FROM DIASPORA DEBATE TO CIVIL-RIGHTS CATEGORY: HOW CASTE POLITICS WENT MAINSTREAM IN AMERICA

On a crisp evening in March 2025, New York Assembly-member Zohran Mamdani stood in the state Capitol to introduce a bill that would add “caste” to New York's anti-discrimination statutes.

- RUCHIRA TALAPATRA

Surrounded by organisers from Dalit, Sikh and Oaxacan communities and flanked by fellow progressive lawmakers, Mamdani argued that caste oppression was not a parochial quarrel within the Indian diaspora but “an American civil-rights issue.” By the mid-2020s, such rhetoric had become familiar. City councils in Seattle and Fresno had already passed ordinances explicitly prohibiting caste discrimination, and universities, corporations and civil-rights agencies were revising their policies. Suddenly, a term that once circulated mainly in South Asian community networks was appearing in council chambers, human-resources manuals and court filings across the United States. The emergence of Mamdani and his cohort illustrates how a new generation of Indian-American and progressive politicians shifted caste politics from the margins to the mainstream.

Tracing that transformation we will find that the mainstreaming of caste as an American civil-rights category reflects three intertwined dynamics: (1) the long genealogy of Dalit and Ambedkarite organising within diasporic communities since the 1960s; (2) high-profile controversies in the tech industry and on university campuses that translated caste hierarchies into familiar U.S. frames of discrimination and harassment; and (3) the rise of elected officials like Mamdani who linked caste equity to broader struggles for housing, labour and racial justice. Together, these forces pushed caste from the realm of diaspora debate to U.S. city halls and state legislatures.

GENEALOGY OF THE ISSUE