87 entries found
Over the past months the campaign to end caste discrimination in key South Asian diaspora communities has gathered momentum. Anti-caste groups and activists in the US, Canada, UK and Australia have carried out targeted advocacy and made significant progress towards the goal of ensuring protections and legal recourse for those experiencing caste discrimination in South Asian communities globally.
Voices represented in Indian media are overwhelmingly upper-caste and male. Now Dalit-led media, taking inspiration from Dr. Ambedkar’s legacy and Black liberation movements, is bringing their experiences to light with grace and humor — both at home and in the diaspora.
The biennial Darnal Award for Social Justice (DASJ) 2022 is all set to be warded to Karnali Arts Centre (KAC), a community-based arts organisation of Nepal and Equality Labs (EL), a US-based Dalit civil rights organisation this year.
The recent controversy around actor-comedian Vir Das’s show ‘I come from two Indias’ sparked a debate around the perception of India on the international front. While Vir talked about various issues in the 6-minute monologue, he did not utter a single word against the darkest reality of India – caste dominance.
Prem Pariyar worked with the student government association representing the 23 colleges in the California State University system as they passed a resolution to ban caste discrimination. He said he was involved in efforts at the University of California, Davis to do the same.
Harvard University is the latest U.S. school to add measures protecting caste-oppressed students following a push from graduate workers and a national organization.
Students worked to get their university to officially recognize caste — a millennia-old concept that assigns people their social statuses at birth — as a source of discrimination on the Northern California campus.
In the sea of “representation matters”, it is imperative to ask why the Indians taking up diversity-spaces in western and west-targeted media are all so insistently upper caste and often always North Indian?
In connection with their participation in the 48 th Human Rights Council session, states are encouraged to consider the ongoing and systemic practice of discrimination based on work and descent, also known as caste-based discrimination, affecting more than 260 million people globally.
C. Concern and recommendations
Discrimination based on descent
15. While taking note of information provided by the State party affirming that the caste system is not institutionalised in Suriname, the Committee is concerned about reports on the persistence of such a system in certain communities of Indian origin living in the State party (arts. 3 and 5).
16. The Committee, recalling its General Recommendation No. 29 (2002) on discrimination based on descent, recommends that the State party take steps to identify the specific communities and persons who may suffer from such practices and if applicable, to adopt specific measures to combat and eradicate such discriminatory practices.
The Indian American Attitudes Survey (IAAS), done jointly by Johns Hopkins University, University of Pennsylvania and Carnegie with polling group YouGov, also found that US-born Indian Americans are more likely to complain of discrimination than those born outside, mostly in India
India’s government needs to urgently address healthcare shortages amid the world’s fastest-growing Covid-19 crisis and ensure that vulnerable communities have equitable access to treatment, Human Rights Watch said today. Donors and diaspora groups that are rushing assistance to India should encourage the government to end curbs on free speech and to respect human rights in its pandemic response.
Santa Clara County’s Human Rights Commission is tackling the thorny issue of caste discrimination in education and on the job in Silicon Valley.
Talk by Thenmozhi Soundararajan about Caste in the United States. This talk is a part of the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center's educational webinar series, "We are not a stereotype: Breaking down Asian Pacific American bias."
The group, over a 100 years old, has recently come under scrutiny for casteist labor practices in New Jersey.
U.S. authorities recently raided a large and well-known Hindu temple in New Jersey that they said had exploited Dalit workers from the “lowest” bracket of India’s caste system. The men had been categorized as “lay religious workers” for immigration purposes but were instead employed in back-breaking labor for $1/hour.
As a new migrant to Australia I was surprised when I learnt caste discrimination exists in a country so far removed geographically and culturally from South Asia.
In connection with their participation in the 43rd Human Rights Council session, States are encouraged to consider the ongoing and systemic practice of discrimination based on work and descent, also known as caste-based discrimination, affecting more than 260 million people globally.