The Roasting of Hindus at Brown U

Image courtesy: CNN.Com

It is that time in this age of Kali Yuga that the roasting of Hindus in the vast cauldrons of the “Mullah-Missionary-Marxist” kitchens has become commonplace. We are easily available. We are quite aplenty. And we mostly don’t complain or protest. The few who do so have little of the knowledge and the skills required to understand the nature of the enemy arrayed against them, and they have much less power to challenge them, let alone defeat them.

One of the old enemies, now growing new fangs, is Western academia. In the US, over the past three decades, and especially after the destruction of the Babri Masjid, we have seen the growth of the “Hindus are coming” fiction mill – funded generously by “woke” and “Wahhabi” capital or even by the deluded Indian “industrialist” largesse.

We have called attention previously, here and here, to how “caste” has become the new currency in the American academic “discrimination identification, labeling, production, and study industry”. The study of caste and Hindus is no longer a cottage enterprise but has become a full-blown massive industrial/social/political complex where all kinds of unverifiable claims about Hindus and Hinduism (and especially Brahmins and Brahminism) are selectively embellished to create new ogres who can be fed into the “diversity, equity, and inclusion” mill. We thus come to the op-ed piece written by the Executive Director of the Hindu American Foundation (and a member of India Facts’ Advisory Board) and published by The Wall Street Journal.

Suhag Shukla writes about Brown University’s December 1 announcement that it had “added a new provision to its nondiscrimination policy that explicitly prohibits caste oppression”. Please read Ms. Shukla’s spare, precise, accurate analysis of what such a policy would entail. In brief, what Brown’s policy does and would do, according to Ms. Shukla, is this:

• Adds “a specific category to its nondiscrimination policy—one that categorically and uniquely applies to a single ethnic group”
• “Brown has created a policy that is discriminatory on its face”
• Treats “South Asian students disparately on account of their ethnicity under a presumption—for which no evidence is proffered…”
• “South Asians on campus have a propensity to engage in a form of invidious discrimination, hitherto unknown on campus”

The “South Asian” business is nonsensical anyways. It is India and Hindus that Brown University targets, not “South Asians” – not the Pakistanis, Sri Lankans, Bangladeshis, or even Nepalis, though, if you do some careful Googling, you will find one itchy Nepali busy sucking at the American “caste teats”.

Given the carefully drafted charge against Brown University, how did its handsomely paid “Vice President for Institutional Equity and Diversity,” Sylvia Carey-Butler (helped by her handsomely paid “armed force” of twelve staff members) respond? Ignoring Shukla’s charge that the Brown U policy specifically targets “South Asians,” the clueless bureaucrat blathers: “Brown has added ‘caste oppression’ to its nondiscrimination policy to underscore protections for members of the university community and call attention to a subtle, often misunderstood form of discrimination based on class. The policy has added an explicit reference to caste among other factors, including race, gender, sex, national origin and religion. The policy applies to every member of the Brown community. It does not and never has specified that any element applies specifically to any individual group”.

So, according to Ms. SCB, anyone of any color, race, gender, ethnicity, tribe, cabal, clique, claque, group, band, body, company, faction, gang, party (choose from the many synonyms for “group,” please) could be hauled up for discrimination based on caste at Brown U? Who the heck is this bureaucrat trying to fool? Does she understand what her well-paid army has drafted for her – either the policy or the meaningless response to Ms. Shukla’s charge?

The Vice President for Institutional Equity and Diversity says, “…the university felt it was important to elevate this less-publicized form of discrimination and explicitly express a position on caste equity”. Who in the university “felt” this urgent need to “elevate” this form of “discrimination”? What is “caste equity” by the way? Garbled nonsense produced by unqualified mediocrities does not a policy make! Or does it actually mean that like in India, Brown University will ensure that “Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe, OBC” students will not only get the admission requirements lowered but also get special training and support from the university to succeed? That is an interesting thought…

It is the season in these United States for the spawning of DEI offices and the filling of these offices with people solely based on the color of their skin and their choice of pronouns. Nothing more. They know little else or can claim little else; they read from the same Ibram X. Kendi’s “anti-racism” book; offer the same set of anti-racism policies and pablum; dole out the same boxed set of anti-racism training manuals; and go around campus like commissars sniffing out opportunities for expanding their power and influence. “Caste,” therefore, comes in handy to expand their “business opportunity,” especially after the highly successful peddling of Isabel Wilkerson’s book, “Caste: The Origins of our Discontent”.

Be that as it may, how would Ms. SCB then implement the new Brown U “anti-caste” policy? Let us think carefully about the potential operationalizing of this expanded “nondiscrimination policy”:

• How does Brown U define caste?
• Does caste equate to jati and varna?
• How does Brown U define caste discrimination?
• How did Brown U officials figure out that “caste discrimination” in the US is a “less-publicized from of discrimination”? Did they conduct any study? Who conducted it, and what were the results?
• What is caste equity? How would Brown U enforce/ensure caste equity?
• If someone at Brown U discriminates against someone else at Brown U based on caste identity, how would Brown U know?
• What kind of reporting system would be put in place?
• Would it be on similar lines like the Title IX Office at Brown U?
• Who and how many among the twelve staff members in Ms. SCB’s office would oversee and monitor “caste discrimination” at Brown U?
• Who would train them?
• What kinds of training manuals will they create and use?
• Who are the experts they are going to call upon to create these training manuals?
• Will they borrow lock, stock, and barrel the “Unlearning Caste Supremacy” training workshop manual from Equality Labs?
• How will they ensure that whoever they hire to build their manuals, construct their training programs, etc., are experts – both in the understanding of caste differences but in the identification of caste-based discriminatory practices?
• Does Brown U subscribe to Equality Labs’ agenda for raising “popular consciousness of the expansive history of casteism and anti-caste resistance, and activate allies toward caste abolition”?
• How will Brown U train all students, staff, faculty, and administrators about “caste discrimination”? Will Ms. SCB’s office offer consultations “for faculty, supervisors, administrators, and others who need information about their responsibilities to address caste discrimination of which they become aware?”
• How will Brown U maintain a record of the caste affiliation of students, faculty, staff, and administrators?
• Will Brown U ask all its students, staff, faculty, and administrators to declare their caste identity – and not just “South Asians”?
• How will Brown U ensure that the complaints about caste discrimination are valid? What kind of confidentiality will be provided to those who have been accused of discriminating someone based on their caste identity?
• Or will those accused of caste discrimination have no privacy guaranteed them, but the accusers would remain anonymous and retain their privacy?
• Will it be like the Title IX process where the accused have few rights, the alleged victims cannot be cross examined, or have lawyers barred from participating in the adjudicatory process?
• Will the “caste discrimination” hearing process be also governed by the “preponderance of evidence” standard and not the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard – meaning that “hearing officers don’t need to be convinced that an incident occurred, only that it is more likely than not”?
• How will Brown U decide that it is an “upper caste” person discriminating against a “lower caste” person, and not vice versa? Or is the latter not “caste discrimination?”
• Will Brown U require all students to fill out their caste affiliation in their application for admission to the university?
• If one does not know one’s caste, or does not have a caste affiliation, or has rejected caste affiliation, how would they or should they respond in the Brown U application form?
• How much of one’s self-identified caste category be verified?
• Who will verify one’s caste affiliation?
• Will Brown U require caste identity certificates like the ones issued in India?
• What kinds of advantages will Brown U provide students, staff, faculty, and administrators based on their self-avowed caste identity?
• Will “Dalits” and “lower caste” students be considered more eligible for Brown U admission within Brown U’s “affirmative action plan”? For example, all public universities in India offer Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe, and Other Backward Caste students a lower admission hurdle than the “General Category” of students. Will Brown U do the same? If so, when will the new admission standards be announced?
• How will Brown U ensure that caste groups in the US or in India not misuse Brown U’s “discrimination based on caste” policy?

This list is running long already, and it can run another two thousand words. But, heck, we will not be the ones to clean the shit that Brown U’s “Office of Institutional Equity and Diversity” has dumped on its own people. Let them go wash themselves if they can! We doubt that they have the means and the sagacity to do so.

Neanderthals!!!*

*Maybe another protected category at Brown U?

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are the personal opinions of the author. IndiaFacts does not assume any responsibility or liability for the accuracy of any information in this article.