California Governor Gavin Newsom on Saturday vetoed a bill heavily watched by the South Asian community that would have banned discrimination based on caste, a system of social hierarchy that dictates someone

from the moment they are born at birth

.

Newsom called the bill “unnecessary” in his veto message and said existing laws already prohibit such discrimination.

If passed, Senate Bill 403 would have made California the first state in the country to explicitly recognize caste in its civil rights law.

Seattle and Fresno have implemented such bans in recent months, reflecting growing awareness among officials as South Asian tech workers and college students in California become more vocal about the biases they have faced. Supporters of the bill included Dalits, caste-oppressed people of South Asian descent, as well as members of Oaxacan and indigenous communities who say they have been discriminated against by a similar system. preached caste equality and had Dalit roots, and also spoke in favor of the bill.

In Fresno, Sikhs and Oaxacans unite to approve ban on caste discrimination

Some Hindu Americans, some of whom have ties to right-wing Hindu nationalist groups in India, had opposed the bill, saying it cast them as potential perpetrators of discrimination. Republican California Sens. Brian Jones of Santee and Shannon Grove of Bakersfield sent a letter this week to Newsom urged him to veto the bill. saying it would “jeopardize our state’s innovative edge.”

“We hope to move forward without hatred or malice and bring together our community that SB-403 so needlessly divided,” Suhag Shukla, executive director of the Hindu American Foundation, said in a statement after Newsom’s veto.

Supporters of the bill had been on a hunger strike in front of the Capitol Annex for more than a month, holding rallies where hundreds of people gathered in support.

Civil rights are not divisive, said hunger striker Thenmozhi

SoundararajanCQ

, executive director of the national Dalit civil rights organization Equality Labs and member of the California Coalition for Caste Equity, before Newsom’s veto. Discrimination leads to division.

Soundararajan, who is Dalit, said caste-oppressed people have been mobilizing for years to fight violence and discrimination against their communities, and their organizing will not end with the governor’s veto.

“While it is heartbreaking to receive the governor’s veto, it is not a reflection of the incredible democratic power our communities have demonstrated,” Soundararajan said in a written statement. “We have done the impossible. This is the first state law that has organized and built amazing power and awareness among caste oppressed people on this issue.”

Even though India banned discrimination based on caste decades ago, biases based on the system persist today, even among the diaspora, advocates say.

In a major lawsuit, California regulators sued Cisco Systems in 2020, saying two dominant-caste executives discriminated against a Dalit engineer. The officials have now dropped their case against the managers, but the lawsuit against the company is still ongoing.

The California State University system added caste to its anti-discrimination policy in 2022 after hearing from people from the Dalit community, including Prem Pariyar, then a student at Cal State East Bay in Hayward. He had talked about segregated housing, exploitation by dominant-caste colleagues in his restaurant job and how a classmate from India blocked his efforts to organize a campus conference on Dalit rights.

“It’s the people of my district who are suffering,” Sen. Aisha Wahab (D-Hayward), who authored the bill, said in an interview in February as she announced the legislation.

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Ancestry is included in the list of characteristics such as race, gender, disability, age and religion that are protected from harassment or discrimination in employment and housing, in business and in public education. SB 403 would have included caste in the definition of ancestry in state law. Some have argued that such a bill is necessary to explicitly clarify that the state prohibits caste discrimination.

Some Hindu groups in California had aggressively opposed the bill, calling it “Hindophobic” and saying people associate caste with Hinduism.

The right to practice my religion of basic constitutional rights is mine, says Geeta Sikand, associate professor of medicine at UC Irvine. She is also communications director for Americans4Hindus, a political action committee that favors what she believes are pro-Hindu candidates.

Calling me a caste oppressor is outrageous and cruel, Sikand said.

These groups had packed City Council meetings in the Bay Area and House committee hearings in Sacramento, urging lawmakers to oppose the bill.

But the bill’s supporters and South Asian experts had said public debate over the bill was flooded with misinformation. Wahab and Dalit rights activists who supported the bill said they faced harassment and threats of rape and death because of their anti-caste advocacy.

Hindu nationalism in India increases tensions among immigrants in the US

Dheepa Sundaram, assistant professor of religious studies at the University of Denver, said groups such as

Hindu Swayamsevak SanghCQ

and the

Vishwa Hindu Parishad of AmericaCQ

with ties to India have been very active in opposing the bill. Right-wing Hindu nationalist groups in India have gained support under Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

These groups were able to mobilize the community through social media posts and op-eds arguing that Hindu Americans were under attack, Sundaram said.