The Weaponization of Caste Comes to Australia
In late 2023 the Indian Century Roundtable published a report on The Weaponization of Caste in America that explained how a coalition of Muslim, Sikh, and Dalit civil society organizations was campaigning for laws to explicitly ban caste-based discrimination in the United States.
These laws weren't meant to actually protect anyone. Instead, the campaigns for the laws were designed to generate publicity that inappropriately links discrimination with Hindus and the Hindu faith, turning caste into a weapon in a South Asian diaspora culture war.
Now that campaign has come to Australia.
On March 26, 2024 the Monash City Councilor Anjalee de Silva put forward a motion to "include 'caste' as a protected characteristic in a similar manner to race, religion, etc in relevant Council policies and plans." The motion explicitly referenced the weaponization of caste in America, justifying the Monash City policy on the rationale that caste "is included in some American jurisdictions with similarly large diaspora populations."
Seconded by Councilor Josh Fergeus, the motion was carried, and Monash City now lists caste as a "protected characteristic."
This is not a one-off. On September 3, 2024 Melbourne Councilor Dr. Olivia Ball moved that caste should be added to the Inclusive Melbourne Action Plan 2024-2026, placed alongside race, language, religion, and other identity groups. The motion was seconded by Councilor Jamal Hakim and passed unanimously.
Initiatives like these may sound innocuous. They are not. They form a new front in a global culture war targeting the Indian diaspora. Whether or not the sponsors of these local council resolutions are aware of it, they are being used as cat's paws for astroturfed groups that are ultimately connected to global Islamist, Khalistani, and other anti-India networks.
Efforts to weaponize caste against Indian-Australians date at least as far back as 2021, when the Australian Human Rights Commission began planning for a National Anti-Racism Framework. One of the 164 submissions to the new plan, which was intended to combat racism, came from The Humanism Project.
The Humanism Project describes itself as a "transnational, multi faith group rallying against the hateful and divisive BJP agenda." It seems to be connected with a broader organization that goes under the labels Australian Alliance Against Hate (AAAH) and Australian Alliance Against Hate and Violence (AAAHV).
These groups have played a role in supporting anti-Indian, anti-Hindu coverage in The Guardian, as well as multiple community newspapers and websites. Their cooperation with Greens Senator David Shoebridge was even highlighted on the website of the Indian American Muslim Council — an organization that featured in our 2023 Weaponization of Caste in America report.
These organizations went to the Australian Human Rights Commission with a narrative that casteism was a form of racism, and Commission bought it. As a result, the December 2022 National Anti-Racism Framework Scoping Report includes two pages (and twelve footnotes) on caste.
Citing a series of academic journal articles, the Commission found that "caste is a strictly codified, socio-religious hierarchical system made up of classes and sub-classes that are ranked based on underlying ideas of purity and pollution."
The report also refers to "the Hindu caste system," tying caste specifically to one religion — despite the fact that South Asians of all religions identify with caste groups on social surveys.
This is how national and religious vilification works. Hostile groups first place articles in the academic literature, then leverage those citations into language that is included in official or quasi-official reports. From there it goes to the press, and the press clippings are passed to the politicians.
The Indian Century Roundtable has documented this process for the weaponization of caste in America, and now the same tools have come to be used against Indians and Hindus in Australia.
Religiously-motivated anti-Hinduism is a real force in the world, and it is given additional strength by geopolitical anti-Indianism. In the United States, community groups like the Coalition of Hindus of North America and the Hindu-American Foundation have organized to set the record straight. So far, there has been little action from the Indian-Australian community to resist these attacks.
Salvatore Babones is the executive director of the Indian Century Roundtable. He is also an associate professor at the University of Sydney. His book Methods for Quantitative Macro-Comparative Research is a standard source for the statistical analysis of international comparisons. He is currently researching a book on Indian democracy.