“A Land Without Sorrow”: An Evaluation of California’s Anti-Caste Movement from Fresno and Beyond

Abstract

The California Civil Rights Department’s 2020 lawsuit against Cisco Systems, Inc. alleging caste discrimination against an employee has brought caste politics to the forefront of debates within the South Asian diaspora in the United States. A growing anti-caste movement, led by Equality Labs and other Dalit civil rights groups, resulted in a multitude of resolutions, ordinances, etc. in a variety of spaces (municipalities, organizations, universities, etc.) to provide caste protections. This movement culminated in the statewide push for S.B. 403, which would consider caste as a part of ancestry, and in effect, ensure caste as a protected class in California’s civil rights law. Governor Newsom’s veto of the bill in October of 2023, however, seemingly leaves caste policy conversation at a standstill. However, during the S.B. 403 advocacy process, the city of Fresno succeeded in passing an ordinance to include both caste and indigeneity as protected categories under municipal law after a joint advocacy effort by Sikhs and Oaxacans. The unique framing of the Fresno ordinance, which stands in stark contrast to the perception that caste is only a South Asian issue and an anti-caste policy agenda would serve to stigmatize South Asians and/or Hindus, motivates this research. This thesis asks the following research questions: What factors can explain Fresno’s local success in passing an ordinance in contrast to challenges at the state level in California? How have California’s anti-caste advocates built momentum in their advocacy efforts across spaces? And finally, how can the Fresno case study inform the direction of the state-level policy conversation in the wake of Governor Newsom’s veto? This thesis relies on four in-depth oral history interviews, three of which assist in outlining Fresno as a case study and provide a deep-dive into the context-specific community organizing which succeeded in establishing a unique policy framing on the issue of caste. Other methods include an analysis of city council public comments, newspaper articles, ordinance preambles, legislative history and/or government evaluations of specific policy measures. Through this methodology, this thesis will argue the following: (1) The policy discourse surrounding caste discrimination is shaped by anti-caste political moments over time and across spaces (municipality, organization, etc.), and the passage of ordinances, resolutions, or even guidance in certain spaces further develops policy discourse in a snowball-effect of sorts; (2) the Fresno ordinance’s framing which de-emphasizes and destigmatizes caste is rooted in a uniquely cohesive cross-ethnic coalition built to change social conditions for their respective communities in the Central Valley and not primarily by the issue of caste itself; (3) in order to challenge the countervailing narrative that caste policies stigmatize South Asians and/or Hindus, which in turn limits feasibility of ensuring protections to caste-oppressed individuals, Fresno’s cross-ethnic coalition building and the diffusion of the caste policy conversations across spaces in the state can inform reframing the caste policy debate towards a more universal and destigmatizing narrative.