‘A disease’: Caste discrimination in Australia is on the rise - but some are fighting back

When Rakesh Kumar migrated to Australia from Punjab in India 16 years ago, the discrimination followed him. Before he could even enter the house he would be staying in he was asked: "What is your caste?"

"I said I'm Chamar," Kumar says. The term is a Punjabi equivalent of the Dalit caste.

With India now the third most common birthplace of Australian residents, according to the 2021 census, and with migration from south Asia on the rise, many are worried about caste discrimination escalating in Australia.

The Hindu caste system, which is assigned at birth and determines occupations and social status, is made up of four tiers, with Brahmins or priests and teachers at the top and Dalits at the bottom. Dalits are often tasked with scavenging and street cleaning, are considered "untouchable" and are outcast from Indian society.

Questions about Kumar's caste followed him into his career. He now manages a team at a Melbourne logistics company.

In 2013, Kumar says, he bought a car with a number plate that read chamar "so that no one asks me".

Kumar, who has a career as a logistics manager, subverted a trend among upper-caste south Asians who flaunt their status on Australian number plates: "When I tell them my caste with pride, people feel ashamed, they realise they did something wrong."

Despite his professional success he has still been discriminated against. He once overheard a colleague suggesting that he had only progressed so far because his mother or grandmother must have slept with someone from a higher caste.

"That was the worst experience I had," Kumar says.

It was after this incident that Kumar's organisation received an email from an unknown source, requesting that the company only hire people of higher castes.

For others, the discrimination is not so direct.

Aparna Ramteke, a Sydney recruitment consultant, has in professional situations where those around her engage in banter about castes. If someone is excluded from a conversation they might say: "Am I an untouchable? Don't treat me like an untouchable."

"They don't know that I belong to that community, or that there might be others who might be from the community," she says. "So even though they might be just joking around it's actually singling out the community.

"It really puts you down. You feel a bit guilty about your identity."

South and central Asian countries now form for the largest group of new migrants to Australia, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. In 2018-19 and 2021-22 the region accounted for 28% and 32% of new arrivals respectively.

A professor of law at Melbourne University, Beth Gaze, says: "With the expansion of our subcontinental community I think it's inevitable that [caste discrimination] is going to turn into a major problem in Australia. And I don't think we can address other forms of racism without taking account of that."

Vaibhav Gaekwad, a sustainability professional, says the reason there is little awareness about caste in Australia is because the south Asian community is dominated by upper or oppressor castes who deny the existence of discrimination.

"They occupy key decision-making positions in public and private sectors," Gaekwad says. "They will always claim that this type of discrimination does not exist.

"If you deny the existence of caste discrimination, you are its perpetrator."

In 2021 Ramteke, Gaekwad and other members of the Ambedkar International Mission, or Aim - a collective that advocates for caste-oppressed people in Australia, built on the ideals of India's foremost Dalit lawmaker and chief architect of its constitution, Dr Bhim Rao Ambedkar - heard from another south Asian diaspora collective, the Humanism Project, that the Australian Human Rights Commission was seeking submissions for its national anti-racism framework scoping report.

The AHRC says the framework will be "a long-term, central reference point to guide actions on anti-racism and equality by government, NGOs, business, communities, and others".

A submission co-authored by the academics Vikrant Kishore and Nisha Thapliyal, the Humanism Project and Aim called for casteism to be recognised as an "intersectional system of discrimination".

Gaekwad says: "What we wanted to do is make sure that our lived experiences get told as they are and that there is no misinformation about caste discrimination. For example, it being a colonial invention is something which has been sort of propagated a lot in recent times."

The AHRC's race discrimination commissioner, Chin Tan, says: "Discrimination of any kind is unacceptable, and that includes discrimination on the basis of caste. I am deeply concerned by the experiences of casteism in Australia that were shared with the Commission."

Aim wants action - legislation to protect those experiencing discrimination.

Gaze says that though drafting caste discrimination laws would be a long process, amending the Racial Discrimination Act would be just as effective.

"The definition of race in our racial discrimination laws includes a range of different things, like national origin and language and nationality and colour and so on," she says. "So there's no reason not to just expand that definition by including caste."

Gaze also says that once there is enough awareness, caste discrimination may be easier to prove than racial discrimination: "A lot of it may actually be quite explicit."

The AHRC says the next phase of creating the national anti-racism framework will involve in-depth community consultations, including on caste discrimination.

Ultimately, Kumar warns: "There is a disease. You need to diagnose it. Only then you can cure it. If you will not diagnose it, it will get bigger and one day it will not be controllable."