Academic Year 2022-2023
Title :- Black Lives, Caste and South Asian Diaspora in USA and UK
Paper:- presented
Level :- national
Title :- Black Lives, Caste and South Asian Diaspora in USA and UK
Paper:- presented
Level :- national
By: dr. ajinkya gaikwad
Organizer :- 15th Mani Kamerkar National Seminar organised by Khalsa College, Mumbai
Venue :- GN Khalsa College, Mumbai
Date: 17/09/2022
Abstract: The emergence of faith as an important identification in matters of politics and governance has rationalised and reinforced ethnic and religious identities among the diaspora groups in the West. Consequently, the racial ties and solidarities weakened to accommodate ethnic, religious or even nationalistic connections. In the case of the South Asian diaspora, there has been a paradigm shift from being comrades in the anti-racist struggles in a decolonised world to those split between narratives of colour discrimination and liberal notions of classical equality. The paper primarily discusses two intertwined issues with regard to the racism that prevails within the South Asian diaspora based in the UK and US. The first part discusses the responses of the South Asian diaspora to the ‘Black Lives Matter’ protests which erupted in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd. These responses brought to the fore the anti-blackness notions among the South Asian diaspora in the West. The second part forms a corollary which discusses the subjugation of anti-race and anti-caste narratives among the diaspora groups with reference to the South Asian diaspora institutions opposing the demands to expand the legal jurisdiction to include caste-based discrimination. The paper attempts to draw a connection between anti-racism and anti-casteism alongside a reflection on the complicity of the South Asian diaspora rationalising the supremacist arguments in a period which is witnessing a marked resurgence of racial reckoning and calls for racial equality.