Promoting Human Rights as a Way of Improving Soft Power: The Case of India’s Caste-Based Discrimination at the United Nations

Abstract

The ascendance of India as an economic power is well documented. This rising India has also focused on increasing its soft power and influence in international politics, especially through the dissemination of its values of ancient cultural heritage such as Buddhism, yoga and engagement with the diaspora. In the field of human rights as well, as a founding member of the United Nations (UN), India has participated in the framing of the Universal Declaration on the Human Rights and has signed various UN Human Rights Treaties and Conventions over the years. However, in the particular case of addressing caste discrimination, India has shied away from the international recognition of Dalit rights as human rights. Indian diplomats have continually opposed any internationalisation of caste-based discrimination and its linkage to racial discrimination at the global level, especially in the UN. In this scenario, how does the international community view India’s ascendance with respect to this issue? This article argues that India must play a leadership role in defending the rights of discriminated caste groups if it seeks to enhance its soft power credentials of being the largest democracy and demonstrate itself as a responsible power at the global level with respect to human rights issues. Furthermore, the norm that UN has tried to create of categorising caste discrimination as a form of racial discrimination cannot be strengthened without India’s support as India happens to be the most relevant state actor in this case.

Keywords

Caste discrimination race UN India soft power human rights

Introduction

‘Soft power’ was a term coined by the scholar Joseph Nye in 1990. According to him, soft power is the ability of a country to co-opt other countries to do what it wants through its cultural and ideational influence instead of relying on the hard power of military might (Nye, 1990, p. 166). This aspect of power became popular especially in the post-Cold War era wherein a country’s power was no longer limited to its economic and military strength (called as hard power) but also expanded to include its particular culture and political values that are seen as attractive and influential in the international community. Although the concept of soft power became a buzzword in the study of international relations since the 1990s, India had already been projecting its soft power to meet its foreign policy objectives. For one thing, in the early years of independence especially, promotion of Gandhian values of non-violence or ahimsa, Nehru’s Panchsheel Principles of Peaceful Coexistence and the Non-Aligned Movement helped India to create for itself the image of a leader of developing countries of Global South committed to values of peace, democracy, self-determination, territorial integrity and racial equality (Shetty & Sahgal, 2019). Additionally, scholars have identified several sources of India’s soft power that include its ancient system of medicine Ayurveda, Bollywood cinema, Buddhism, Cuisine, art and architecture (Ganguly, 2012). India, over the years, has sought to leverage these soft power resources primarily to augment its international image.

Under the leadership of Prime Minister (PM) Modi, particularly, India has been adopting a ‘strategic approach to enhance its soft power’ (Pant, 2022) by promoting aspects of its culture, especially yoga. In this regard, an achievement of the current regime came in 2015 when 177 countries at the UN General Assembly observed the International Yoga Day on June 21. As this day has been celebrated across the world in different cities annually thereafter, including in locations such as the Times Square and Sydney Harbour, yoga has assumed an important tool of India’s soft power (Govindarajan, 2016). Apart from yoga, the current government has also focused on promoting other soft power assets such as Buddhism and diaspora (Mazumdar, 2018). PM Modi on his official visits to countries in South Asia and Southeast Asia has sought to promote India as the spiritual birthplace of Buddhism. The establishment of Nalanda University in India in 2014 is also another way of showcasing its shared cultural heritage with countries of Nepal, Sri Lanka, South Korea Vietnam and Japan that have a sizeable Buddhist population (Mazumdar, 2018). Apart from this religious diplomacy rooted in Buddhism, the current government has also increased its outreach to the country’s diaspora spread across different parts of the world. In particular, PM Modi’s speeches at in the cities of Toronto, New York City, Sydney, Dubai and London had a single agenda of encouraging the Indian diaspora to play a key role in contributing to India’s economic rise (Mazumdar, 2018).

While there are many bright spots in India’s ancient culture, the phenomenon of caste-based discrimination still deeply entrenched in the Indian society. As the former Indian PM once remarked: ‘Dalits have faced a unique discrimination in our society that is fundamentally different from the problems of minority groups in general. The only parallel to the practice of untouchability was apartheid’ (Manmohan Singh, The Telegraph, 2006).

The above statement by the then PM of India in 2006 remains the sole outlier by any Indian PM in the whole discourse on the internationalisation of Dalit rights and India’s usual opposition to it. That the plight of Dalits can be likened to those of Blacks in South Africa under the apartheid regime has been admitted honestly by Manmohan Singh alone, at least on paper if not in practice. The Dalits are a historically marginalised group in India, lying outside the ancient caste pyramid of the four broad castes: the Brahmins, the Kshatriyas, the Vaishyas and the Shudras. The word ‘Dalit’, a Marathi word, means broken and oppressed. The Dalits for years have been seen as impure people who must not be touched, and for this reason, they are primarily forced to do menial jobs. The Constitution of independent India helped to alleviate their plight by including legal safeguards and protection. Articles 15 prohibits discrimination on part of the State on the basis of caste, Article 16 provides for affirmative action in employment and education opportunities to rectify the historical injustices and Article 17 bans the practice of untouchability. Various statutes too protect the rights of Dalits specifically to curb caste-based violence and atrocities, particularly the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 (SC/ST Act, 1989).

Despite the above-stated legal protections on paper, their execution has always been questionable. Perhaps, it was the poor implementation of the law that Manmohan Singh was signalling. Caste discrimination is quite similar to the apartheid, except that it was veiled by the laws of Independent India. While India’s pre-eminence may be clearly seen in Asia owing to its impressive economic growth, its Dalits have been left behind.

The latest National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) report on ‘Crime in India 2021-Statistics’ shows that there has been a continuous upsurge in the rate of atrocities/Crime Against Scheduled Castes (NCRB, 2021). Within five years from 2015 to 2021, these cases have increased at the rate of 31.6% from 38,670 to 50,900 cases. Although metropolitan cities are generally seen as markers of a country’s growth and development, even there caste discrimination persists. The NCRB data reveal that Bengaluru and Hyderabad, the information technology hubs in India, registered 153 and 104 incidents of caste violence, respectively, in 2021. What this disturbing trend shows is that ‘caste anonymity and meritocracy in urban India’ are merely a façade wherein even the forces of urbanisation and globalisation are unable to make modern India a caste-free society (Deshpande, 2017).

In recent times, widespread unrest was reported in the country from flogging of Dalits in Una to caste-based riots in Maharashtra in 2018 to the polarisation of the Dalits and Thakurs in Saharanpur, resulting in violence. Furthermore, the Supreme Court judgement in Kashinath Mahajan v. State of Maharashtra 2018 that prohibited the automatic arrests under the Act and allowed anticipatory bails, in order to ensure that the Act was not misused against public servants as well as common citizens, was criticised as ‘diluting’ the objectives of the SC/ST Act, 1989. This was followed by agitations led by Dalit groups across the nation that compelled the government to overturn the judgement by passing an amendment (The Indian Express, 2018). In another instance, the government issued a directive to the media to not to use the word ‘Dalit’ but stick to the constitutional term ‘Schedule Castes’, attracting criticisms from Dalit right activists and scholars who argued that the word ‘Dalit’ has a history to it and infuses a sense of collective identity for the hitherto marginalised caste group (Nair, 2018).

The uneasiness of the government of India with the word ‘Dalit’ is not new; successive governments have opposed the internationalisation of the issue of caste discrimination at forums like the United Nations (UN). At the World Conference Against Racism (WCAR) in 2001, various NGOs advocated for Dalit rights to be seen as universal human rights. India opposed such an agenda vehemently on the grounds that caste discrimination could not be compared with racial discrimination. Although the word ‘Caste’ finally found no mention in the declaration adopted at the end of the conference, this could only be seen as a short-lived victory for the Indian government. But subsequent actions by the UN reveal a different story. Even though the word ‘caste’ is absent from the various international human rights instruments, the UN over the years, as an international actor, has helped to innovatively promote the norm that caste discrimination is a form of racial discrimination.

Against this background, a central question that this article seeks to address is: How does the UN view India’s ascendance with respect to this issue of caste discrimination? India views the UN as an organisation of particular importance and aspires a global power status recognition. As a founding member of the UN, India has participated in the framing of the Universal Declaration on the Human Rights and has signed various UN Human Rights Treaties and Conventions over the years. India has been particularly demanding a permanent seat in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) that must reflect the changed geopolitical realities post Cold War. India gives various reasons for its qualification to be a permanent member of the UNSC, namely ‘population, territorial size, GDP, economic potential, civilisational legacy, cultural diversity, political system and past and ongoing contributions to the activities of the UN—especially to UN peacekeeping operations’ (Permanent Mission of India to the UN, 2018). However, when it comes to the issue of caste discrimination, it has been at loggerheads with the UN blocking attempts of discussing caste issues in the UN, especially when they are linked to race. In this process, what kind of an image does India create for itself internationally? It is argued that India will have to deal with this issue intelligently and not merely bureaucratically if it seeks to augment its soft power.

The first section of the article deals with the different understandings of caste and race of India and the UN. The second section elaborates on UN as an actor in promulgating the norm that caste discrimination is a form of racial discrimination that has resulted in an estranged relationship between India and the UN. Finally, the third section analyses the effects of this estranged relationship on India’s image and ascendance at the international level. It discusses how not addressing such human rights issues can become Achilles’ heel of India’s soft power.

The Caste–Race Conundrum

In the run up to the WCAR to be held in Durban 2001, various civil society groups like India’s National Campaign for Dalit Rights lobbied for the inclusion of caste discrimination to be included within the agenda of the conference. The target was not just India. Various activists from different countries, such as Nepal, Sri Lanka, Senegal and Japan, also joined to highlight the fact that caste discrimination is not restricted to a particular geographical unit but rather must be seen as an international concern (Narula, 2001). About 160 Dalits joined the NGO forum at the conference demanding the inclusion of caste on the agenda of WCAR. This Dalit caucus was motivated by the single objective to infuse the international consciousness with the saga of hidden apartheid based on occupation and descent (Human Rights Watch, 2001). However, calling it as ‘exaggerated and misleading propaganda’, the Minister of State for External Affairs Mr Omar Abdullah stated categorically that ‘We are firmly of the view that the issue of caste is not an appropriate subject for discussion at this Conference …. We are not here to engage in social engineering within member states’ (United Nations, 2001a).

While India was outrightly opposed to even the utterance of ‘caste discrimination’, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) had a more supportive view. In its statement at the conference, the NHRC focused particularly on the plight of the Dalits and the tribals. It was of the opinion that there was no harm in discussing such issues. Dr Justice Ramaswamy, a member of the NHRC, stated, ‘It is not so much the nomenclature of the form of discrimination that must engage our attention, but the fact of its persistence that must cause concern’ (United Nations, 2001b).

Although the final declaration, adopted at the end of the Durban Conference, excluded any references to caste, the question is: Was the Dalit caucus wrong to raise the issue? For one thing, the Dalits simply were reiterating what the UN had already said earlier. In its 1996 report, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (hereinafter, CERD) identified categorically that the ‘system of castes’ in India impede the implementation of the CERD in the country (United Nations, 1996, p. 51). The Committee further elaborated the meaning of the word ‘descent’ as used in Article 1¹ of the CERD that defines racial discrimination as ‘any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin’ (Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, 1965, p. 2). As per the understanding of the Committee, the word ‘descent’ meant much more than mere ‘race’ of a person. Moreover, it averred that the term ‘descent’ was inclusive of the ‘situation of the scheduled castes’ in the Indian context (United Nations, 1996, p. 52). So, in accordance with this interpretation of the UN Committee, the Dalits were only voicing concerns in accordance with the name of the conference.

The Indian government held that the Indian society is a mix of races and rather than being ‘racially nor ethnically homogenous’, ‘caste’ connotes a ‘social or a class distinction not based on race’ where the Dalits were never identified on the basis of a particular race but on the basis of their peculiar social, economic and education backwardness (UN Human Rights Council [UNHRC], 1999, p. 23). Ironically, it was India who had proposed the inclusion of the word ‘descent’ during the drafting of the CERD, but what is problematic was the fact that the Indian representative, Mr Saksena, never elaborated on its meaning (Keane, 2007). Even from the Indian Constituent Assembly debates, the word ‘descent’ was not focused upon, but clearly, it was seen as distinct from caste as codified in Article 16(2) of the Indian Constitution. This fact was stated in categoric terms by India when it communicated to the Committee that the grounds for discrimination on the basis of race was a product of racism that the Indians faced under colonialism and that race and caste are separate grounds of discrimination and not ‘interchangeable or synonymous’ (UN CERD, 2006, p. 6).

Scholars have also differed in this caste–race conundrum that got raked up at the WCAR. Andre Beteille dismissed the position of the UN as a ‘latitudinarian’ effort—of treating caste at par with race—as ‘politically mischievous’ and ‘scientifically nonsensical’ (Beteille, 2001). In contrast, Gail Omvedt supported the view that caste and race could be compared as different forms of social stratification (Omvedt, 2001). While Beteille saw race as biological, Omvedt did not see it as a biological category but as a social phenomenon. Interestingly, Kancha Ilaiah opined that caste should be discussed at WCAR because the Indian caste system, too, has certain elements of a ‘racist psyche’ displayed by the upper-caste Brahmins who regard only the cow (white in colour) as sacred ignoring the buffalo (black), even though the latter contributes more to the economy (Ilaiah, 2004). Others like TK Oomen regarded caste as ‘race plus’, worse than racism based on the superiority of the Aryans over the Dalits (Pinto, 2001, p. 2819).

Caste Discrimination as a Form of Racial Discrimination: Efforts of the UN to Create a Norm

Despite the outcome of the Durban Conference, the UN went ahead in creating the norm that descent-based discrimination because of a person’s caste is a form of racial discrimination lying within the scope of the CERD. In 2002, it released the General Recommendation XXIX on Article 1 of the CERD to identify the descent-based communities. Seven of these identifiers resound well with the situation of Dalits in India. These are as follows:

inability to alter inherited status;

prohibition of inter-caste marriage;

private and public segregation;

limitation on occupation mobility;

debt bondage;

untouchability;

generalized lack of respect (UN CERD, 2002, p. 2).

This recommendation by condemning caste discrimination as a violation of the CERD can be seen as an attempt by the UN to make this as a norm, as a standard for appropriate behaviour of states party to the CERD. For any norm to emerge in international politics that the states must adhere to, few entrepreneurs are needed. As Finnemore and Sikkink argue ‘Norms do not appear out of thin air; they are actively built by agents having strong notions about appropriate or desirable behavior in their community’ (Finnemore & Sikkink, 1998, p. 896). Here, the UN has played the role of a norm entrepreneur by interpreting Article 1 of CERD in a particular way and institutionalising² it within the international human rights treaty system.

In response to India’s state report on the CERD submitted in 2006, the Committee in its concluding observations criticised the government for not accepting the general recommendation XXIX. Additionally, it made the Dalits as the focal point of its report by highlighting their plight with respect to the persisting de facto segregation in accessing basic facilities such as drinking water, exclusion from state electoral rolls, ill-treatment by the police, sanctions against inter-caste marriage, evictions from land, violence against Dalit women and the degrading devadasi tradition, ineligibility of Dalit Muslims and Christians to reservations, classroom segregation and high dropout rate at the school level, forced subjection to manual scavenging and debt bondage (UN CERD, 2007).

India, however, did not respond to the recommendations given by the Committee with respect to the above-listed problems. Nevertheless, the UN has actively engaged through its Special Rapporteurs, a body of UN experts who have highlighted time and again the prevalence of caste discrimination in India. For instance, the then UN Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, Mr Doudou Diène, highlighted that in India, ‘the caste system remains a source of great inequality for millions, particularly the Dalits, in spite of constitutional and other legal instruments introduced over the years to fight it’ (UNHRC, 2007, p. 15). Furthermore, he made a serious allegation that certain political platforms like the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh or RSS (National Volunteer Corps) and its political wing the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that follow the ideology of Hindutva (Hinduness) and Hindu supremacy ignore ‘deep-rooted caste, class, ethnic, linguistic and regional loyalties’. Nonetheless, the current Indian government has denied the existence of any political platform inciting racial discrimination. Rather, it has reiterated that the Constitution of India strictly prohibits any sort of discrimination on caste as well as race (Ministry of External Affairs, 2004).

India’s denial has not stopped the UN in actively pursuing the norm that it has created. In 2009, the then Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief, Asma Jahangir, emphasised that the Dalits who were Christians or Muslims could not take advantage of the affirmative action programmes for these were recognised only for the Dalits belonging to three religions: Hinduism, Buddhism and Sikhism (UNHRC, 2009, pp. 11–12). In the same year, the then UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, averred that the time was ripe to eliminate the barriers of caste just like other ‘seemingly insurmountable walls, such as slavery and apartheid, have been dismantled in the past’ (Pillay, 2009). Furthermore, in 2013, the UN Special Rapporteur noted the prevalent prejudice against inter-caste marriages, resulting in brutal ‘honour’ killings (UNHRC, 2013a). Also, the UN experts highlighted the linkages between racism and poverty (UNHRC, 2013b, pp. 22–23) and between gender and caste (UNHRC, 2014). Recently, another UN Special Rapporteur doubted if the government’s Swachh Bharat Mission (or the Clean India Mission) would really help in eradicating manual scavenging, a practice though officially banned but still continued (UNHRC, 2018, p. 9). The Indian government reacted saying that the UN expert’s report was merely a ‘sweeping judgement based on factually incorrect information’ (Chandran, 2017).

The most important development, however, has been the release of the first even UN report on the issue of caste-based discrimination. The report stresses that caste-based discrimination is a global phenomenon spreading across the regions of Asia, Africa and Pacific, though the problem remains acute in South Asia (UNHRC, 2016). This report is pertinent as it has pointed out indirectly that out of approximately 250 million caste-affected individuals, about 201 million were found in India alone (i.e., approximately 80%). This number could be higher as it does not include the Dalit Christians and Dalit Muslims. Another compelling point that the report makes is that the caste-affected persons could be treated within a ‘minority-rights framework’ (UNHRC, 2016, p. 5). That the Dalits could be treated at par with other religious and linguistic minorities has again been subject to vitriolic criticism by the Indian government. India’s permanent representative to the UN in Geneva, Ajit Kumar called the report as a breach of the Special Rapporteur mandate itself (Mitra, 2016). Sidelining India’s criticisms, and building on this comprehensive report, the UN has come up with a comprehensive Guidance Tool on Descent-Based Discrimination in 2017. This guidance tool aims at a system-wide action at the UN level (United Nations, 2017).

These developments clearly show that the UN as an international actor has tarnished the image of India as a ‘rising’ power of the century with respect to the issue of caste-based discrimination. An estranged relationship between the UN and India is clearly visible. India submitted its periodic reports to the CERD Committee only twice, one in 1996 and another in 2006 after a gap of 10 years. Moreover, the request of the UN Special Rapporteur for a country visit to India in 2016 is still pending despite a reminder being sent in 2018 (Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, 2018).

Interestingly, it is not the case that India refuses to engage with the topic of caste discrimination altogether. In all its four periodic reviews of India at the UNHRC (four cycles till now in the years: 2008, 2012, 2017 and 2022), India has received recommendations by other countries on this issue but has continually rejected several recommendations. For instance, during the first periodic review of India in 2008, when Canada and Germany enquired of India on how it would implement the recommendations given by the CERD Committee, India refused to budge and maintained that the caste system ‘unique’ to India is devoid of any racial origins, and therefore, ‘caste-based discrimination cannot be considered a form of racial discrimination’ (UNHRC, 2008). In the second periodic review, India accepted only 2 out of a total of 10 recommendations related to the issue of caste-based discrimination (International Dalit Solidarity Network, 2012). However, while accepting these recommendations, India did not explain the strategies it would take to implement the same. Though India’s acceptance rate of recommendations rose in the third review (from 20% to 69% in 2017), it still has not provided any explanation about how it would follow up on those accepted recommendations. This trend has continued for the last peer review cycle as well as India responds with either a ‘Note’ or ‘Support’ to recommendations by other countries on this issue (UNHRC, 2023).

Interestingly, India has in the past obstructed the participation of certain civil society actors. For example, India blocked the International Dalit Solidarity Network (IDSN) from seeking consultative NGO status with the UN Economic and Social Council. IDSN since 2000 has worked tremendously as an international NGO working for Dalit rights across the world. This application of IDSN has attained the record of being one of the longest pending applications extending over a decade. Even one of the former UN Special Rapporteurs described this situation as ‘clearly unacceptable, wrong and unfair’ (International Service for Human Rights, 2018).

Rectifying De Facto Caste Hierarchies: Releasing India’s Soft Power Potential

Although the UN has sought to institutionalise this norm, India’s recognition of this norm remains crucial. A norm may emerge, but for it to be broadly accepted, ‘a critical mass of relevant state actors’ must first adopt the norm (Finnemore & Sikkink, 1998, p. 895). And being home to 80% of the Dalits in the world, India is a crucial state actor with respect to this norm. This gives India a unique opportunity to take lead in rectifying caste hierarchies, a phenomenon not unique to its own soil alone. The UN itself has been adopting the terminology ‘caste and analogous systems of inherited status’ in identifying the caste-based discrimination as a global problem, not limited to a particular region of South Asia or a particular religion of Hinduism (UNHRC, 2016). Accordingly, the CERD Committee has made several recommendations over the years on this issue to several other countries such as Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Japan, United Kingdom, Yemen, Nigeria, Mauritania, Madagascar, Chad, Mali, Ethiopia, Ghana, Burkina Faso, Ghana and Suriname (International Dalit Solidarity Network, 2018).

As per the UN CERD Committee, states must take general measures to tackle caste-based discrimination. Some of these are as follows:

identify descent-based communities;

prohibit descent-based discrimination in the national constitution;

review and enact or amend legislation in order to outlaw all forms of discrimination based on descent;

implement legislation and other measures already in force;

formulate and activate a comprehensive national strategy with the participation of members of affected communities;

adopt special measures in favour of descent-based groups (UN CERD, 2002, pp. 2–3).

With respect to Steps 1–3, India has made considerable progress. India has also conducted the socioeconomic caste census in 2011. It has provided for legal safeguards within its constitution since its inception. Article 15 of the Constitution prohibits discrimination by the State ‘against any citizen on grounds only of religion, race, caste, sex, place of birth or any of them’ that may subject to

any disability, liability, restriction or condition with regard to—(a) access to shops, public restaurants, hotels and places of public entertainment; or (b) the use of wells, tanks, bathing ghats, roads and places of public resort maintained wholly or partly out of State funds or dedicated to the use of the general public.

Moreover, Article 17 of the Constitution has banned the practice of untouchability, making it a punishable offence. To improve the future generations of this historically discriminated group, the Constitution also makes provision for affirmative action where reservations are provided for them in education institutions and employment opportunities (Article 16). Legislations to uphold the rights of the Dalits are also in place, notably the SC/ST Act, 1989 and the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and Their Rehabilitation Act, 2013.

It is, however, with respect to Step 4 where India is lagging. As revealed from the statistics of the NCRB report, the practice of manual scavenging continues to exist. In fact, the local state authorities itself have been aggravating the plight of the Dalits. The Human Rights Watch reported in 2014 that the village officials in the panchayats forced the Dalits to do manual scavenging. The report brought out the testimony of a woman from a village in Maharashtra’s Jalgaon district where the panchayat threatened her to clean human excreta or else she would be evicted from her home (Human Rights Watch, 2014).

India is also lagging with respect to Steps 5 and 6. Although India has adopted special measures for the Dalits, what is absent is the formulation of a national strategy to eradicate caste-based discrimination taking inputs from civil society activists and creating the space for a dialogue to change the mindsets of people.

It is time then the Indian government shed its hypersensitivity on the issue lest such human rights issues will become the Achilles’ heel of its soft power. Instead, India could lead the fight against caste-based discrimination not just in de jure terms (on paper in law) but also in de facto terms (in the society). This way India can seek to release the true potential of its soft power. India must consider the proper implementation of its laws to combat caste hierarchies effectively and implement initiatives to change the mindset of the population. It must also think about submitting reports to the CERD Committee regularly. Through this, India would display that it is a responsible State that respects the human rights treaties of the UN, especially those that it itself is a State party to.

A golden opportunity for India to release its soft power potential in this regard has come about with the appointment of Ashwini KP, the first Dalit woman as the UN Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance in October 2022. She is a Dalit scholar from India who has researched extensively on the issue of caste discrimination and racism. Among her priorities, she looks forward to focus on the issues of intersection of caste and gender discrimination, role of media and caste as a global category of racism operating in Indian diaspora communities, especially in the United States (Ganeshan, 2022). With an Indian now becoming the face of UNHRC on the issue of caste discrimination, India should see this as a chance to liaison with the UN and improve its image by rectifying the caste hierarchies persisting within its own territory. Tomorrow, it would be a matter of public shame and irony if the Indian government were to reject a UN report on caste discrimination by Ashwini KP and call it ‘biased’.

Another strong reason for India to take up the leadership role in this area is because other countries like the United States have already started recognising that this human rights issue has the potential to tarnish the image of democracies. In a historic decision, in early 2023, the Seattle City Council specifically outlawed caste discrimination becoming the first US city outside the South Asian region to do so. Earlier several higher education institutions in the United States, such as the Harvard, Brown and California State University, have already updated their anti-discrimination policies to include caste criteria. Prominent groups of activists and civil society organisations like the Equality Labs have led the fight in this regard by publishing data about rising caste violence against the Dalits, especially in the tech sector of the United States. After Seattle, California was on the verge of becoming the first US city to outlaw caste discrimination. The Anti-Caste Discrimination Bill was introduced by Senator Aisha Wahab, the first Muslim and Afghan American who emphasised that caste as a category was independent of religion and nationality and so should not stop people of a particular descent in fulfilling their American dream (The Hindu, 2023). Although the Bill was passed by the State Assembly, it was later vetoed by the state governor. One major reason for this reversal in the stance of the government could be the widespread protests led by a sizeable Indian American Hindu community who felt that if this Bill were to become a law, it would lead to racial profiling and discrimination against the Hindu community of South Asian diaspora. Prominent supporters of this view were led by the Hindu American Foundation who even saw the Bill passed by the Seattle City Council as nothing but a policy to discriminate against people of a certain descent and national origin (Hindu American Foundation, 2023).

The fight against caste discrimination in the United States shows that India is in a better position to handle this issue of caste discrimination. India can no longer say that there is no caste discrimination and violence just because there are affirmative action policies in place. A ‘rising’ India only in economic terms with a ‘rising caste discrimination and violence’ would not be rising India in genuine terms. While India calls for reform in the UNSC where it sees inequality and the P-5 countries getting the privilege of veto power over other countries, India needs to also reform its own structures that are inequality embedded in the caste system. India has been wary of ‘democracy promotion’ like the Western countries but instead chooses ‘democracy assistance’ by supporting initiatives like the UN Democracy Fund (Choedon, 2015). India must then take measures to create an authentic pluralist democracy where it demonstrates leadership in respecting human rights of Dalits. A few years ago, Ambedkar Jayanti was celebrated, and Helen Clark, the UN Development Programme head, expressed to partner with India ‘to help realise the vision of the 2030 Agenda and ensure that Ambedkar’s vision becomes reality for the poor and marginalised around the world’ (HT Correspondent, 2016). But what kind of an ‘Ambedkar’, the hero of Dalits, does India export to the world by celebrating his birth anniversary at the UN when caste atrocities remain rampant within its own borders? As India aspires for an enhanced status globally through the projection of its soft power, it certainly will have to deal with this human rights issue in an intelligent and not merely in a bureaucratic way. Admitting the rising caste violence, striving for greater transparency and honest engagement with the human rights bodies of the UN would be profitable steps for India on this issue.

Conclusion

This article has shown how the positions of the UN and the Indian government have differed on the issue of caste discrimination being seen as a form of racial discrimination. Although not previously stated within the CERD Convention, the UN has made efforts to institutionalise the norm that caste-based discrimination falls within the ambit of the CERD Convention. This it has done particularly through its General Recommendation XXIX on the CERD, when it has interpreted discrimination based on descent as discrimination based on caste. The UN in this respect has acted as a norm entrepreneur. The Indian government, on the other hand, has refused to recognise any linkages between these two forms of discrimination. It has maintained that ‘caste’ and ‘race’ cannot be equated because caste is a social category, while race is a biological category. Seeing caste-based discrimination as a problem unique to India, the government has opposed any internationalisation of the issue by obstructing its discussion in the WCAR in Durban in 2001 that could lead to ‘social engineering’ and outside interference by the UN. Even though India has responded to recommendations related to tackling the problem of caste discrimination in its periodic review by other member states at the UNHRC, it has been cautious of giving entry to NGOs like the IDSN into the UN. This is because the government knows such NGOs can criticise it vociferously for the caste-based discrimination persisting in India despite the laws and constitutional provisions prohibiting it.

This opposition by India has not, however, hindered the UN to actively promote the norm that it has created. Through its system of special rapporteurs, a body of various UN experts, the organisation has highlighted various problems of caste-based discrimination and the continuing plight of the Dalits in India. But the UN has also opined that caste discrimination exists not just in India, though the majority of Dalits are found here. The UN has adopted the terminology ‘caste and analogous systems of inherited status’ in identifying caste-based discrimination as a problem existing in other countries as well. It is therefore argued here that India considers shedding its sensitivity on this issue, act as a responsible State party to the CERD, rectify its prevailing de facto caste hierarchies and lead the fight against this human rights issue which is now a global problem. Furthermore, India is more suited for this leadership role than any other country, including the United States. This way India can also improve its soft power of being the largest democracy in the world.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Notes

References

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