The Equality Labs Trapped Right Wing Activists

On June 30, Cisco systems Inc. was sued by California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing regulators for allegedly failing to prevent ‘caste- discrimination, harassment and retaliation’.   

A Dalit engineer anonymized as “John Doe” accused his Brahmins colleagues, Sundar Iyer and Ramana Kompella, of denying him bonuses and stalling his promotions just because he belonged to ‘lower-caste’. As the news came, so came the rhetorics articulated in plethora, directed against the Indian society in general and the Brahmins in particular.  

Meena Varma, Executive Director at the International Dalit Solidarity Network, told TRT World, “Wherever we [Indians] go in the world, we tend to take our two things with us: one is chilli and pickle, and the other is caste”.  

Since most of the engineers in Silicon Valley happen to be from Indian Institute of Technology or the IITs which enjoy a strong reputation in the US tech sector, subaltern scholars did not mince words while alluding the IITs as the “Iyer Iyengar Technology” (Iyer and Iyengar being Tamil Brahmin castes), “the fiefdom of Brahmins in independent India” which contribute to the formation of “Global Brahminism,” or the “global ascendance of local racism and casteism” to take root in international firms.  

And since Silicon-valley supposedly employs lots of Brahmin, it was jibed as being ‘Agraharam valley’, after the important aspect of the collective identity of the Tamil Brahmins – Agraharam.  

Controversial and disputed race theories were parroted again embellished with hackneyed phrases like ‘Dalits and Adivasis, who are India’s indigenous population of India’ endured brutal ‘Caste-structural-apartheid’ at the hands of Upper castes who were outsiders. 

As expected, similar ripples appeared when the news hit the Indian coasts: Prominent newspapers with ‘left-liberal or subaltern’ agenda pounced upon the opportunity to denigrate the Indian social system keeping Brahmins at the centre.  

Interestingly enough, the self-professed reformists Right Wing proponents joined the ‘Anti-Brahmin-Anti-Caste’ band-wagon.

To validate and authenticate the case against Cisco Inc., the California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing regulators used the reference of a 2018 survey titled ‘Caste in the United states: Survey of caste among South Americans’, commissioned by Equality Labs, a South Asian American civil rights organization. This very report has been often used by the Dalit-American voices.  

Let us now analyze the survey report.  

Though the survey claims to be ‘comprehensive’, the sample size is of mere 1500 respondents from different parts of the US, which ultimately gets narrowed down to 1200. 

Although the respondents identified as “South Asian”, in reality they belonged not only to India but also from present day Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, Trinidad/Tobago, Guyana, Fiji, Tanzania, and as far as Kenya. 

Usage of respondents from as far as ‘Kenya or Fiji’ to present the Greater picture of so called ‘caste-Apartheid’ within Indian Hindu Diaspora is gross sampling error.  

The overhyped report prepared by the Equality Labs presented, a very twisted understanding of Indian society and other pertinent connected issues regarding food. 

The report says that Brahmin vegetarianism is a sort of caste oppression. To corroborate such absurd claims, they give anecdotal evidence of a ‘lower caste’ women who fears of being “ostracised” by the “upper caste folks” for bringing non-vegetarian dishes on their “auspicious” day as she once brought chicken curry on a festival and the “upper castes” oppressed her by setting aside her dish in a corner and labelled it “NON-VEGETARIAN” in large letters.  

Here, the case is of cultural ignorance of the alleged victim, not oppression. Even most of the so-called “Lower Castes” abstain from non-vegetarian during most auspicious days. 

Connecting vegetarianism with the Upper caste or Brahminism is reflection of sheer ignorance, as even sub-castes of Brahmins like Saraswat or Maithili are non-vegetarians while many non-Brahmin castes have been vegetarians notwithstanding whether they are Upper or Lower. 

While subaltern scholars sever the Adivasis as secluded entity from Hindu religion, the Adivasis icons like Birsa Munda exhorted his tribe to give up non-vegetarian food and don sacred thread for uplifting their spirituality to gain strength for the higher goal of fighting against the British and Christian enculturation during the late nineteenth century.  

Another instance is where Reports says, 

“An overwhelming majority (>90%) of all Muslim, Christian, and Sikh respondents in this survey reported being non-vegetarian. This is replicated in India where these same communities are also prominently associated with eating beef and working with cow products.” 

This statement again reflects the falsehood as Amrit-dhari or Baptised Sikhs religiously abstain from meat forget about beef. Sikhs have been historically against cow slaughter and beef consumption. During the rule of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, cow slaughter was punished by death penalty.  

The report writer appears to be ignorant of  MN Srinivas’s concept of ‘dominant-caste’, according to which a caste, upper or lower, dominates in a village due the tracts of land it owns, other sources of income along with other criterias. For example, ‘Shetties’, who just like Jats are the dominant caste, despite being so called ‘Lower Castes’. Still the report uses the trivial anecdotes from a “Shetty ” respondent that he was made to feel less ‘cool’ for being a shudra by the ‘Iyengars’ – who are not a dominant caste in any region of India.  

While the report itself admits that the sample size of Adivasis was just 12 (selected few?) – to strengthen their preconceived notion of oppression, the report gives a trivial account of an Adivasi respondent that as a kid in school, he was supposedly jibed for his ‘animal-like’ look.  

The report makes a very sweeping generalisation by the statement: “In fact, many Muslims and Dalits are publicly lynched in India, by Hindu fundamentalists on the very suspicion of consuming beef” – it depicts the anti-Hindu bias of the researchers as they ignore the cattle-theft and smuggling which is rampant in India, and not only several civilians but security personnel have been killed during the clash with the cattle-smugglers.

Who’s who: The Equality Lab?? 

Equality lab is famous for its social media campaign “Smash Brahminical Patriarchy” poster. They are the one who campaigned for the propagation of anti-Hindu bias in the famous California text book, calling for the ‘upper caste accountability’ for the oppression of caste while they opposed the gory details of Islamic imperialism as it would be ‘vilification’ of Islam. Islamic imperialism led to enslavement and genocide of millions in India as well as wholesale loot and destruction. Not even a fraction of such crime could be laid at the feet of pre-Islamic Indian society. But the latter is vilified worse than Satan is vilified in Bible while enforcing silence on Islamist atrocities.

Where lies the problem ?  

The legal case against Cisco, the 2018 Caste Survey and the zealous activism in the US reminds of the pre-independence times when Periyar was leading the anti-Brahmin movement in Madras.  

Although he is popularly bestowed with the epithet of being ‘Rational’, he was anything but rational. Fanatically blinded by the Aryan-invasion theory, so much so that he equated the Brahmins with ‘Jews’- as both ‘are only interested in themselves, and nobody else’, he issued blood-curdling threats to Brahmins for supposedly ‘lording over the non-Brahmins’. 

Just as the Caste Report of the Equality Lab has sampling error, sweeping generalisations based on sparse anecdotal evidence, in the same way Periyar’s scientific temperament was ‘hollow and lacked any useful content’. He once said that the white people who lived in the temperate regions were less brainy than the ones who lived in Tamil Nadu. The reason? Their flowers were less fragrant than the flowers of Tamil Nadu. That their snakes don’t have venom but the Tamil snakes do. 

Periyar’s politics thrived on the anti-brahmin rhetoric and has been continued by his political heirs. Loss of political relevance and opportunity combined with humiliation resulted in the silent exodus of the Tamil Brahmins to distant lands as far as the US, where they re-established themselves.  

In 2001, around 4.3% of Tamil-Brahmins resided in villages (Tamil Brahmans: The Making of a Middle Class, Fuller and Narasimhan, 2014, appendix). Their land holdings dwindled to almost nothing as they had to sell them off to get higher quality education. 

Dispassionate number crunching (The Politics of South India, C.J. Baker, 1976, p. 46) shows that although in the late 19th century and early 20th century, Brahmins dominated the educational scene in the state, Periyar exaggerated their so-called hegemony in the educational and government jobs scene.  

Less than 1% of the population were graduating from colleges and it was certainly not a Brahmin monopoly nor were a majority of Brahmins graduating. Also, by the 1930s, the majority of students in both arts and professional colleges were not Brahmins. On the employment front, the total number of Brahmin gazetted officers were 620 in 1928. Overall, there were about 15,000 Brahmins out of about 80,000 government employees (Political Career of E.V. Ramaswamy Naicker, E. Sa. Viswanathan, 1983, p. 126)’. 

Now where lies the Problem ?? 

Few days back, the noise created with the lawsuit died an organic death as the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing voluntarily dropped a federal lawsuit against Cisco inc. 

Whether it was Periyar or the Equality Labs, they never hid their anti-Hindu agenda while pursuing the greater goal of ‘Social Justice’. Intriguing is the blind fall of so called champions of the Hindu Rights into the overt trap set by the agenda driven organisations.  

While it is not expected from the ‘Subaltern-social justice’ organisations which are overtly anti-Hindu, will the Right Wing activists apologise for becoming the tools in character assassination of the Brahmins and attack on Hinduism?