it is. and i am being SERIOUS here south asian mutuals. crucial that we do not confuse bhagat singh thind, racist, castiest, antiblack and anti indigenous white supremacist, with bhagat singh, revolutionary marxist freedom fighter who straight up killed a british soldier and was imprisoned about it and died in jail. i cannot stress the importance of this enough. it is an easy mistake to make considering the name. but pls. hold my hand. do not sully the memory of my guy bhagat singh like this
A group of caste equity leaders have been fasting for more than two weeks to convince Gov. Gavin Newsom to sign a bill that would make caste
COALITION LAUNCHES HUNGER STRIKE AS A COMMITMENT TO ENACT ANTI-CASTE DISCRIMINATION BILL — EQUALITY LABS
Show The Daily, Ep An Unexpected Battle Over Banning Caste Discrimination - Sep 25, 2023
about the ongoing hunger strike to ensure that the historic anti-casteism bill passes in california ^^ wanna support?
if you’re on mobile, go to: https://tinyurl.com/Signsb403
other devices, like laptops: https://www.gov.ca.gov/contact/
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sample email below from the mobile link, not my own writing:
Subject: Please Sign SB403 (Wahab) to End Caste Discrimination
I am writing to request the governor to sign the historic bill SB403 introduced by State Senator Aisha Wahab, which would end discrimination on the basis of caste. This bill aims to clarify existing California state law and make explicit that discrimination based on caste is illegal by adding caste to ancestry and defining caste in the Civil Rights Act, Fair Employment and Housing Act, and Education Code.
Caste systems are social stratification where each position is characterized by hereditary status, endogamy, and social exclusion. Caste discrimination manifests as workplace discrimination, housing discrimination, gender-based violence, and other physical and psychological forms of violence.
Caste discrimination occurs across industries, including technology, construction, restaurants, and domestic work. In these sectors, caste discrimination has included harassment, bias, wage theft, and even trafficking. Caste is today inextricably intertwined with existing legal protections in state and federal civil rights laws such that discrimination based on one’s caste is effectively discrimination based on the intersection of other protected identities. However, because of the grave discrimination caste-oppressed Californians face, these existing protections must be made explicit.
Caste is a workers rights issues, a women's rights issues, and racial justice issue. It is also a bill that has bipartisan support. That is why we are joined by Asian Law Caucus, Stop AAPI Hate, AAPI Equity Alliance, Tech Equity, Equality Labs, Alphabet Workers Union, Ambedkar Association of North America, Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance, AFL-CIO, Californians for Caste Equity, Hindus for Caste Equity, Jakara Movement, South Asian Network, Sikh Coalition, and Sikh American Legal Defense Fund. Every major legal association is in support of caste equity and the lawfulness to make caste equity explicit. This includes the American Bar Association, South Asian Bar Association, National Asian American Pacific Bar Association, and Asian Law Caucus.
That is why we urge you to make history and sign his bill without hesitation. Justice delayed is justice denied. Let's ensure California opportunity for all by ensuring that ancestry and caste discrimination is explicitly prohibited and make history across the country.
Thank You,
[Name]
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and if you don’t know what caste is? send in an ask @bfpnola or join our Discord server, link in bio, so we can answer you in real-time!
So this might be a translation issue, but could someone help me figure out where people are drawing the line between ‘caste freedom’ and ‘caste abolition’?
Like, ‘raise the out-of-caste income cap’, ‘more dual-caste careers’, ‘swapping’ seem pretty firmly in ‘caste freedom’.
‘Do stuff to make caste not a thing at all’ would pretty clearly be ‘caste abolition’ I’d assume. (There’s also ‘announce that caste is not a thing now’, I guess, but it seems pretty obvious to me that that would just mean we’d keep having all the problems we get because of castes except now we can’t do stuff about them because we’re supposed to pretend they’re not there). (Well, and ‘make talking about caste completely illegal; make everyone wear scarves in public or shave their heads and all’ like in that one sci-fi book* clearly goes here I guess but I’m not sure I’ve seen anyone actually advocate that.)
But, ‘make jobs in general non-casted’? ‘allow people to opt out of caste’? That doesn’t sound like abolition because well, you still have castes, but it seems rather above what I usually see in ‘freedom’.
*ooc: I’m imagining a book in a genre-parallel to We or something
One thing that I hate particularly about benevolent racism is the orientalist treatment religions like Buddhism and Hinduism get, as if our philosophy and cultural practices mean that we can do no wrong and our free from criticism. Despite popular western narrative the religious institutions of Buddhism and Hinduism are not the peace-loving, enlightened faiths that we are often presented as.
Buddhism has been used to as an excuse to commit two genocides across South Asia (against the Rohingya people in Myanmar and against Tamil, Hindu, Muslim and Christian communities in Sri Lanka). I cannot give you a specific number on the number of religious minorities and caste oppressed people who have been murdered in the name of Hindu supremacy across India because it ranges in millions of billions throughout south Asian history.
And yet white people continue to travel to South Asia to ‘find themselves’ and go back home to their privileged lives having learned about karma and dharma and reincarnation cycles and speaking about the inherent superiority of south Asian philosophy knowledge while ignoring the ways that these ideologies have been used to harm the oppressed within south Asian communities, on the subcontinent or within the diaspora.
And I’m saying this because I am religious. I know I am Hindu and that I benefit from many of the systems that sustain Hinduism (like caste for example) while actively being harmed by Hindu ideology in other ways (such as my queer and trans identities) and we have got to acknowledge the harm religion does as we practice our faith to be better allies to those who most suffer from these systems. Like, religion is violent because it is formed and spread by humans and while I try to believe that most people will choose kindness because the other option is frankly fucking horrifying, I know that this is quite naive and that humans are violent. We will oppress to claw any bit of power we can gather. We cannot let faith blind us as we work together to free all oppressed peoples. We just can’t. Take my hand. Let’s do the work together.
How Dalit women in India were forced to wet nurse the children of dominant castes while their own children went hungry.
this piece is written so well, reads just like a story, that i'm struggling on which excerpts to showcase for this post. please read the whole thing when you get the chance!
“They forbade us from feeding our own before we went to feed their children. They never prohibited us physically,” she said, her jaw clenched, adding that the fear they inculcated was enough for them to obey. “They didn’t want their children nursing from the breast of a woman who had just fed an untouchable child.”
Driving her stick farther into the ground, she added: “Sons of b******.”
“I was distressed about starving my child, but I always went along with it because that is how it worked,” Narsamma said. She would be compensated sporadically. “I was paid with a sack of grains or 10 or 20 paise [less than 1 cent].”
She looked around, before adding: “Soon as I reached their premises, I was provided with a piece of soap and was asked to take a bath near the cattle shed. Which human being would want to be treated that way? I left my baby starving in the house to feed their child. And while we slaved away our bodies for them, they saw it as nothing less than their birthright to treat us like that.”
...
The women began to speak about Madiga food habits and, in particular, eating beef.
Most Hindus who are not Dalits do not eat beef because cattle are considered sacred animals, but it is a staple food for many Dalit communities like mine.
For Madigas, meat from the dead cattle our community disposed of was often our only source of food, and we became associated with consuming beef. Non-Dalits have long humiliated people who eat beef by saying they are impure. But beef was not only an easy, protein-rich source of food for my community, it also played a significant role in our nutritional customs.
Such customs have faded as our community has tried to dissociate itself from a cultural practice that we were shamed for. The marginalisation of those who eat beef has only grown since 2014 after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government came to power and banned the slaughter of cattle in many states, fuelling the rise of violent vigilantism against beef-eating minorities.
Beef played a particular postpartum role for Madigas. “For about 12 days following childbirth, our elders made sure we ate a nutritious diet of a different assortment of beef parts every day,” Narsamma said. “The elders carefully chalked out every day’s diet to make sure we had the strength to sustain ourselves after giving birth and to produce sufficient nutritious milk for our babies. All the castes knew about this custom and hence had a popular opinion that our women produce nutritious milk.”
The sun had nearly set, and the women fanned themselves to keep the mosquitoes away. They would soon return home to tend to their families and the evening chores.
“They humiliated us as impure and dirty every day for eating beef, but they wanted the milk of the beef eaters,” Narsamma said. “They say we polluted the air they breathed, but they wanted our bodies to feed their children.”
Yesterday I heard a happy Republicancrediting President Trump’s self-proclaimed successesto his training and experience with consumer-driven accountability;meaning,I presume,his for-profit experience with promotion-driven consumerism.
Now I realize this for-profit wealth of experienceoutside Washington,untainted by prior pubic sector experience,appears compelling for how he became President…
