Hindu-American advocacy group files civil rights complaint against US university over caste-based discrimination report News
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Hindu-American advocacy group files civil rights complaint against US university over caste-based discrimination report

CasteFiles, a Hindu-American advocacy and educational group, filed a civil rights complaint against New Jersey’s Rutgers University and Professor Audrey Truschke, the group announced Tuesday. CasteFiles claimed that the university does not protect students from discrimination as required by Title VI of the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Rutgers University had been advised to add “caste” as a protected group in the university’s Policy Prohibiting Discrimination and Harassment after the institution’s caste task force, co-chaired by South Asian history professor Truschke, released a report entitled ‘Caste Based Discrimination in U.S. Higher Education at Rutgers’ in August 2024. The report consisted of testimonies detailing caste discrimination faced by students and faculty.

Since 2019, universities across the US have moved to prohibit caste discrimination, with Brandeis University being the first to amend its school policy to include caste bias.

Founder of CasteFiles Richa Gautam said that there was weak evidence in the report and that there is no systematic data that proves Hindu Americans experience discrimination based on caste. Gautum also pointed towards a petition written by Hindu students in 2021, where students claimed they were concerned for their safety and feared attacks, bullying and backlash, condemning Truschke for alleged Hinduphobia. Director of CasteFiles Abhijit Bagal noted Rutgers University’s previous failures to protect its students, including lawsuits by Jewish students as well as alleged discrimination towards Palestinian, Arab and Muslim students. Bagal said CasteFiles would revoke the Title VI complaint if the caste task force agreed to remove mentions that could be linked to the caste system, stating that the caste system could be incorporated into a neutral term such as “class or social status” that are relevant to all Americans.

Truschke was named a defendant in 2021 after the Hindu American Foundation (HAF) filed a lawsuit in the US District Court. However, this move was criticised by the organization Hindus for Human Rights as being a strategic lawsuit to eliminate criticism of Hindutva, a right-wing political and ethno-nationalist ideology. That same year, Rutgers offered its support to Professor Truschke, citing her academic freedom and condemned the “vile messages and threats” directed at her. Support had also come from Hindu faculty members at Rutgers.

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Suffragists formed Equal Rights Party, named Presidential candidate

On September 20, 1884, a group of suffragists formed the Equal Rights Party in San Francisco, dedicated to "equal and exact justice to every class of our citizens, without distinction of color, sex, or nationality" and in support of the proposition that "the laws of the several states be so amended that women will be recognized as voters, and their property-rights made equal with that of the male population, to the end that they may become self-supporting - rather than a dependent class."
Read the full text of the first platform of the Equal Rights Party.

The party immediately nominated Mrs. Belva Lockwood for US President and Marietta Snow for Vice-President. Grover Cleveland won that election, but Lockwood was included in a number of presidential primaries, and is recorded to have won some 4149 votes from the male voters of the time.