Caste Discrimination

The Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill which is currently passing through Parliament, seeks to amend the Employment law landscape in a number of different ways.

The Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill which is currently passing through Parliament, seeks to amend the Employment law landscape in a number of different ways.

Something that was not originally covered by the Bill, and which is a recently proposed amendment, is caste discrimination.

Discrimination based on caste involves people being separated into different rankings/levels/categories within a particular religious, national or social grouping, with the lowest rankings or castes being treated as ‘subhuman’ or ‘untouchable’.

These people are often discriminated against as a result of their ‘caste status’ and treatment on these grounds is become increasingly common in an employment context.

At the start of March, the House of Lords ruled that caste discrimination should be expressly outlawed, with the Bill proposing that a suitable amendment be made to the Equality Act. It was therefore decided that caste discrimination should fall within the same category as race, for discrimination purposes under the Act.

The proposal is still subject to approval from the House of Commons however, initial indications suggest that the proposal will not be enacted, or at the very least, will not be enacted without the issue being looked into further by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (“ECHR”).

In February 2013, the first claim based on caste discrimination took place before an Employment Tribunal. The claim itself involved a practice manager of a solicitors’ firm in Coventry, and his wife who worked at the same firm, who both alleged they had suffered caste-based harassment, victimisation, discrimination and humiliation as they were each from different Asian castes. Although the claim eventually collapsed, it is a timely reminder that the issue of caste discrimination is now firmly on the legislative agenda.

The ECHR has believed for a long time that caste is part of the protected characteristic of race, for discrimination purposes under the Equality Act. The UK Government has a power within the Equality Act to specifically state that caste is part of the protected characteristic of race for discrimination purposes, but to date have not exercised this power.

Although the subject is now more widely in the public domain than before, it remains to be seen whether it will be expressly outlawed, in light of the comments of a spokesman for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, who said:

"We do not believe that introducing specific caste-based legislation is the best way to tackle the incidents of caste-related prejudice and discrimination that have been identified – many of which occur in areas not covered by discrimination law, such as in volunteering".