Brown University Passes Ban on “Caste” Discrimination

As reported on CNN.com this afternoon, Brown University now explicitly prohibits discrimination on the basis of caste, joining a number of US colleges and universities in shoring up protections against an ill-understood, insidious form of oppression. The university’s governing body voted this fall to add caste as a protected characteristic to its nondiscrimination policy, alongside categories such as race, religion, sex and gender identity. It’s the first Ivy League institution to add such protections for the wider campus community, including students, faculty and staff, according to advocacy organizations. According to a University spokesperson, “The previous policy would have protected people experiencing caste discrimination. But we felt it was important to lift this up and explicitly express a position on caste equity.”

By way of background, the caste system, which originated in ancient India, is a social hierarchy that historically assigned people to groups based on occupation and moral obligation. It evolved over time to assign a degree of “spiritual purity” at birth, in turn determining everything from a person’s societal rank and occupation to what they ate and who they married. At the bottom of that social order, considered so low that they fall outside the traditional hierarchy and are relegated to the worst jobs in society, is a group that now calls itself Dalits. Colleges and universities across the US are moving to ban caste discrimination.