In the fall of 2015, a group of Dalit survivors and activists from India began marching across 16 cities in North America—including New York, Los Angeles, and Seattle—to “break the silence” on caste apartheid and expose caste-based sexual violence in India and abroad.
Organized by the All India Dalit Women’s Rights Forum, the march gave Dalit women, who belong to the lowest stratum of a hierarchical caste system in India, an opportunity to speak about issues of caste privilege with the Dalit diaspora and South Asian Americans, as well as connect with other intersectional movements like #SayHerName, #BlackLivesMatter, and INCITE. The group then met with Washington Rep. Pramila Jayapal in 2019 for the first-ever congressional briefing on how to support caste-oppressed survivors.
This week, years of work culminated in a historic win: On Feb. 22, Seattle became the first American city to explicitly ban discrimination on the basis of caste, after a vote by the city council amended the city’s municipal code to include caste as a protected class along with categories like race, religion and gender identity. Led by councilwoman Kshama Sawant, the law bans caste discrimination in workplaces, housing, and public spaces such as transport, hotels, public restrooms, and retail establishments.
Sawant was born in Mumbai and raised in an upper-caste Hindu Brahmin household before moving to the United States from India. Noting that Seattle was home to more than 167,000 South Asians, she said its elected officials have a “political and moral obligation” to address caste discrimination so that it does not remain “invisible and unaddressed.”
“The fight against caste discrimination is deeply connected to the fight against all forms of oppression,” Sawant said.
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