Paper short abstract:

Opposition to the inclusion of caste in the Equality Act 2010, rests on a key premiss, challenged in the paper that caste is dying in the UK. The alleged deficits of credibility, evidence and concept are addressed to argue that caste is not dying in the UK.

Paper long abstract:

For several years now, community reports, academic research papers and Government sponsored reports, including the last one led by this author for the UK Equality and Human Rights Commission, show evidence of caste based prejudice and discrimination. Yet the opposition to the inclusion of caste in the Equality Act 2010, denies that caste discrimination exists in the UK. The opposition, mainly from some Hindu and Sikh organisations, rests amongst other things on three distinct but interconnected claims. First a 'credibility' claim, second, an 'evidential' claim, and third a 'conceptual' claim. This paper responds to each of these. The credibility claim proceeds by discrediting community reports as lacking 'academic' credibility. The paper argues that standpoint epistemology is useful in appreciating the credibility of the incidents of caste based discrimination in community reports. The victims' perspective must be privileged. The evidential claim demands more information about how much caste discrimination there is, whilst assuming that caste cannot be defined. As such it is a muddled claim. The conceptual claim makes the generalisation that any definition of caste would be inadequate because caste is a 'colonial construct' which has distorted a non-hierarchical and benign Jati identity, while assuming that caste is dying. This last claim is challenged by arguing that however it has come to be, caste now is a basis of self-identity. Qualitative research suggests that caste is not dying in the UK.