Caste narratives in DEI create bias against Hindus: Report

Hindu advocacy group urges North American companies, cities and universities to redress harm done by “caste” policies

By Arun Kumar

Exposure to caste discrimination narratives results in bias against Hindus as a whole, according to a new study by the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI ) and the Social Perception Lab at Rutgers University.

After reading a short description of “caste discrimination” from Equality Labs content, participants in the study were much more likely to endorse Hitler’s quotes (since the word ‘Brahmin’ replaced ‘Jew’), according to Coalition of Hindus of North America (CoHNA), a Hindu advocacy and civil rights organization.

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“When DEI makes well meaning people agree with debasing labels like ‘parasites’, ‘viruses’, and ‘the devil personified’, we know there is a problem” it said citing the study.

In the experiment, a Hindu-sounding college admissions officer rejected a Hindu-sounding candidate. Study participants exposed to anti-caste rhetoric were more likely to assume that the admissions officer was upper caste and biased, and feel the decision was unfair–despite no supporting evidence. Alarmingly, many exhibited a willingness to punish the admissions officer. And to view Hindus, in general, as racist.

“An immediate fallout from this study is that any future use of such materials is a clear effort to propagate hatred against Hindus”, said Nikunj Trivedi, President of CoHNA. “Organizations that have created caste policies should take a good hard look at their actions and start reversing some of the harm that they have already visited on Hindus in the US and Canada.”

“Shocking as they are, the results of the study do not surprise us. For many years now, groups have explicitly compared Hindus to Nazis,” said CoHNA’s leader of Government Relations, Sudha Jagannathan. “No wonder the experimental participants drew such vile comparisons about a group of folks they did not even know.”

The NCRI report also provides powerful evidence that exposure to a problematic narratives and Hinduphobic words like caste, can create bias against an entire category of people, according to CoHNA.

The caste study was designed by Dr Lee Jussim at the Rutgers Social Perceptions Lab and conducted on a nationally representative sample of 876 individuals. Authors used a treatment-control approach to probe the impact of caste training on the perceptions of ordinary Americans about Hindus.

A randomly selected experimental group within the sample was exposed to the language of Equality Labs, taken from their survey on “Caste Discrimination in the US”. The control group was presented with a neutral, academic view of the ancient social system.