Against caste in Europe

Anti-caste campaigners in the United Kingdom score a major victory with the E.U. passing a resolution to put caste within a global rights framework. 

THE ringing indictment of caste-based discrimination and prejudice contained in a strongly worded resolution that the European Parliament passed last month has put this particular form of human rights abuse firmly on the international agenda. Equally importantly, the resolution has served to drag this pernicious institution out of the shadows of the South Asian migrant experience in Europe where it has long remained hidden and into the public domain of legal and institutional scrutiny.

Passed by an overwhelming majority of Members of the European Parliament (MEPs), the resolution received cross-party support. Its passage was preceded by a discussion in which members from all parties condemned the practice and made specific suggestions on how it could be eradicated.

Caste, according to the resolution, is a “distinct form of discrimination rooted in the social and/or religious context, which must be tackled together with other grounds of discrimination, i.e., ethnicity, race, descent, religion, gender and sexuality, in E.U. [European Union] efforts to fight all forms of discrimination”. It also called for the E.U. to include the issue in legislation and human rights policies while raising it “at the highest level” with the governments of caste-affected countries.

The resolution has had a positive impact for anti-caste campaigners in the United Kingdom, where caste practices and caste-based discrimination are widely prevalent among Asian populations. This is hardly surprising. British Asians now comprise 7.5 per cent of the population of the U.K. Those of Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi descent—among whom the practice of caste is most prevalent —accounted for 3.07 million out of a total population of 63.23 million in the 2011 Census.

In the U.K., caste functions with impunity within a larger socio-political environment in which the rule of law and equality before the law are rights that are institutionalised. It operates in below-the-surface cultural spaces where institutional oversight does not usually reach. In the multicultural society that the U.K. has become, the growth of identity politics has consolidated the hold of traditional ties and practices among immigrant groups. These so-called personal spheres—the home, the joint family, places of worship—are fiercely protected by community bosses from “interference” of any kind. And it is here that the most discriminatory of traditional practices—caste among them—flourish.

Source: Front line