This presentation explains how the anti-discrimination law in the UK came to include caste. It locates activism, led mainly by evangelical influence within churches, as a key motor which generates a discourse concerning caste discrimination among Britain’s Indian minority communities. This activism built on a background of missionary, colonial and Orientalist conceptions of the Indian caste system, and was thus able to garner support from parliamentarians and sectors of government in such a way that it almost succeeded in generating a specific clause extending the Equality Act to include caste. However, opposition to the clause, mainly within Britain's Hindu and Indian community, pushed the pro law groups to a defensive position. A rearguard action by the British government then channeled the focus to developing case law as the answer to the extension of the anti-discrimination law to caste. The British government managed to obtain the support of Indian groups to this solution in the process of its consultation on the caste law, which concluded in 2018, even though it embodies what they had opposed. The management of the caste law can be seen as an instance of successful multicultural management of minority groups in light of their ‘colonial consciousness’.

Prakash Shah