Harvard University in the US has added measures to protect caste-oppressed students, after the graduate workers and a national organisation pushed them to do so. Several South Asian students have been pointing out to the administration where the discrimination in US university campuses lies.
The students said that there is discrimination based on the Hindu caste system and though the system is illegal in India, the impact of it can still be witnessed overseas.
Many people who were born in the so-called lower caste families have faced oppression in India for several hundred years. And with more South Asian immigrants in the US, the discrimination has been carried there too.
Around 25 per cent of Dalits in the US said they have been verbally or physically abused, according to research by Equality Labs.
Aparna Gopalan, a South Indian doctoral student at Harvard and a member of the Graduate Student Union, was one of the individuals who had been convincing the administration to add more protected classes to the union’s contract. “They had no idea what caste was,” Gopalan said. “I don’t think they really understood. At one point, they asked, ‘Why isn’t caste just protected under nationality?’ and I was flabbergasted. We were operating on a very basic level.”
But after months of conversation, the contract was ratified and caste was added as the new protected category.
Dalit students have been called various names, discriminated against, physically and sexually abused, as stated by both Gopalan and Equality Labs. “This important step recognizes first that we, too, exist at Harvard and that our experiences matter,” said Raj Muthu, a Dalit Harvard alum as well as a member of Equality Labs' coalition.
For Gopalan, this win is just the beginning. “This is just the Grad Student Union,” she said. “We would like every union to have it at Harvard. We would like the university itself, outside of just workers, to put it in their handbooks.”