ybvdadminuser(RNS) — Despite a report finding that caste-based discrimination was a problem on campus, Rutgers University decided this week not to update its anti-discrimination policies — saying that policies already in place address the issue.
“Because caste is already covered by the Policy Prohibiting Discrimination and Harassment, the university will not be taking steps to amend this policy at this time,” Rutgers officials said in an official announcement Monday (Jan. 13).
Rutgers officials had been asked to respond to the 2024 report from the University Task Force on Caste Discrimination, which recommended adding caste as a protected category to its anti-discrimination policies, something that more than 20 other colleges and universities have done.
The university said its announcement “does not reflect the university’s agreement with, or adoption of, the findings and conclusions set forth in the report.”
The issue of caste discrimination has made headlines nationwide in recent years — most notably this past fall, when California Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill that would have banned caste discrimination in that state.
While not all of their recommendations were adopted, members of the Rutgers task force see the university’s announcement as an “unmitigated victory.”
Audrey Truschke, Rutgers professor of South Asian history and co-chair of the task force, said the university has committed to training staff members on identifying casteism and will include caste discrimination-related questions in the next campus climate survey. That shows the “most robust response to caste discrimination by any university in the United States,” she said.
Discrimination based on the caste group one is born into, say activists who work with caste in the Indian context, can take various forms, from social ostracization to blatant stereotyping about worship or eating patterns.
In their announcement, Rutgers officials cited the intersectional nature of caste, which means that discrimination can fall under religion, national origin, ancestry, race or a combination of those things, all of which are already covered.
“The report generated important discussion and review around how our policies address potential cases of discrimination based on caste and around how the university collects – and responds to – information in this area,” said Dory Devlin, spokesperson for Rutgers University.
According to its administration, Rutgers is among some of the most ethnically diverse universities in America. Almost 30% of its students identify as Asian American, and more than 80% come from areas of New Jersey, which has the highest population of South Asians in the country.
Though caste is not limited to any one community, its association with India and Hindus in mainstream culture had made caste a contentious issue for Hindus the world over.
For Hindus for Human Rights, an anti-caste advocacy organization that launched an email campaign to urge Rutgers administrators to adopt the policy, the decision is both disappointing and encouraging.
“I think the difference between a case like SB 403 being vetoed (by Newsom) and Rutgers not adopting caste protections is that you do have this more fleshed-out and explicit acknowledgment of caste discrimination as an issue that needs to be combated,” said Pranay Somayajula, director of organizing and advocacy for HFHR. “And I think that we’ve seen in the statement from Rutgers a more comprehensive explanation of: ‘Here’s what we’re going to do to address the issue of caste at Rutgers.’”
Not having an explicit protected category for caste in institutional policies makes it harder for people who are experiencing discrimination to make their concerns known, Somayajula said.
“We just shouldn’t be creating barriers to this,” he said.
Thus far, the Harvard Graduate Student Union, the University of Minnesota, the entire California State University system and the city of Seattle have been among the institutions that have adopted anti-caste policies.
Though its origins are contested, caste can be sometimes be identified through someone’s family surname, birthplace or religion. Yet many activists argue that the social hierarchy of caste, and any prejudice attached to it, was left behind years ago in India and did not travel along with its immigrants to America.
To Hindu organizations that have long been opposing the widespread adoption of caste-discrimination policies, Rutgers’ decision also seen as a win.
The legal counsel of the Hindu American Foundation, the largest group of its kind, sent a letter to Rutgers’ Office of General Counsel in August after the task force’s initial report, “strongly advising” the university not to implement any programmatic changes.
“The inclusion of ‘caste’ in your policies will necessarily and unconstitutionally single out and stigmatize students, faculty and staff of Indian origin as a matter of policy, and require ethno-racial profiling and disparate legal scrutiny on the basis of their race, national origin, ancestry, and religion,” read the letter.
To other Hindus in this camp, naming caste outside of existing discrimination “perpetuates negative misinformation” that associates people of Indian origin with a specific form of bigotry, and therefore promotes the idea that students of Indian origin are either perpetrators or victims of caste discrimination. The letter also noted that the report used the words “India” or “Indian” 38 times, “South Asian” 25 times and only singularly mentioned other communities.
“I am glad that the Rutgers University Labor Relations office recognized that caste is already covered under their current policy and did not fall for the report by the task force, which singled out Hindu students and faculty,” said Hitesh Trivedi, associate Hindu chaplain at Rutgers University, in a press statement from the Coalition of Hindus of North America. “In a recent study, Rutgers University’s Social Perception Lab confirmed that adding caste to its policy would increase suspicion and hate towards Hindu and Indian Americans.”
The study he refers to, a November report from a nonprofit center at Rutgers University that studies misinformation and hate ideology, found that caste education can increase bias, saying, “anti-oppressive pedagogy increases hostility, distrust, and punitive attitudes — escalating tensions instead of fostering inclusion.”
Other groups, such as Caste Files, a think tank that focuses primarily on the perception of caste in the United States, applauded the new development, yet remained measured in their celebration.
“CasteFiles urges Rutgers University to reconsider the inclusion of caste-related questions in its campus climate surveys,” it said in a statement. “These surveys must avoid the pitfalls of anonymity breaches, biased incentives, and discriminatory implications for participants.”
Truschke, whose extensive research on the history of India and caste and outspokenness have made her a target of online vitriol and Rutgers the subject of international attention, said that Rutgers’ statement is a “promising beginning” that her educational efforts are working.
“We have already seen, especially this year, an increase in on-the-ground activity at Rutgers: more groups, more events talking about caste, and trying to get this more into the conversation,” she said. “So to me, the announcement by Rutgers, this is step one, maybe step two. But we’ve got 100 more steps to go.”
