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Upper caste Indian women in the diaspora, DEI, and the politics of hate

Figure 1: Trump, Vance and their partners responding to the remarks by Mariann Edgar Budde
 

Emergent from the struggles of the civil rights movement, led by African Americans, organized against the oppressive history of settler colonialism and slavery that forms the backbone of US society, structures around diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) formed an integral role in forging spaces for diverse recognition and representation. 

These struggles around affirmative action, diversity, equity and inclusion were at the heart of the changes to white only immigration policies, building pathways for migration of diverse peoples from the Global South. 

The changes to the immigration policies created opportunities for Indians to migrate to the US, with a rise of Indian immigration into the US since the 1970s into educational institutions, research and development infrastructures, and technology-finance infrastructures.

These migratory structures into the US were leveraged by large numbers of upper caste Indians, with caste privilege and access to the structures of merit, organized around caste. The Indian Institutes of Technologies (IITs) played a critical role in this movement, serving as the feeders of global merit, delivering knowledge workers for the emergent science, engineering and technology economies. These upper caste Indians, already trained into the techniques of upward mobility, learned well the techniques of crafting DEI resumes and DEI applications for scholarships, writing diversity essays, selling their victimhood and leveraging intersectionality. 

Upper caste ab/uses of intersectionality 

Upper caste Indians, including upper caste Indian women, leveraging the categories of race (and gender, in the case of upper caste Indian women), created pathways of mobility for themselves into these structures of merit, performing victimhood while at the same time carrying with them the oppressive and misogynist categories of caste and Hindutva. DEI programs that were created to address entrenched historic inequities in the US resulting from the structures of settler colonialism, patriarchy, slavery, underpinned by white supremacy (such as those experienced by African Americans, Indigenous Americans etc.) were carefully leveraged by the largely upper caste Indian communities to forge pathways of merit.

Upper caste Indians secured tremendous success in the US over the past eight decades, culminating in the strong presence of Indians in the corporate sector (Big Tech and Finance), academia, media, and politics. This success is narrated by upper caste Indians as both merit and victimhood, concocting a story of model minority success. 

Powerfully erased from these opportunistic narratives of upper caste victimhood are the violent cultures of violence, rape, genocide, everyday oppression, and discrimination that are carried out by caste structures in gendered forms, with the violence disproportionately experienced by oppressed caste (Dalit) women.

Returning then to migration to the US and upper caste colonization of migratory processes, once in the US, upper caste Indians have continually organized to restructure immigration processes, attacking DEI and mobilizing around caste-based concepts of merit. Upper caste Indians for instance form a critical part of the mobilization against affirmative action, quickly aligning with the anti-Black racism of white supremacists. This organized attack on DEI, and specifically affirmative action, while benefiting from DEI historically, is an inherent characteristic of upper caste pedagogy in India and the Indian diaspora. Caste pedagogy continually teaches upper castes lessons on merit, hierarchical notions of merit, the biological basis of merit, combined with the techniques of opportunistic positioning to secure available pathways (Consider here the number of times you hear upper caste Indians point to our Brown skins and complain about racism, while at the same time aligning with white supremacists in our anti-Blackness).

The curious case of Usha Chilukuri Vance

Usha Chilukuri Vance, married to the anti-DEI Vice President J D Vance (whose rise in the Trump echelons is closely tied to his anti-woke crusade), is a daughter of Indian parents who had migrated to the US in the 1970s, and is being projected across media stories as the first Indian woman in that role. This frame, "the first Indian women" is paraded around to demonstrate the progress that the US has made in diversity, to somehow suggest that the US is not a racist society, that arguments about white supremacy of the US are mischievous complaints from the woke crowd. 

Chilukuri Vance, once a democrat, now a republication, reflects the broader transformation of the upper caste Indian community, a transformation that can be explained when conceptualized from the framework of caste (I will return to this argument at the end of this piece).

As I watched the powerful remarks by Mariann Edgar Budde, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington at the interfaith service of prayer for the country at the Washington National Cathedral, urging Trump to demonstrate the value of mercy, I was struck by the nonverbal expressions on the face of Usha Vance caught on screen. 

The blank expression, staring straight at the speaker, communicated the non-committal ideological base of upper caste opportunism in the diaspora. 

The blankness of the face is a studied non-verbal strategy of upper caste accommodation that mobilizes caste mobility in the Indian diaspora. Being non-committal in the face of a sermon to upholding mercy, compassion and empathy is a learned strategy of caste opportunism (taught from childhood), while married to a powerful politician who forms the face of Trumpian white supremacy. This non-commitment forms the zeitgeist of caste opportunism, paraded as Chanakya Neeti. 

Caste opportunists excel at the art of speaking from two mouths, at performing "both this and that," of demonstrating non-commitment. And all of this can be peddled under a cynical narrative of victimhood (after all, what can a "poor" Indian woman do, married to a powerful white guy?).

Chilukuri Vance, Merit, and Hindutva

So, who is Usha Chilukuri Vance and what are the investments of the Chilukuris in the fascist ideology of Hindutva?

Indian media have reported that Chilukuri's grand uncle, Subramanya Sastry, was an RSS worker.

Note here that RSS forms the core of the far-right base of Hindutva. Observing the passing of Sastry, the RSS propaganda outlet Organiser observed,

"Dr Sastry became a Pracharak in 1945. After working in several districts, he came to Hyderabad in 1953 to establish Hindusthan Samachar"

Media narratives circulate the family's story of merit, including the linkages with the IITs of the men in the family, while at the same time erasing the linkages of the family with Hindutva.

Upper Caste Indians in the Diaspora and Attacks on DEI

Upper caste Indians, from the upper caste Hindu Tech Boys to Usha Chilukuri Vance, reflect powerfully the dangers to democracy, diversity, and equity that are posed by the large-scale migration of upper caste Indians across Western democracies. 

This caste Indian diaspora, aligning with the racism of white supremacy, threatens the struggles for equity from the margins.  They have exploited DEI and the openings created by struggles around affirmative action to arrive at positions from which they target DEI and affirmative action, aligning with white supremacists around the "anti-woke agenda."

The opportunism of upper-caste Indians, as seen in their support for attacks on DEI initiatives, exemplifies one of the most extreme forms of caste-based opportunism within the Indian diaspora. This opportunism, distilled from the Hindutva narrative structure, has mastered the art of playing victimhood while participating in the ongoing oppressions of Dalits and Adivasis in India, and of Indigenous, Black, and migrant communities at the margins.

Upper caste Indian women, much like the broader category of upper caste Indians and drawing their pedagogy from the upper caste women of Hindutva, leverage the opportunities for DEI to arrive at spaces of power from which they can align with misogynist white supremacists propagating the worst excesses of patriarchal violence to target communities at the "margins of the margins."

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