Caste is a difficult legal concept to identify and distinguish in the international context, and while this social identity is specific to the Indian subcontinent, its consummate profoundness ensures that its practice has persisted in those areas where people from the Indian subcontinent have settled. Accordingly, in Capturing Caste in Law, Annapurna Waughray focuses on the struggle to include ‘caste’ in anti-discrimination laws outside the Indian subcontinent.
This book is divided broadly into three parts. The first part familiarizes its readers with the complexity of defining and understanding caste. It discusses the historical evolution of caste-based inequalities in the Indian subcontinent, favouring powerful castes at the expense of weaker ones.
The second part examines the attempts made by international human rights law and the United Nations (UN) human rights treaties to recognize caste as an enumerated ground of discrimination. In this section, Waughray urges readers to take note of the obstacles that international human rights bodies such as the UN have faced in recognizing caste as a ground of discrimination. However, India, which considers caste-based discrimination a domestic issue with no international relevance, has resisted. Here, Waughray highlights the dilemma between reading caste into wider concepts of descent, ethnicity, etc., distinct from lobbying to add caste as a distinct enumerated ground in legislation.
The third part focuses on the absence of caste from anti-discrimination laws in the UK, starting with the Race Relations Act 1965. Since caste did not originate in the UK and primarily impacts the Indian diaspora, the proposal to include caste in the anti-discrimination laws of the UK has encountered significant resistance. Thus, neither civil nor criminal legal remedies exist for caste-based discrimination, which usually occurs in private and social spaces. Waughray argues that since caste as a phenomenon originated outside British society, anecdotes of discrimination do not attract the attention of British legislators and incidents of discrimination are often dismissed as stray and not systemic, with caste-based discrimination not being addressed with the same urgency as race, ethnicity, religion, and nationality discrimination.
Waughray's work, based on reports, proceedings, and parliamentary debates in international human rights bodies and the UK Parliament, sheds light on ongoing debates outside the subcontinent. According to anti-caste scholars in India, geographical relocation will only spread caste beyond the subcontinent because caste is so entrenched in the social fabric. While the Indian government vociferously argues that caste-based inequality is a domestic issue, Waughray makes a compelling case against such arguments. Recent movements to ban caste discrimination have gained traction in the US. Waughray's work provides valuable insight into the organized struggle outside the subcontinent to acknowledge and ban caste-based discrimination.
Competing interests
The author declares none.
