Sen. Kamala Harris’s meteoric rise in the Democratic Party has generated an endless stream of articles and conversations in the United States about her multifaceted identity as a black and Indian American woman, a heritage she will no doubt highlight during the upcoming vice presidential debate. Yet one of the most interesting conversations about Harris is happening not in the U.S., but in India.
Harris’s family, from her mother’s side, belongs to India’s Brahmin caste. In contrast to the history of black people’s slavery under white oppression, the history of Brahmins is underwritten by centuries of enslaving many millions of others.
The ancient varna system devised by the Brahmin ideologues, such as Manu, legislated four hierarchical social divisions: Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas, and Shudras. Brahmins were the most exclusionary group and propagated the myth that they were superior to everyone by their birth. Outside this classification system are the outcasts: present-day Dalits, also formerly known as “untouchables,” who were further down the hierarchy and social status.
This Brahminical framework of varna dictates that Brahmins should be spiritual leaders and teachers who totally monopolized access to literacy. Kshatriyas were deemed suitable for kingship and military service, and Vaishyas were to take care of trade and commerce. Shudras were destined to serve the other three varnas in the hierarchy, doing all agrarian and artisanal tasks. The upper varnas or castes were not supposed to touch soil at any stage of their life.
The whites of the West were never so divorced from production work, even when black slaves were working under their lash.
Most unjust, outcasts were forced to do jobs of a polluting and demeaning nature — scavengers, leatherworkers, drummers, and gravediggers. For centuries, Brahmin-directed Hinduism denied Dalits and Shudras even the most basic of civil, spiritual, and educational rights and access. Worldwide, the plight of the Dalits and Shudras is perhaps the greatest human rights issue of our time.
Although caste discrimination may have originated in South Asia, it now exists in other countries, including the U.S. The story of Harris’s family is an example of how the Brahmin caste has migrated overseas.
Harris’s grandfather P. V. Gopalan’s story as a colonial bureaucrat follows the typical trajectory of the Tamil Brahmin castes who, according to C. J. Fuller and Haripriya Narasimhan’s “Tamil Brahmans: The Making of a Middle-Class Caste,” sold the large tracts of land they held and migrated to colonial headquarters for the sake of a lucrative education and employment in 20th century India.
Shyamala Gopalan, Harris’s mother, pursued her Bachelor of Arts from Lady Irwin College of New Delhi, an extraordinary opportunity for a woman in the 1950s, when India’s basic literacy rate was well under 20%. On top of that, she migrated to the U.S. at the age of 19 to pursue her master’s degree at the University of California, Berkeley. Her Brahmin family was able to pay her tuition and living costs in the U.S. In comparison, millions of Shudra and Dalit castes were denied access to basic education in India.
What happens to the identity of Brahmins when they migrate overseas? As our experience shows, many seamlessly transition from being Brahmin to more profitable identities such as a person of color, “brown,” Asian, a woman, or an immigrant in an opportunistic way, while at the same time discriminating against other lower castes in the Indian diaspora. The same Brahmin who criticizes reservation policies for the historically oppressed castes back home in India may well support Black Lives Matter in the U.S. The erstwhile story of their social domination can be swiftly brushed aside with a borrowed narrative of discrimination and powerlessness as a person of color.
When it comes to caste-based abuses in the Indian diaspora, the recent case of a CISCO supervisor harassing an employee because of his Dalit background brought to light how Indians carry their caste overseas. Unfortunately, this case also reveals that there are no appropriate legal safeguards against caste-based discrimination in the U.S.
Sadly, many Brahmins who live overseas flaunt their identity to humiliate and harass others, as the CISCO case shows. Others try to distance themselves from the history of the caste system, denying it exists even as millions of Indians back home and around the world still experience discrimination.
Thankfully, more people are paying attention to this injustice. As someone who bears the unique heritage of being black and a Brahmin, Harris could also bring to light this issue and advocate for the rights and dignity of the Dalits and Shudras. Were she to do so, she would gain the support of millions of Indians, both in the U.S. and across the world.
Karthik raja Karuppusamy is a doctoral candidate at the Centre for Political Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.
