Annapurna Waughray

Ensuring protection against caste discrimination in Britain: Should the Equality Act 2010 be extended?

Section 97 of the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013 requires the addition of caste to the Equality Act 2010 by secondary legislation as ‘an aspect of’ the protected characteristic of race; but despite being mandated, no secondary legislation has been introduced and the addition of caste remains contested by some academics, civil society organizations and politicians who question the adequacy of any definition of caste, the estimates of the extent of caste discrimination, and whether legal protection against caste discrimination already exists under the Equality Act. In this article, we assess whether legal protection against caste discrimination is now assured following the Employment Tribunal judgement in September 2015 in Tirkey v Chandhok & Anor which held that discrimination on grounds of caste, depending on the facts, might be capable of falling within the scope of race as currently defined in the Equality Act. We argue that Tirkey is significant but not decisive and that it remains incumbent on government to extend the Equality Act to cover caste.

Challenging caste discrimination in Britain with literature and law: an interdisciplinary study of British Dalit writing

This essay, the collaborative product of a legal scholar and a literary critic, examines the relationship between Dalit literature and legal assertion in challenging caste discrimination in Britain. The construction of caste discrimination in India as an international human-rights issue from the late 1990s onwards has raised awareness of caste discrimination in Britain and given impetus to long-standing demands for caste discrimination in Britain to be made illegal – a possibility envisaged in the Equality Act 2010. We were interested in finding out whether the intense lobbying for a change in British law by Dalit organisations was matched by a similarly vibrant cultural output by Dalit writers and artists, as exists in India. The article specifically analyses the play The Fifth Cup by Rena Dipti Annobil and Reena Bhatoa Jaisiah and the poetry of Daljit Khankhana as examples of British Dalit writing. These Dalit writers are involved in legal and political campaigning against caste discrimination and their writings engage with the concept of law, but only the play by Annobil and Jaisiah addresses caste discrimination in the UK whereas Khankhanas poetry focuses on violence against Dalits in India. The writings reflect two different political strategies towards caste identity and the struggle against casteism. With regard to caste identity, Khankhana disavows it or represents it as problematic in his poetry, asserting a totally non-caste identity, whereas Jaisiah and Annobil embrace and celebrate Dalit identity in their play as having the potential for resisting casteism. However, despite their different approaches to caste identity and the struggle against casteism, both Khankhana and the playwrights Jaisiah and Annobil support the legal prohibition of caste discrimination in Britain.

India and the paradox of caste discrimination

Like an octopus, caste has its tentacles in every aspect of Indian life. It bedevils carefully drawn plans of economic development. It defeats legislative eff ort to bring about social reform. It assumes a dominant role in power processes and imparts its distinctive fl avour to Indian politics. Even the administrative and the academic elites are not free from its over-powering infl uence. So how can it be ignored as a social force?1