Rutgers University, after a more than yearlong review, has declined to create a separate prohibition against caste-based discrimination, bucking a nationwide trend among colleges and universities.
The university made the announcement on Monday, arguing that current policies barring discrimination based on religion, ancestry, national origin and race were sufficient to also prohibit caste discrimination.
At once, the university said it would provide training to campus personnel so they could effectively recognize and deal with complaints related to caste discrimination.
The decision by one of the country’s largest universities was cheered by conservative Hindu organizations, which contend that creating a separate category barring caste discrimination would demonize Hindu students and faculty.
“Rutgers stands firmly against harassment and discrimination in all their forms,” said Dory Devlin, a Rutgers University spokesperson, who noted that questions related to caste discrimination would be added to the next campus climate survey.
Rutgers is among the most ethnically diverse universities in the nation, according to the administration. It has more than 69,000 students, of whom 82% are from New Jersey, according to the school. Rutgers said 27% of students are Asian American. It doesn’t separately list the size of the South Asian student population.
The decision by Rutgers counters a movement in recent years, in which a growing number of colleges and universities have made caste a protected category. The list includes Harvard, Brown, the University of Minnesota, Brandeis and the entire California State University system, as well as the city of Seattle. In 2023, California Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill that would have explicitly banned caste discrimination.
The Rutgers decision brought mixed reactions from Hindu organizations that have closely monitored the issue.
“We’re disappointed in the administration’s failure to adopt this much-needed civil rights policy,” said Pranay Somayajula, the director of organizing and advocacy at Hindus for Human Rights, a progressive group.
He said “university officials seemingly gave in to bad-faith pressure tactics from Hindu supremacist groups.”
“However, we are glad to see the university explicitly acknowledge for the first time that caste discrimination is prohibited at Rutgers, and we hope that the administration will make good on their promise to clearly communicate the fact that caste is covered under existing anti-discrimination policies to the campus community,” Somayajula said.
Some Hindu groups, including the Hindu American Foundation, a national organization, celebrated the university’s decision. In a Aug. 28 letter to the Rutgers Office of General Counsel, it argued that a separate category for caste would “necessarily and unconstitutionally single out and stigmatize students, faculty and staff of Indian origin.”
"We applaud Rutgers University for their decision restating existing university policy already protects against caste discrimination,” said Suhag Shukla, the executive director of the Hindu American Foundation.
“We will also continue to monitor closely any trainings or surveys the Rutgers Administration conducts to ensure that students are not treated differently on the basis of their race, ethnicity, or religion,” Shukla added, “and that Indian and Hindu American students are not falsely or negatively stereotyped as a matter of policy or process.”
A 2001 report from Human Rights Watch likened caste-based repression to “a hidden apartheid of segregation, modern-day slavery, and other extreme forms of discrimination” for an estimated 250 million people worldwide, including “the Buraku people of Japan, the Osu of Nigeria's Igbo people, and certain groups in Senegal and Mauritania,” as well as Dalits, who occupy the lowest rungs of the social order in South Asia.
Audrey Truschke, a historian of South Asia at Rutgers who co-chaired a university task force on caste discrimination, had fought for a separate protection for caste. Despite the university’s decision not to create one, Truschke said she was heartened by its commitment to include training for campus personnel as well as a way for students and faculty to submit claims of caste discrimination.
“We had none of that 24 hours ago,” Truschke said.
She added: “Caste based discrimination is not a longstanding historical problem in the United States. As caste has become a bigger and bigger issue in many American communities, there’s a need to explicitly name and discuss it.”
Kevin Brown, the Richard S. Melvin Professor of Law Emeritus at the Maurer School of Law in Bloomington, Indiana, coauthored a 2022 paper examining whether U.S. federal employment law covers caste discrimination.
In an email, he said, “the strongest argument is that caste discrimination is a form of race discrimination” but could also fit under existing categories of discrimination based on ancestry or national origin.
The approach taken by Rutgers, said Brown, “will slow down the recognition of caste discrimination, but it does provide [members of lower castes] with the same protection they would have obtained with a resolution that specifically identified caste as a protected trait.”
This article was updated with additional comment.
