Dominating the diaspora

In November 2009, a report on caste in the United Kingdom was issued by a Derby-based group called the Anti-Caste Discrimination Alliance (ACDA). It showed that caste discrimination, far from having been eliminated through migration and resettlement, was alive and thriving in the large Southasian communities of the UK. Of course, despite their disturbing nature, the revelations are not surprising: immigrant communities often carry with them the most vicious dispositions and hierarchies of the societies they travel away from geographically. Indeed, such communities often entrench such biases further as they settle into other (at times hostile) cultures, and as they carve out new political niches for themselves.

Often seen within a liberal multicultural and human-rights framework as homogeneously victimised by racism and anti-immigrant sentiments, Southasian communities in Britain often escape nuanced critical scrutiny (the unbalanced denunciations by anti-immigration campaigners and racists being a separate matter). In the current climate of a national preoccupation with Islam in the context of the US-led 'war on terror', British Hindu and Sikh communities have become even less accountable for some of the more unsavoury features of their collective existence. This has been particularly so as some of their high-profile spokespeople have made concerted attempts to distance both communities from Muslims, arguing that they are better assimilated and make a more positive contribution to the 'host' community.