Monitoring Desk
ISLAMABAD/WASHINGTON: Seattle has become the first city in the United States to outlaw caste discrimination after its local council voted to add caste to its anti-discrimination laws.
The move addresses the problem significant to the area’s South Asian diaspora, particularly the Indian and Hindu communities.
India’s caste system is among the globe’s oldest forms of rigid social stratification.
“The fight against caste discrimination has deeply connected to the fight against all forms of oppression,” Kshama Sawant, an Indian American Seattle City Council member, said.
The caste system dates back hundreds and thousands of years and allows several, privileges to upper castes but represses lower castes. The Dalit community has the lowest rung of the Indian Hindu caste system and has been treated as “untouchables.”
Caste discrimination
“Caste discrimination does not only take place in other nations. It is faced by South Asian American and other immigrant working citizens in their workplaces, including in the tech sector, in Seattle and different cities around the country,” Sawant said when her office introduced the proposal to ban caste-based discrimination in Seattle.
