If you’re reading this, then there is some chance you have heard of the New York State Caste Bill that is currently under consideration in the state legislature. This bill, if passed, will make New York the first state in the country to have caste protection laws and make caste discrimination illegal. Some readers might also recall a similar bill which was introduced in California by then-Senator Aisha Wahab in 2023. After passing successfully through the legislature, it was ultimately vetoed by Governor Gavin Newsom, who argued that California did not need a separate bill since caste was already protected under the aegis of ‘ancestry’. Harper's Magazine, along with other sources reported that Newsom was allegedly influenced by the pressure from some Hindu donors, who reportedly warned him about withholding their support for his impending Presidential run, if he allowed the caste bill to pass.
Now, almost three years later, New York State has its own version of the caste protection bill with title numbers A6920 for Assembly and S6531 for the Senate. Introduced by Assembly Member Steven Raga and Senator James Sanders Jr., New York’s caste bill efforts are orchestrated by Dalit attorney Swati Sawant, who started working on this bill almost concurrently to the California caste efforts in 2023. In 2025, when Sawant was ready to solicit support from legislators, one of the first calls she made was to the Assembly member mounting a long shot mayoral challenge against one of the most powerful politicians in New York State at that time. Zohran Mamdani was still polling in early double digits against Andrew Cuomo when he threw his weight behind the caste bill. Sawant later revealed that it took less than 30 minutes for Assembly member Mamdani’s office to get back to her saying they’d sponsor it.
Ironically, (and on this Substack, not even remotely surprisingly), later in the campaign when certain Hindu right groups got together to write a letter to Mamdani protesting his campaign (and in typical desi uncle fashion, another one complaining to his mother Mira Nair), among their demands was for Mamdani to withdraw his support for the caste bill. Since Mamdani’s win and move into City Hall, the loss of his assembly seat’s support for this bill was gained when Diana Moreno, who won the special election for Mamdani’s seat in Astoria, came on board as one of the bill’s co-sponsors.
Who Supports This Bill (other than former Assembly member Zohran Mamdani)
So far, the New York State Caste Bill (A6920/S6531) has support from over 22 Assembly members, which includes the entirety of the DSA slate with Assembly members Claire Valdez, Phara Souffrant Forrest, Emily Gallagher, Marcela Mitaynes, Sarahana Shrestha and Senators Julia Salazar, Jabari Brisport and Kristen Gonzalez. Outside of the socialists in office slate, the bill also has support from Assembly members Jessica-Gonzalez Rojas, Ron Kim, David Weprin and Khaleel Anderson, among others. Simultaneously, a total of 11 senators support this bill so far, including former mayoral candidates Jessica Ramos and Zellnor Myrie. You can find a complete list of legislators supporting this bill here and here.
Press Conference, Diversity Plaza, Jackson Heights, April 13
Swati reached out to me in March last year to get involved with this effort, and built support from over 40 inter-faith, labor, gender, housing and worker justice organizations, which include Hindus for Human Rights, Sikh Coalition, Indian American Muslim Council, Sakhi for South Asian Women, Sadhana Coalition for Progressive Hindus, DRUM and Jews for Racial and Economic Justice. During Dalit History Month in April, we publicly announced the bill at a press conference in Diversity Plaza in Jackson Heights, a neighborhood known for its desi food and large South Asian population. At the conference, Assembly Member Steven Raga and Council Member Shekar Krishnan (the first Hindu American elected to New York City Council) spoke passionately about the need for this legislation in New York and Krishnan called out how often the acknowledgment of caste gets erased in South Asian spaces. The testimonies that followed, however, completely annihilated the assertion that caste didn’t exist in the United States, or closer home in New York.
Swati Sawant spoke about the 2018 case of a Dalit Nepali restaurant worker, who was actively discriminated by his colleagues once they discovered his caste. “Other co workers, they wouldn’t eat with him. They would say, you are impure, untouchable. And he faced difficulties,” Sawant told me in an interview for a piece I reported for Prism Reports.
Sawant elaborated that once he escalated the issue with his manager, he was told that since they can’t fire the entire staff, it’s ‘better if you leave’. When Sawant raised this case with the New York State Division of Human Rights, and later with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), both bodies which handle cases of workplace discrimination in the state, they told her they understood this to be a case of caste discrimination, yet could not pursue it in the absence of a law specifically addressing caste.
Later, Nepali Dalit organizer Pabitra Dash recounted the testimony of another Dalit woman, Deepa Sunar who was denied job opportunities as a domestic worker once her caste was discovered. Pabitra, who is an organizer for the human rights organization, Adhikaar, and also a nail salon worker, talked about the caste discrimination she had encountered while working in New York. Last week, at the Asian American and Asian Research Institute (AAARI) at CUNY for a panel I hosted on caste, Pabitra spoke more about being repeatedly reminded how caste doesn’t exist in the U.S. yet encountering discrimination at work, in terms of distribution of clients and lopsided work responsibilities.
Lobby Day, Albany, May 5
A few weeks after the press conference, several of us traveled to Albany, the state capital of New York to meet with legislators to seek their support for the bill. Among the group was another Dalit Adhikaar member Punyavati, who spoke about the housing discrimination she had experienced in the city once her caste was discovered. Apartments that were almost ready to move in, disappeared once her caste was discovered, and the landlords not even balking when telling Punyavati that she reason she could not no longer stay there was as other house members ‘might not be able to adjust with her’ as she is Dalit. Several legislators, like Assembly members Ron Kim and Khaleel Anderson who heard this testimony and recognized the force of our coalition agreed to sponsor this bill on the spot. Others like Senator Zellnor Myrie (who we were unable to meet that day but left our materials in his office), signed on a few days later.
After encountering near consistent caste denial and forceful, aggressive and breathless claims about how either caste didn’t exist, or that Dalit people were simply lying about the discrimination we experience, this overwhelmingly positive response from state legislators left even the more seasoned organizers in the group pleasantly surprised. It was especially heartening when we met Senator James Sanders Jr., who drew parallels between the struggles of Black Americans and Dalit people and said that those who doesn’t want to sponsor this bill don’t ‘know their own history’. The solidarity from Senator Sanders and his open and gracious support for this legislation further underscored the significance of the parallel struggles of caste and race, each distinct in its history and execution yet similar in experiences of systemic brutality and exclusion.
What Exactly Does This Bill Do?
It explicitly adds caste as a form of discrimination, which as we have seen in the case Swati advocated for, can often go unaddressed in the absence of clear legislation. For the Prism piece, I spoke to Assembly member Steven Raga, who decided to introduce this bill last year (and who I also interviewed separately at the unveiling of Dr BR Ambedkar’s statue at the Shri Guru Ravidass Gurudwara in Woodside Queens, last December).
Raga told me that this bill is about “closing a gap in the law and making clear that discrimination in any form has no place [in New York State]”. Raga mentioned that several constituents of his district, which stretches across Woodside, Jackson Heights, Elmhurst, and Maspeth areas of New York City had revealed experiencing discrimination in housing, workplace and during every day interactions. “What stands out is how often these experiences are carried silently, either out of fear of retaliation or uncertainty about whether the system will respond,” he said.
Speaking about the need for this bill in New York, Raga said it was crucial because it removed ambiguity around which category caste discrimination can fit under, since it is often assumed to fall under race, religion or ancestry, yet not clearly defined in stature. “People experiencing caste discrimination are often forced to fit their experiences into categories that do not fully capture what they are facing, which can lead to inconsistency in how protections are applied,” he told me.
And the real big question:
Is the New York caste bill “Hinduphobic”?
It’s not.
Simply because the New York Caste Bill, as it is written, does not address any specific religion or community. It does not single out Hindu New Yorkers, just like it doesn’t target South Asian Muslims, Sikhs, and Christians, who also experience caste discrimination. In my reporting for the Prism piece I spoke with Shariq Farooqi, who works as the Anti-Violence Prevention Manager at the gender justice nonprofit Sakhi For South Asian Survivors. In our interview (which didn’t make it into the piece), he recalled the 2023 case of a female Muslim Bangladeshi New Yorker who was experiencing domestic violence, and caste based abuse because of her inter-caste arranged marriage.
She lived in Queens in a joint-family setup and encountered regular caste based slurs and abuses, mostly from her mother-in-law about who also physically assaulted the survivor, compounding the abusive behavior due to her ‘lower’ caste. “A lot of times that caste discrimination comes in with in-law abuse, with their identity being kind of held up against them as a threat, as a form of superiority complex,” Farooqi told me, adding that several cases of caste based domestic and gender violence often go unreported because of a lack of understanding of legal protections around it.
Raga also underscored that the bill is about “conduct, not identity”, and that caste exists across several communities, including the Japanese Burakumin and Roma people. “Civil rights laws set standards for behavior and protect people from discrimination. They do not single out communities; they ensure that everyone is held to the same standard of non-discrimination,” Raga told me.
But that hasn’t stopped certain Hindu groups from attacking this bill
After calling out Zohran Mamdani to drop his support for the New York Caste Bill, certain sections on Twitter became increasingly animated after the publishing of my Prism piece. While some took umbrage to the fact that Prism had dared to give me the space to write that article, others were upset that I had used words like “Brahmin” and “caste privilege” in my story.
Many also seemed to immediately jump to the conclusion that this bill will target Hindus but then seemed upset that my piece highlighted examples of discrimination faced by the Dalit Ravidassia Sikh community in New York as well. And of course, there were usual complaints about this bill only being introduced as a way to “punish upper caste Hindus”. Eventually, Hindu organizations got in the mix, and made videos about the US becoming ‘woke’ again because of the introduction of this bill. The hate cycle lasted several days in my mentions and prompted Hindus for Human Rights and the Sikh Coalition to issue a statement of support, asking folks to stop attacking Dalit individuals advocating for this legislation.
But none of the imminent pushback to this bill changes the fact that caste legislation is a widely popular move, both in the United States and more specifically in New York. According to a 2024 survey by the Carnegie Foundation (and data later obtained by Hindus for Human Rights), almost 77% of Indian Americans supported legal protections around caste. And a recent 2025 study by Cornell suggested that similarly 77% of people in New York State supported such laws.
Those are staggering numbers for any legislation, let alone one that protects among the most vulnerable groups of people in the country, whose discrimination has often been dismissed because of their lack of heft in population size. Perhaps because most people do not find it a problem when laws offer more protections to those experiencing discrimination. It only becomes one when certain cultural patterns of exclusion and discrimination pose a risk of being interrupted, and others who covertly practice and observe caste in their spaces stand a chance of being exposed and held accountable.
If someone does not discriminate on the basis of caste — like they do NOT ask what rank an Indian tech worker got in an engineering exam as a way to investigate their caste, or they do NOT attack Dalits for celebrating the symbolism around Dr BR Ambedkar, or they do NOT exclude Dalits from accessing equal opportunities at work because of their caste or deny them housing once caste is discovered — then this bill should NOT bother them.
Those rankled by the existence of a caste protection bill are not only telling on themselves, but based on the support for this bill from progressive Hindu organizations like Hindus for Human Rights and Sadhana Coalition of Progessive Hindus, clearly do not speak for ALL Hindu Americans, including many Dalits like myself, who are born in Hindu families.
“When the bill doesn’t actually attack Hindus or say anything about Hinduism, they just don’t want to fight caste discrimination, because maybe they want to continue castes practices,” is what Sravya Tadepalli, the Deputy Executive Director of Hindus for Human Rights told me when I spoke to her for the Prism piece. “We believe in the equality of all human beings. That’s our fundamental tenet. That is what we think Hinduism teaches us,” said another Hindus For Human Rights member Anuraag for the piece.
Where do we go from here?
Since early May, more legislators have signed on to this bill and the momentum certainly inspires hope. But with less than two weeks left before the Legislative Session closes in Albany on June 4, time has never been more crucial for its passing. As of now, the bill is stuck in the Assembly and Senate Committees, where Assembly member John T. McDonald III, who heads the Assembly Committee on Governmental Operations and Senator James Skoufis, Chairman of the Senate Investigations and Government Operations Committee, have not only withheld their support for this bill so far but have also not responded to several meeting requests from our coalition.
Their support is critical because unless the bill makes it to the committee floors, and goes up for debate, it could just as easily be dead without seeing the light of the day. Equally consequential is support from Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, who along with Governor Kathy Hochul constitute two of the ‘BIG THREE’ in Albany, a power center that control all major legislative decisions in New York — when Mamdani received their support during his mayoral run, he was declared as the frontrunner. However, neither Stewart-Cousins nor Heastie have agreed to meet about this bill yet.
Recently, the UN Special Rapporteur, Ms. Ashwini KP (who is also a Dalit woman), announced her support for the New York State Caste Bill, and requested legislators, including Senator Stewart-Cousins and James Skoufis and Assembly member McDonald to provide an update on the status of the bill — a hugely consequential measure in moving it forward.
However, the budget for New York State is several weeks delayed, leaving an extremely narrow window until the end of the current legislative session on June 4 for the remainder of the bills to pass. If that deadlines lapses, all impending bills will be scratched and forced to start anew. New York State Caste Bill is among the dozens of other bills that stuck pending in the committee with the clock ticking fast. And until the budget passes, legislators will have little time to focus on the needs of their own constituents and pass the forthcoming bills.
But if we have learned anything from the historic election from last year, two weeks in New York politics can sometimes be a lifetime. That is why, we have planned a few days of upcoming action to push the bill forward, and if you live anywhere in New York State, here’s how you can help:
Call your legislators to ask for their support for the bill. Use this excellent resource by the Sikh Coalition to send an email to your state senator and assembly member in less than a minute.
But even if you are reading this Substack from outside New York or outside the U.S. in India (where many of the readers live), or anywhere else in the world, know that caste protections don’t take away rights from anyone. They make all of us stronger. As I’ve been saying on this Substack for months: no matter what you hear, a new anti-caste wave is coming.
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