After details of a violent gang rape in Hathras, Uttar Pradesh, were released to the public last year, protests broke out all over India. The story of four upper-caste men brutalizing a 19-year old Dalit woman, and her subsequent death from injuries sent shock waves throughout the country. It set off new conversations about violence against marginalized women in India, challenging both traditional spaces and the urban middle- to upper-class Me Too movement.
In India, women and girls from the Dalit community experience incredibly high rates of sexual violence. India’s caste system, which functions like a social hierarchy, imposes positionality at birth and has been in place for thousands of years. Dalits are at the bottom, outside the caste hierarchy, leading to discrimination at the intersections of caste, class, and gender.
A Joint Civil Society* Contribution to the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) for the adoption of the List of Issues Prior to Reporting on India has regretted that despite the abolition of untouchability enshrined in the Indian Constitution, and a constitutional formal prohibition of discrimination on the ground base of race or caste, under the Constitution, Dalits and other communities affected by discrimination based on descent, including Adivasis, still face de facto discrimination.
A minister’s involvement a high-profile caste discrimination case raises questions of state complacency
According to the latest census, conducted in 2017, approximately one million people were counted from the Dalit community in Pakistan, most of them living in Sindh, especially Tharparkar. A chunk of these – approximately more than 15,000 of them are dwelling in Karachi’s dilapidated, ramshackle houses in the Hindu Para locality of Chaneser Goth.
Caste is not well understood in the United States, even though it plays a significant role in the lives of Americans of South Asian descent. Two recent lawsuits make caste among the South Asian diaspora much more visible.
At just eight years old, Jasvinder Sanghera was already promised to an older man who she had never met before. One day after school aged 14, her mother sat her down at their home and showed her the picture of a man they'd decided she would marry. Ms Sanghera refused, and fled home at just 16-years-old with a man outside of her caste. Her conservative Sikh family disowned her and she has now been estranged from them for 42 years.
Profile on Beena Pallical from ADRF-NCDHR.
Santa Clara County’s Human Rights Commission is tackling the thorny issue of caste discrimination in education and on the job in Silicon Valley.
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.
The recent Rukum case in Nepal echoes the rampant caste violence in India. The region needs a new dalit narrative to imagine a better future.
The California government used sections of the Civil Rights Act, which emerged out of the struggle against segregation, to file a lawsuit on grounds that a Dalit had been discriminated against by his 'upper' caste supervisors.
Need and objectives for EU intervention on sustainable corporate governance
As India went into a nationwide lockdown to fight the Coronavirus pandemic, caste animosity continued its rampage and destroyed the lives of thousands of Dalit persons across the country. The book "No Lockdown on Caste Atrocities: Stories of Caste Crimes during the COVID-19 Pandemic" produced by Dalit Human Rights Defenders network (DHRDNet) tells stories of 60 such cases of caste crimes that took place while the country was under lockdown in order to deconstruct the psycho-social and legal dynamics that perpetuate caste violence.
The Informal Sector Service Centre (INSEC), a leading human rights organization in the country, documented 5,543 victims of human rights violations in 2020.
In connection with their participation in the 44th 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.
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.
This is the fact sheet by DNF and IDSN on the UPR of Nepal, listing recommendations, that have been responded to and noted, as well as the national framework of Nepal.
Discussion of intercaste love in India. Marriages in India not only serve as a tool to exchange wealth through dowry rituals but also act as an institution to strengthen the caste system.