identity as being something that is recognized within human resources and civil rights legislation. In fact, in February of this year, just before we recorded this interview, Seattle became the first major United States city to ban caste discrimination, and add caste to its recognized list of protected categories. I think it's also important to recognize that though, this conversation is happening in the context of a particular community, a particular ethnic and religious identity, that the issues raised here really resonate broadly across identity issues, across race and ethnicity, in the United States and around the world more generally. You will notice that there is an affinity there is allyship, between people who are arguing for social justice, across the caste spectrum, and other organizations and other movements that are interested in shining a light on discrimination around identity more broadly. So for example, when we hear arguments that we live in a post race world or a world in which race and ethnicity and color doesn't matter, that's a far different argument to make depending on one's own identity, right that feels very different if you are a part of the class that is discriminated against. Likewise, there are people who will argue that caste is an old world institution that is not a part of contemporary Indian American identity and is not a significant part of Indian American communities. But that feels very different to people who do not have ancestry in a dominant caste. So I think it's important to consider the source of those those types of rhetorics as we look at this conversation, we look at this issue. So all that being said, it's my sincere pleasure to welcome Sonja Thomas to ReligionWise. Sonja Thomas, thanks for appearing on ReligionWise. Really appreciate it.

Sonja Thomas: 5:39

Yeah, you're welcome. Thanks for having me.

Chip Gruen: 5:42

So let's start by laying out a definition of caste. And I know we've talked a little bit about this, you say that's kind of an impossible task, but I'm going to ask you anyway. For those who might be unfamiliar, what is caste? What is it based on? How is it determined? How can we get started in this conversation?

Sonja Thomas: 6:01

Yeah, well, maybe I'll first start with by saying like the terms because I think some people would be unfamiliar with the terms. So maybe some people have heard about untouchability, and the caste name that we associate with the former untouchable caste, the most oppressed castes, we use the term Dalit and Dalit means literally translates to downtrodden. But it's been reclaimed by the Dalit community. When, So, a lot of I think what I'm going to be talking about is India. Caste can be found in many different nation states, but my research is based in India. So I kind of bring in India as an example. And in India, when you go to different regions, there's different languages and Dalit peoples can be known by specific Dalit caste names. Like in the area of India I study I study Kerala, India in the south, there is a Dalit caste named Paraiyar, which is where we get our lovely word in the English pariah from so pariah is a Dalit caste name. Then another term that comes up is is Bahujan which is a term that translates to majority is the term for non Dalit peoples who also are oppressed caste. Sometimes you might hear them called lower caste. Caste activists reject the term lower because it's very demeaning to imply that Dalit casted peoples or Bahujan casted peoples are lower. In relation to Dalit and Bahujan peoples we have what are called the oppressor castes or dominant castes. And these are people with caste privilege and peoples who would do casteist practices potentially inadvertently or on purpose. And it's important to say upfront that I'm coming from a South Asian American background. And I myself am part of a South Asian dominant caste Christian community. So what is caste? Caste is what we refer to as descent based discrimination. That means it matters who your parents are. And it's carried down through the generations. When you have a system in place called endogamy, which liter... which means like marrying within the group, so marrying within the caste or marrying within the religion, that means that we literally reproduce the caste system into the next generation. And before Americans and non South Asian Americans say whoa, that's so different. And so, so outside of what I'm nor the norm is, in the United States, we have something that we are familiar with. If you're not familiar with caste in the United States, you may be familiar with race, and race is a form of descent based discrimination. In the United States, we used to have something called the one drop rule where you have one drop of black blood in you you're considered black. And in the United States, we had miscegenation laws that prevented people from marrying outside their group. Alabama, for instance, kept miscegenation laws in the on their books until the year 2000, where it was finally overturned in a referendum with 40% of the people who voted in that referendum voted to keep miscegenation laws, right. So that little factoid comes from Isabel Wilkerson's book, "Caste, The Origins of Our Discontents." So we have a descent based form of discrimination that we're familiar with in the United States. So what is it? It's descent base, but how do you see it? How do you know it? And we can see quote unquote, see caste through the effects of casteism. So the effects of casteism are intersectional with color with class with gender and sexuality, so for instance, because caste is literally reproduced, that system requires heteronormativity which makes queer sexualities be seen as a threat to the system. Because gender is so important endogamy is so important you see that this these casteist ideas about a Dalit casted women as being sexually available for the right, the right towards Dalit women's bodies that dominant caste men would perceive themselves to be entitled to. So we see hundreds of years of systematic sexual violence and gender based violence against oppressed caste women. And we see on the on the flip side for dominant caste women stringent controls on their mobility, because of the idea that there are vessels to reproduce dominant caste individuals, dominant caste children, while dominant caste women still benefit from the caste system. So feminists will talk about the intersections of, of the patriarchy and casteism. So, it's intersectional. It's also integrated into the social fabric. So you see, things like housing and segregation, discrimination in housing and segregation of Dalit communities, discrimination in education, discrimination in the workplace with the hiring and lack of promoting of Dalit Bahujan peoples. Stigma associated with certain jobs like removing animal carcasses, which are primarily seen to be a Dalit casted job, over-policing of Dalit communities. Violences and exclusions from social groups, harassment, we even can talk about institutionalized casteism, like let's say there's a natural disaster which may affect Dalit Bahujan communities disproportionately. And then you try and get state aid and you face barriers to getting state aid. So it's difficult to to go into all the effects of casteism, because it's so embedded into the social fabric. But I think the main takeaway is to understand that caste is a dis...form of descent based discrimination it's intersectional with things like class, color, and gender and sexuality. And unfortunately, it's embedded into everyday social life.

Chip Gruen: 12:11

So one of the things that we're going to talk about today, and we will continue to talk about as we go is how much we should associate caste with Hinduism, right, which becomes one of the kind of the sticking points and how this conversation is had. Obviously, religious, social and cultural systems create webs of meaning and significance. But can we talk about how much Hindu tradition should or not should not be associated with caste? I know, we've started to talk about this already by by thinking about, for example, dominant caste Christians and Dalit Christians and so forth. But, but what is the what is the relationship between those two things?

Sonja Thomas: 12:48

Yeah, that's that's a good question. And since I study Christianity, and I'm, I'm from a caste privileged Christian community, I'll start by not talking about Hinduism, but Christianity, right. So and which will bring me I think, a little bit to talking about Hinduism too. But I study the community that is the heritage that I come from a group of dominant caste Christians in South India. They're known as St. Thomas Christians, mostly because they believe that St. Thomas, the apostle of Jesus, the doubting Thomas, you know, he comes to India. So we know the first part of the story in the western world where he says, I'm not going to see it, I'm not going to believe it until I see it until I put my hands in his wounds. And then supposedly after that, he says, Woah, my bad, I'm gonna go and spread the good news in India. And he's martyred outside the city of Chennai. This is not me saying this. This is the Catholic Church that understands St. Thomas's evangelization mission to India. So he comes in the year 52 CE, and he reportedly converts Brahmins to Christianity, which is the most dominant caste. Now, to be clear, in the year 52, in this area of India, the caste system was not the social organizing norm, it doesn't become the norm until a few centuries later. But by the eighth century, these particular Christians are granted rights by local rulers that are on par with the rights that dominant caste Hindus have. And so when Vasco de Gama if you remember your history, he's this Portuguese guy who sails around the tip of Africa and he hits this area of India, which paves the way for Christian missionaries, most notably St. Francis Xavier, who converts 10s of 1000s of people to Christianity, but mostly from the Bahujan and Dalit castes on the coast, a lot of fisherfolk people which is casted labor convert to Christianity. So I mention this long history to say that there is from the beginnings of Christianity, Christianity in the world has been infused with the caste system. So I hear a lot of people saying that, you know, it's in the Hindu religion, and it's transplanted onto other religions. And in my research, I try and say like, we have to understand that casteism and caste, not only through the lens of one religion, but to understand how the social fabric is so imbricated with issues of caste and casteism, well, Dalit Christians qualified today in the state of Kerala for affirmative action policies, dominant caste Christians do not the St. Thomas Christians do not. So even this is not just the community believing this, this is the state recognizing the privileges in the accrued generational wealth that the St. Thomas Christians have. I suggested too like for non South Asian Americans unfamiliar with caste, I think that there's a natural reaction to try and understand where it comes from. And to do that, we want to go back to the earliest time it's mentioned, and I think that's a natural reaction. And if you want to go to the earliest texts, they will be in the Hindu texts that men...mentioned caste. But I always ask like, does that does that tell us everything about caste? We can take other forms of discrimination too like, we can take sexism and say like, okay, somebody unfamiliar with sexism, like, where does it come from? And somebody says, well look at this early text called the Bible, and you can see sex discrimination here. And then we, we, then someone who's Christian could say, like, well, you're attacking my religion. Right? But we understand that, that sexism can happen in multiple religions. It can happen in Islam, it can happen in Christianity, it can happen in Hinduism, just the similar to that casteism can occur across religions. So try, instead of trying to think about what is caste, let's go to the source or the what religion is saying about caste, I would suggest that we try and understand how those with power, try and make alliances, often across religions. And this is what a lot of my research does, I look at how dominant caste Hindus and dominant caste Christians will unite politically, for economic reasons to keep their class interests protected. And you see those alliances much more than you see an alliance between dominant castes Christians and dominant and Dalit Bahujan Christians. Right. So religion is not what is uniting people, it is the caste and the economic interest. And I would also suggest that we can understand the effects of casteism, which happened not just in Hinduism, segregation, housing discrimination, sexual violence, this is happening to Dalit Muslims, Dalit Hindus, Dalit Christians, and if the effects are happening across religions, it's important to understand how that discrimination is functioning across religions.

Chip Gruen: 18:02

So you've mentioned on a few occasions, the the complicity of the state in the system, and that the state recognizes the system. But the caste system was made illegal in India about 70 years ago or so. But clearly, the this ancient social system did not simply go away with a change in the law. So what is the relationship there between this thing being sort of according to the law, not a part of the system, yet we can see it how is it continued to be a part of the social, political and religious system when at least on paper it was made for both?

Sonja Thomas: 18:39

Yeah, that's such a good question. And I think I've talked a little bit already about how casteism is so intersectional and systemic and institutionalized. So let me answer this by talking about the law and social change, because I've seen a lot of people saying like, well, it's, it's not legal anymore in India, so it doesn't exist. And as per the Indian constitution, caste discrimination should be unconstitutional. And plus, India has a number of laws, for instance, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, which means Dalit and Indigenous Peoples Prevention of Atrocities Act. This is kind of like hate crimes legislation. So if you are a perpetrator of a caste-based crime, the consequences for that are very stringent. However, you don't see a lot of people being brought under this law. We could say that maybe police would want to keep their numbers down because I'm sure that their their numbers of crime violence would go way up if there was a lot if this was actually enforced. The law has been poorly implemented. You have state complicity in protecting dominant castes, perpetrators of violence, and the vast majority overwhelming majority of judges in India are dominant caste, it's specifically Brahmin. So how when a caste of cases even brought forward? How can a dominant caste judge might be like, I don't understand this, I've never seen it. It's not my lifeworlds. Right. So we can say like, what's the point in having a law then? And the answer would be like, well, we should have mechanisms in place for recourse. And then we should also have activism to understand how and why that recourse is not happening. Right. So I think we can understand this with another form of discrimination in the United States, like, we had segregation, Jim Crow laws, and they were overturned by Brown versus Board of Education. And still, we have some of the most segregated schools, even more so than the 1960s. Right. This is Derrick Bell's research with critical race theory. We just call them good schools, or suburban schools, in relation to urban schools. But does that mean that we shouldn't have laws against segregation? Like no, no, it means that we think about how discrimination and housing and redlining has made for continued segregation across racial lines in a way that is harder to talk about. And so we dismantle that segregation by thinking through equal equal housing, right, like so in the same way with that intersectional work that needs to be done with casteism. While it's illegal in India, and hopefully in the United States, soon, it's being fought by Dalit Bahujan activists for decades, if not centuries, laws are needed for recourse, but Dalit peoples continue to organize and work towards abolishing caste apartheid.

Chip Gruen: 21:45

So you've mentioned that a lot of your research has to do with this Kerala, this region in India, but you've also done a lot of writing on this issue in the United States, among South Asian communities in the in the US. Can you talk about the ways in which caste functions sort of differently, or similarly in the United States, in particular, the way that US immigration law, which changed dramatically in the 1960s, welcoming more people from Southeast Asia, and what the consequences are for the initial immigrants from India, in that period and beyond?

Sonja Thomas: 22:24

Yeah, sure. So the 1965 Immigration Act. Prior to the 1965 Immigration Act, we had many laws prohibiting the migration of peoples from Asian countries, such as the Chinese Exclusion Act and the Immigration Act of 1924. So we have the stripping of Asian Americans from citizenship under naturalized citizenship laws that required people to be white, quote, unquote, white. So between like 1924 and 1965, you have very little migration from from Asian countries. And specifically, I'm talking about India, until the 1965 Immigration Act, which allows for the migration of what we call skilled professionals, mostly doctors and engineers. My father was a doctor and my mother was a nurse. And then you start to see a lot of migration from many Asian countries and India. In addition to the 1965 Immigration Act, we have something in 1990 another act that Ted Kennedy brought, and it had a lot of bipartisan partisan support, and continues to do it another Immigration Act, which created a new category of visas called H1B visas. Also embedded into that act created the R1 visa, which is the religious worker visa. I mentioned that because right now, I'm working on a book about priests from India, coming to the United States, many from dominant caste communities who are coming on R1 visas. So the H1B visa was the biggest visa in this 1990 Act. And it really affected the tech industry in Silicon Valley. An estimated 70% of H1B visa holders are software engineers that are coming from India. With the 1965 Act and the H1B visa, what it has made with skilled professionals is people with an education with medical and engineering degrees with generational wealth and and that kind of capital to be able to migrate are the ones who were are migrating. And when we talk about discrimination in education like this happens for Dalit Bahujan peoples from primary school on there are still always I'm reading you know, news reports of Dalit students being forced to clean the toilets at a school, you know, Dalit students committing suicide because of a lack of support and constant harassment and microaggressions in college. So the number of peoples in colleges and universities in what we call private English medium schools, which are English speaking schools. So if you think about mobility in English language, who has the money to go into a private school, and who is going to what we call government school or public school, which is usually in the vernacular languages rather than English speaking, right, so already Dalit Bahujan peoples are working twice as hard to get half as far in the education system. And then you put on to that, like the ability to be able to migrate. Dalit peoples today are 25% of the population of India, but they are only 1.5% of the Indian American population. And, you know, I study Christianity, so we can see a similar pattern with Christian privilege and caste with migration. The majority of Christians in India are Dalit Bahujan. And the majority of Indian Christians in the United States are dominant caste, Christians are only 2.3% of a billion people in India, but they're 18% of the Indian American population. So the Kerala Christian networks that were created to, post 1965, the organizations that they created in the United States, the the networks, you know, I, I've talked before about how my parents networks, they first went to Germany, and then to the United States, and they were brought by St. Thomas priests, those networks did not exist for Dalit Christians, right. And so when we think of an Indian Christian church in the US, that's a dominant caste church, we might not see it as Americans or non South Asians as a dominant caste church, but it is. And this shapes all sorts of things in the American imaginary about what Indian culture is like, what we're seeing what we consider Indian culture in the United States is dominant caste culture, right. And to go back to churches in the United States, we might look at it an Indian Christian church and say, That's a racial minority church. But like I said, I'm working on a book right now about Indian priests coming from India. And Prema Kurien, who's a sociologist has found that Dalit Christians in the United States chose to go to churches where they were a racial minority, rather than go to a St. Thomas Christian church. And when you see people talking about it, like I read a report about Asian American Pacific Islander Catholics, that was given to the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, and they were saying, like, Dalit and Bahujan they didn't use caste, because they were just saying, they were seeing it as a racial issue, that people from the Latin right, which is Bahujan are choosing to go be religious minorities, because of the ethnic homogenization in the St. Thomas churches. But because I am a caste scholar, I can understand that, no, they're choosing to not go to a dominant caste church. They because of the exclusions that they might face there. And caste networks, because it's such a skewed migration pattern, you will have like all of these, you know, cultural organizations that are heavily represented by the dominant caste. So if you're a Dalit Bahujan person in that enclave, you can face a host of microaggressions, and slurs. And hear are the hostility all the time. And we can understand this quite easily. Like if you're a woman in a board room full of men, and you're hearing like comments about like, your legs look better with, you know, high heels. And can you go make some coffee for us, like, you face these every day, and there's nowhere to turn. So that's the climate that we're talking about in the United States.

Chip Gruen: 28:37

So one of the places where this has been most forcefully addressed in the United States, if we think about this climate in the United States are some of the more progressive institutions which tend to be higher education, although, obviously right now, that is being changed in some parts of our country. Your institution, Colby College became the second to recognize casteism and its anti discrimination policy. Brandeis being the first, how does this issue affect faculty, staff and students of Indian descent in higher education in the US? What have you seen at Colby?

Sonja Thomas: 29:13

Yeah, whoo, Colby, way to go! Like, I will say too that, you know, we took the approach at Colby, to educate people about caste and casteism. And it really is a no brainer when you're like this, this discrimination exists in the United States, it's affecting Americans to say, well, we should make sure that anybody who experiences this discrimination here is protected. It's just a no brainer. So but I think after Colby recognized caste, there were a few news stories that ran about it and the AP picked it up and I see a lot of people commenting or retweeting things and saying, people who are unfamiliar with caste, a non South Asian Americans and they say, congrats, you you addressed an issue that doesn't affect anyone what a waste of time. I think it is true that Colby is located in Central Maine, it's the whitest state in the nation. It doesn't have as many South Asian students as a college like Rutgers where I got my PhD, which is, you know, has a lot of South Asians who South Asian Americans in New Jersey, or the Cal State system that has a lot of South Asians. However, back to my example, about women in the boardroom, we know that when you only have one or two people in a place where where a discrimination exists, when you're told like, well, it only affects two people. Who cares, you know, I'm only going to care when it affects 100 people. How callous! I can't understand that people are actually saying that, but that's where we are with caste right now that people are can't be bothered to care about this discrimination occurring. And third, I I with with this idea about you know, it doesn't happen here. It's not that big of a deal, who cares what, what a stupid thing to to work on. Especially when we think about caste. It's not an issue here. That kind of sentiment is so tied to anti Asian sentiments, where the idea is is that these people who experience this discrimination I can't be bothered bothered with because I'm an American, and they're not, you know, this is foreign. It's not affecting Americans. And so you understand that South Asian Americans are perpetual foreigners. And that's so tied to anti Asian sentiments. As a whole, not just at Colby, but caste discrimination in colleges and universities. It's affecting Dalit Bahujan students across the nation. For instance, a Dalit student at the University of Minnesota, which is my alma mater, Go Gophers. shared in the faculty resolutions, the Senate, the Faculty Senate, passed a resolution urging the board of trustees to add caste as a protected category. And during that time, a Dalit student read a letter anonymously had another person read it for fear of being outed, and doxed. But they talked about their experience of casteist slurs of a South Asian kind of get together where there was a separate line for Dalit students in getting food, or even especially, you know, dominant caste students, demeaning Dalit Bahujan students, and assuming that Dalit Bahujan students, they doubted their academic competency. And you see that discrimination happening in colleges and universities a lot. Because in India, I mentioned we have this affirmative action policy called Reservations. So there is a discourse amongst dominant caste peoples that goes something like this. And we might be familiar with this discourse when we think of affirmative action in the United States, it goes something like this. They don't deserve to be here, they got in only because they're a Dalit student, and they're less qualified than I am, I got in on my own merit, or they're taking up my seat, I'm entitled to that space. And this Dalit student is not as good as me. So there's been scholarship that's been talking about this Ajanta Subramanyam, who's a professor at Harvard has written a book called "The Caste of Merit" to talk about how dominant caste peoples will use this, this kind of idea that I got in on merit, and these Dalit Bahujan students are less qualified than I am. One more thing I'll say about colleges and universities is about professors themselves. Because of casteism, the overwhelming majority of South Asian professors in the United States in all disciplines are dominant caste. And when it comes to South Asian religion studies, and South Asian Studies, many dominant caste South Asianists don't study or teach about caste ever. Therefore, many students, South Asian and non South Asian alike, can take entire classes on South Asian religions, South Asian history, South Asian politics, and never learn anything about caste. I mean, I just said how embedded caste and casteism is into the social system. The hubris in the privilege and the blindness of teaching a whole class on South Asian religions without ever talking about caste. It just shows how insular dominant caste communities can be and how you that kind of mantra of I don't see caste, it doesn't affect me even plays into scholarship. So if you're a Dalit Bahujan student who wants to study caste, where are you going to get any mentors or guidance? And Dalit Bahujan professors, there's so few Dalit Bahujan professors in the United States, but oftentimes, Dalit Bahujan professors who will who are working, can be harassed and doxed by by not just people in the college, but outside the college too. Getting rape threats, death threats, some choose to write their research anonymously, to avoid that violence. So that is the level of discrimination we're seeing in the United States and colleges and universities.

Chip Gruen: 35:04

So you're sort of alluding to, to something I want to sort of call out and think about more that many Indian Americans really bristle at accusations of of casteism, claiming, as you just said, right, you know, that invisibility problem like that it does not exist in United States. Accusations of it are actually Hindu phobic, which is why I'm really interested in that idea of this being sort of super religious in its orientation that it's not just about Hinduism. This seems really complicated because you have a minority community that can be discriminated against and marginalized, then being accused of similar behavior towards lower caste or Dalit individuals, Bahujan individuals, does this claim of Hindu phobia have any merit at all?

Sonja Thomas: 35:52

Well, let me, look, religious minorities can face marginalization and discriminations from a dominant religion. And look, I know this because I study Christian religious minorities in India, and they can face discrimination from the Hindu majority. For instance, the Hindu nationalist government has been at and continues to be a very big proponent of anti conversion laws, specifically aimed at Dalit Hindus converting to Christianity. I'm a practicing Christian, for what that's worth. But like, my religion says, spread the good news. This is like laws specifically that prohibits me from practicing my own religion. So it is true that Christians can be discriminated against in India. But it is also true that Christians can have caste privilege and discriminate against Dalit peoples. So even though they're Christian, and thus religious minorities, you can have members of the St. Thomas Christian community be active and complicit in casteism. And so basically, my answer to this question of Hindu phobia is pat your head and rub your stomach. You can be a numerical subordinated community in the US minority demographically, and still perpetuate casteism. Just like you can have South Asian Americans who are racial minorities and also anti Black. Or you can have white women who face sexism, and also support white supremacy. Okay, you can have one discrimination happen and still perpetuate and still participate in caste as discrimination. Being a member of a religious minority doesn't make you immune suddenly, from from oppressing Dalit Bahujan peoples in your religion or any other religion. I've written about how this mere mention of caste because the mere mention of caste is making some say, I'm being discriminated against this as Hindu phobic. So I wrote about how the mere mention of caste generating the charge of Hindu phobia is a smoke and mirrors tactic. When we say that protecting caste oppressed peoples is hurting a religious minority, what we do first is we fail to listen to the experiences of Dalit Bahujan peoples who are coming forward with their stories of discrimination throughout this nation and bravely telling them in the face of so much doubt. And second, we fail to protect caste oppressed peoples in all religions. So we're only focused on Hindus? What about caste oppressed Muslims, and caste oppressed Christians and caste oppressed Sikhs? You know, like, we need to stay focused and understand that assignment. Religion is already a protected category, federally statewise in all colleges and universities, religion is a protected category. Caste is not.

Chip Gruen: 38:43

So I want to continue on this the objections because I'm kind of sensitive to this. Because at the Institute for Religious and Cultural Understanding, we're really interested in incorporating religious diversity of all kinds into our programming into our constituency, very concerned with sort of expanding the net of who participates in what we do. And so I'm aware that even this conversation will be super offensive, right to some of the people who we're trying to attract right to think about religious diversity in our world. And I think one of the mechanisms by which that that sensitivity comes is by saying, I don't identify with the caste identity, right? I'm an Indian American, I'm, but I don't identify with the caste identity. And in fact, one study finds that 53% So a slim majority, but the majority in the US don't. But you argue that not claiming a caste identity is very different than not being casteist. Can you talk about the ways that caste is visible even if those labels aren't used?

Sonja Thomas: 39:59

Oh my gosh, I'm so glad that you gave me the opportunity to talk about this data and the flawed interpretations of this data, this 53% stat that is often being being pushed around. So okay, let's talk about something called castelessness. When you're in, in part of a community where everyone is the same background as you are, and that background is a privileged one with power, you often don't have to talk about discrimination. Because it doesn't affect you. Like to go back to that boardroom, where there's one woman. If you're going out with the bro dudes and having a beer, you're not saying like, Oh, and did you think that that comment about high heels was sexist, or you're going golfing and you're like, you know, I really want to talk about equal pay, you're probably not going to because it doesn't affect you. And I think Americans can understand that quite easily. So that stat of 53% of Hindus not identifying with their caste comes from a survey that was done with Carnegie Mellon. On specifically on Indian Americans. One of the things that I was so confused about is that the survey takers chose to ask only Hindu Americans about caste in this survey. And why I don't know, because especially seeing how the skewed migration pattern of dominant castes is especially pronounced amongst Indian Christians. But you exclude other religions from that question that was really not informed by the studies on casteism. And what's important about the stat of 53% is the people who did answer this question didn't identify with their caste is being made to make a huge jump that because I don't identify with my caste. That's a sign that casteism is not here. But it is a privilege to say, I don't see caste. I've never seen it. It's never affected me. So I don't identify with our caste. I've heard dominant caste people tell me like, we never talked about it in my family. I'm like, Oh, that's great. Did you have to clean toilets when you were in school? I'm sure you didn't have to talk about it, because you didn't have to do that. Right? Why would you talk about it in your family. So that 53% stat needs to be informed through skewed migration patterns to the United States that the overwhelmingly dominant caste and the research on castelessness. And I don't see that stat being discussed through that research at all. We know also that outing somebody's caste in a school or workplace, for example, can lead to increased harassment and and microaggressions, and doxing, and even violence, I'd encourage listeners to read this book by a Dalit American named Yashica Dutt she wrote a book called"Coming Out as Dalit" about her own experiences in trying to hide her Dalit caste. And coming to terms with that, and then coming out with her caste. We know the way that this discrimination works is to make sure that Dalit Bahujan peoples would rather hide their caste identity than declare it in the United States. So that's another reason to be that people are casteless not and saying I don't identify with a caste. Second, as you mentioned, 53 is a slim majority. That means that 47% did identify with their caste. And of that 47% of Hindu Americans, a whopping 83% of them were from the dominant castes, and only 1% of them were from Dalit Bahujan caste. Again, this points to skewed migration. That's why so many Dalit Bahujan peoples are coming forward with their experiences. And that's why when we're reading data, we need to understand that big survey data needs to be right, alongside ethnographic qualitative data, of experiences, otherwise, we're not going to hear those stories. And 80 83% is going to so overwhelm that 1%. Right. So one of the things that just like, makes me so angry is that we hear these stories bravely shared with people. And then we, we see people who don't experience this discrimination, doubting the validity of those experiences, by then shoving that statistic of 53% into, you know, all sorts of forums. And then saying, like, that, pushes away this 53% stat is going to push away those experiences and evidence. It's a real problem. And that's why, you know, when I teach my students about research methods, I teach them about the importance of qualitative data and in the importance of, of understanding how to interpret raw data.

Chip Gruen: 44:50

So speaking of data, and this is one of maybe one of the implications of sort of demographics and the way that immigration laws changed in the US, is that one of the distinctive features of Indian American communities is the that we get this big wave of immigration after 1965. So that we have a sort of a glut of first and second generation Indian Americans in the United States, which affects how they think about these issues, you know it affects their connections with with India. But I think that there seems to be and this is just anecdotal evidence on my part. But when I look to young scholars of Indian descent, for example, and I would extrapolate this out to maybe imagine it's part of, you know, millennial and, and younger generations in the, in those communities generally, is that these attitudes change a little bit like being, you know, growing up in the United States, growing up as sort of ethnic minority here, religious minority here, maybe affects that. But can you talk about the way that the demography of South Asian communities might affect the way that this issue is treated, is thought about, is considered as we move forward in time?

Sonja Thomas: 46:19

Yeah, well, I'm a second generation South Asian American. There aren't many of us in South Asian Studies in South Asian religions. Actually, there's a lot of more diasporic scholars in South Asian religions and white scholars. But I think we also are growing in number. With castelessness, and in so many dominant caste communities in the United States, I think it's hard to quote unquote, see caste for the second generation and the third generation, that doesn't let anyone off the hook though, it just means that these conversations might be fewer and farther far to come by for the second generation, just because they haven't been exposed to any conversations. But these conversations are happening, right? So I've spoken at churches throughout the country. I spoken to family WhatsApp chat groups. And I'm occasionally getting emails from community members in from the second generation who just emailed me they somehow came across an article I wrote or, or my book, and a question I often get is, how were you able to do this? Didn't anybody in your community in the community didn't any of your aunties and uncles and your, your people in your church get mad at you for this, which speaks to me, like one of the things that that tells me is that second generation and third generation Indian Americans from dominant caste communities, really kind of understand how you could face backlash from your own community, because your own community doesn't want you to air the dirty laundry, so to speak. So I can almost hear that in the questions or, you know, I had someone told me like, I read your book. and then I asked my my parents about the fact that we call the place that we live in a plantation, and that would there used to be Dalit slave labor and that dominant caste peoples in slave Dalit caste. They're called the slave castes in Kerala. Right? So and why do we have all these servants working on our land? And my dad was just like, that's the way things are. So like, how can that be just like that right like so that I think they are asking questions. One of the things that I like to direct at first generation South Asianists or people who are academics from from India or South Asia, is that so many diasporic South Asian professors tend to think of the second generation as very young and infantilized the second generation as not knowledgeable about South Asia. We call this ABCD, American Born Confused Desi, that were American born and just confused and don't know what we're talking about know nothing about India or caste. I just like to point out that the children of 1965, post 1965 migrants are in their 40s and 50s. Like my oldest sister is in her 50s. So we aren't young, and we're not dumb, right? We're not stupid. Second generation might not have seen casteism in the same way that diasporic people have. But generally speaking, I have found anecdotally speaking, that the second generation has been much more ready to be allies than first generation South Asianists who don't even teach caste in their own classes. But these conversations and education need to be happening amongst the second generation and third generation. And I will say, quite honestly, that while some of those conversations are there, they are far fewer than what I would hope.

Chip Gruen: 49:51

So you mentioned ally ship and I want to sort of follow up because our astute listeners will have recognized already that that some of the bibliography that you use some of the categories and the terminology you use is not exclusive to thinking about caste and casteism, but is more general about discrimination about racism, etc. So there seems to be a connection to those who are interested in thinking about these issues, or a desire to be allies of other anti discrimination movements like Black Lives Matter, for example. Can you talk about that relationship? How are the fights against discrimination similar to one another, even when the target of that discrimination is different?

Sonja Thomas: 50:39

Yeah, um, after the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and the protests of summer, summer 2020. I saw many ally groups just spring up in the South Asian American community like South Asians for Black Lives, or Malayalees for Black Lives. People from Kerala, India speak a language called Malayalam. So they're called Malayalees. So Malayalees for Black Lives. And I mean, I'm just talking from what I saw. And I saw a lot of second generation, third generation South Asians, like saying we need to center Black lives, because sometimes the the conversation of caste will come up. And then people will say, we need to center Black lives. And we can talk about caste someplace else, but not here. And I saw that as an opportunity to kind of jump in and say, Wait, we also have to understand what ally ship is. And there is a long history of Black and Dalit solidarity. For instance, in the 1970s, a group of Dalits in the in the state of Maharashtra formed a group that they called the Dalit Panthers, and patterned a lot of their community based activism off of the work of the Black Panthers. And, you know, just recently, Angela Davis spoke out against Dalit women facing sexual assault. And so, Black Lives Matter, speaking up for Dalit Lives Matter has been there has been there continues to be there. And so we don't sacrifice one when we look at the other ally ship understands this deep held solidarity between Black Lives Matter and Dalit Lives Matter. I think also too, I'm encouraged by a lot of discussion in these kinds of forums and others where second generation South Asian Americans, third generation South Asian Americans are trying to think about anti Black racism in South Asian communities, and how that anti Black racism is informed by assumptions of labor and color. Like, for instance, like, second generation, Americans being told by their parents or their aunties and uncles are first generation migrants, you don't want to go outside and get so dark. Do you want to be picking up garbage for the rest of your life? Right, so I study caste and I know that idea of, of animal carcass collection, waste collection is is read as a Dalit job and debased and de dehumanized, so then you connect that with with being dark, right, and so, second generation, third generation, I think, are starting to, like connect the dots that anti Black racism in so many South Asian communities, a lot of times be informed by casteism.

Chip Gruen: 53:31

So I want to end up here, and you're gonna help me with with a problem, you're gonna help me because I've already I've already sort of alluded to the fact that we're interested in including lots of different voices and lots of different identities within within the work of the Institute. And I, I know, right, I know from conversations, that there are very sincere South Asian people, right, Hindus and others, who will be hurt, right, by even the mention of this conversation, that they will feel like it is accusatory that it is in itself a problem. And again, the way that I operate in the world I think, is not to imagine that that is insincere, and they just don't want their dirty laundry aired, as you said, but that they are, you know, honestly, I don't know if unaware or or unreflective about this issue. How do you think we deal with this conversation, honoring it, paying attention to it without driving a wedge, or alienating people who again for for lots of different reasons, may not understand it or see it?

Sonja Thomas: 54:51

So if someone gets upset by this conversation, the only person people I could see getting upset, are the people who discriminate or want to continue a system that they benefit from. If you really are against casteism in your community, and you think it's a social evil that you don't support, but you're getting upset, because someone points out how caste aided your migration or your parents migration to the United States, what you're getting upset about is that someone is pointing out that this hasn't been an equal playing field. And in that unequal playing field, you are the one who benefited. I want to say I get that you don't want people to know that, or do you don't want to talk about it, because it, it implies that you didn't work hard. But we're talking about equity here. And it hasn't been an equal playing field for hundreds, if not 1000s of years. So this saying applies. When you're used to privilege equality feels like oppression, how I deal with that, quote, unquote, problem. I mean, I will continue to demystify that which power wants to make invisible. And I will point up, point out that anybody who gets upset with that demystification, what they're doing is they're making it about their own fragility, their own dominant caste tiers. And which, when we treat that with kid gloves, what we do is take away airtime and focus from the experiences of Dalit Bahujan peoples, we turn our attention away from what they're saying, and turn our attention to the privileged one who's saying, I feel attacked here. And I will not do that. I cannot do that, as an educator, we have to stay focused on what is important and what matters the most. And so I aim to continue to expose that in my own privileged community, and to start to dismantle casteism, rather than reap the benefits from it by staying silent, or or tiptoeing around an issue. Because that silence is complicity in the system.

Chip Gruen: 57:03

So there seems to be momentum right now for this issue in the United States. In February of this year, for example, the city of Seattle became the first city to add caste discrimination to anti discrimination laws. So I'm gonna ask you to tell the future here. What do you what do you see, as we wrap up our conversation for today? What is the future hold for anti caste discrimination in the United States, whether it be legislatively, culturally, socially, you know, look around the corner for us here.

Sonja Thomas: 57:39

Yeah, I'm, I'm an I'm an educator. And I believe that the more that non South Asian Americans and dominant caste peoples who haven't had these conversations before, people unfamiliar with caste, the more they learn how it's affecting people, the more this issue is a no brainer. But if we continue to live in ignorance and say things like, it's not an issue, you're making it up, it's a waste of time, or there's no evidence 53% say there's not without taking the time to learn. The more that South Asian professors who are teaching South Asian religions decide to not is that is not worth their time to teach Dr. B.R. Ambedkar and other caste activists and about issues of caste and casteism, then what happens is that the burden of proof lands on the shoulders of Dalit Bahujan peoples, and it should not be the oppressed job to teach the oppressor. I mean, I'm paraphrasing Audrey Lorde here. So I think that there's a lot of work to do with educating people who are unfamiliar with that. And quite frankly, there's not enough of that by dominant caste peoples. I mean, we should be bridging back. But I also really, really think that once these conversations are being had, I'm giving a talk at Lafayette about this issue. And there's more people asking, and so I do see that this will continue to be pushed, I have every reason to believe that Dalit Bahujan peoples who have been working on this, like I said, for activism for hundreds of years, continue to get their voice heard. And the more that we educate ourselves, this will be a no brainer. It's so easy. But it's it's so easy to understand. And once you start like looking into it and educating yourself, I just said, woo-hoo, Colby. Colby was willing to be educated about this. But I'm also on sabbatical this year. So if I'm not there would people who are not educated about it, continue to understand how to implement policies, if casteism occurs? It can't just be one person at an institution. We all have to be committed to this and we all have to be educated about it. Right? Like so, that takes a lot of effort and willingness. And I don't think that we're there yet. But once once people know about this, I've given so many talks about this now and once people know about it, it really is this easy thing to stand up and say I am for human rights. I am against this discrimination. Let's add it to this non discrimination policy. Seattle is a big first, a big first Brandeis was a big first. But you know, my whole family, they're in their in corporate world. And they, they often talk about leadership. And one person doing something can be an outlier. But the follower, the first follower can lead to a movement. So we need another city to step up here. We need other state governments and federal governments we don't need first we need seconds and thirds and fourths and fifths. And that takes a concerted effort for so many people and it takes people who are willing to do that education and not just leave the burden to the most oppressed.

Chip Gruen: 1:01:07

All right, Sonja Thomas, Associate Professor of Women's Gender and Sexuality Studies at Colby College. Thank you so much for sitting down with us today. This has been great.

Sonja Thomas: 1:01:15

Thank you so much. It's been awesome.

Chip Gruen: 1:01:20

This has been ReligionWise a podcast produced by the Institute for Religious and Cultural Understanding of Muhlenberg College. ReligionWise is produced and directed by Christine Flicker. For more information about additional programming, or to make an inquiry about a speaking engagement. Please visit our website at religionandculture.com. There you'll find our contact information, links to other programming and have the opportunity to support the work of the Institute. Please subscribe to ReligionWise wherever you get your podcasts. We look forward to seeing you next time.