Diversity, Equity and Inclusion or simply DEI has become a mainstay in the West with major companies and institutions inducting DEI programs and policies in a bid to build a supposedly more inclusive, equitable and tolerant environment for diverse communities. However, instead of fostering inclusivity, and curbing biases and prejudices, DEI programs are creating antithetical impacts and furthering bias and prejudices against specific caste groups like Brahmins.
A recent study published by Rutgers University and the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) titled INSTRUCTING ANIMOSITY: HOW DEI PEDAGOGY PRODUCES THE HOSTILE ATTRIBUTION BIAS, revealed some DEI programs are spreading negative stereotypes and animosity against certain religious, racial and caste groups like the Brahmins while evoking unwarranted sympathy for the Muslim community.
While evaluating the impact of caste sensitivity training, the research used caste sensitivity training materials from the anti-Brahmin Caste activism group Equality Labs as the experimental condition or intervention text, designed to evaluate the effects of DEI rhetoric. The researchers also used neutral academic sources as control text (neutral text). There were two respondent groups that received intervention and control text respectively.
After both the respondent groups read the assigned texts, they were given a neutral scenario with no explicit caste indicators to measure their perceptions of caste-based bias. The study found that exposure to the Equality Labs intervention led to significantly higher perceptions of microaggressions, perceived harm, and assumptions of bias during the interview process (increases of 32.5%, 15.6%, and 11%, respectively) compared to the control condition.
Further assessment found that participants who read the Equality Labs text showed more willingness—19%— to punish the administrator in the fictional scenario provided to them and about 47% of them perceived Hindus as “racist” compared to the participants who read the neutral text. This indicates that DEI content instead of eliminating, is actually creating prejudices against Hindus, particularly the so-called “upper-caste” Hindus like Brahmins, who are already at the receiving end of hate campaigns of the anti-Hindu elements.
Similarly, when the participants who read the DEI-inspired material looked at modified past statements from German despot Adolf Hitler and his autobiography Mein Kampf that replaced the word “Jew” with “Brahmin,” they were more likely to agree that Brahmins were ‘parasites’ (+35.4%), ‘viruses’ (+33.8%), and ‘the devil personified’ (+27.1%).”
Are DEI programs meant for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion or to Divide, Endanger and Instigate?
The Rutgers-NCRI research findings indicate that contrary to the supposed purpose of DEI programs, the hatred Nazis had for Jews is being normalised by some DEI programs against Brahmins. The Jewish holocaust in Nazi Germany did not happen overnight, it was a culmination of the gradual but virulent spread of propaganda and hostile sentiments against Jews. While the Jewish people have over the centuries been subjected to expulsions, segregation, and violence in various parts of the world, after the defeat of Germany in World War I and the economic depression of 1929, hatred against Jews intensified to an unprecedented extent. From speeches, and pamphlets to the 1935 Nuremberg Laws stripping Jews of citizenship rights to anti-Jew violence, segregation, and eventual condemnation of Jews to concentration and death camps where they were gassed to death, the hatred against Jews was systematically propagated and this hatred magnified over time and resulted in the Jewish Holocaust. It must be remembered that dehumanising rhetoric always precedes genocides.
While the Islamo-leftist cabal would dismiss the argument that Brahmins face an existential threat and a threat of potential genocide, even those in the Hindu Dharmic fold would find this apprehension as exaggerated. However, much like Jews, Brahmins too have seen their fair share of misery and persecution. One notable example was the anti-Brahmin riots in Maharashtra in 1948, which followed MK Gandhi’s assassination by Nathuram Godse, a Chitpavan Brahmin. During this time, Gandhi supporters and Congress leaders attacked Brahmins, resulting in genocidal violence and persecution. The rioters killed numerous Brahmins and destroyed their houses and properties.
The killings and exodus of Kashmiri Pandits in 1980s at the hands of Islamists serves as a grim reminder and a cautionary tale that anti-Brahmin violence in an independent India was very much possible, it happened and may happen again if the propagation of hatred against Brahmins continues to go unchecked and rather celebrated as advocacy of ‘social justice’.
The Brahmin-hating ‘activists’ and organisations are using all means at hand from cinema, media, politics, to even DEI programs to instil and normalise the idea of hating Brahmins despite there being no requisite of doing so. As the Rutgers-NCRI research findings revealed, even the hateful rhetoric of Jewish genocidaire Adolf Hitler seems justified when presented in the context of Brahmins, it can be understood that the anti-Brahmin elements are infiltrating the minds of neutral people and instilling the same extent of hatred against Brahmins as Hitler and Nazis harboured for Jews.
Even in contemporary times, calls for violence against Brahmins are casually given by anti-Brahmin elements without having to face any stringent legal consequences whatsoever. In fact, Brahmin bashing, negative caricaturing and demonisation are accepted as signifiers of progressiveness, liberalism, and equalitarian mindset in the Brahmin-hating left-liberal ecosystem.
In July last year, Mukesh Machkar – editor of Marathi Cartoon Weekly Marmik expressed his blatant hatred for Brahmins saying that he would contribute money to those who pack the women with Brahmin surnames Bhide, Gadgil, and Nadkarni in a sack and send them to Manipur. He also added that he would sponsor a half-litre of petrol if anyone wished to do “something else” with them. A case was registered against Machkar back then. OpIndia reported how the contributions of Brahmin social reformers and thinkers like Lok Hitwadi Gopal Hari Deshmukh in Maharashtra solely because of their Brahmin identity. Hating and mocking Veer Savarkar has been mainstreamed by the opposition parties like Congress.
In Tamil Nadu, Udhayanidhi Stalin, the son of a sitting Chief Minister and a cabinet minister himself equated Sanatan Dharma to dengue or malaria and called for its eradication. Another leader of his party A Raja said that “Sanatan Dharma should be compared to diseases with social stigma like HIV and leprosy.” Forget apologising, these ‘leaders’ have only doubled down on their hatred for Sanatan Dharma implying that it fosters caste discrimination with Brahmins being the superior-most caste by default.
Anti-Brahmin sentiments preached by ‘social reformers’ such as Periyar E. V. Ramasamy in the early twentieth century contributed significantly to the prevalence and normalisation of Brahmin hatred. In the name of fighting the caste system, Periyayr’s campaign entailed instigating violence against Brahmins. From the time of Periyar to the present, occurrences of cutting the poonool or Janeu (sacred thread) worn by Brahmins to insult and mock them have been widespread. Periyar’s Brahmin hatred was so blatant that he reportedly used to tell his followers that if they ever encountered a Brahmin and a snake on the road, they should kill the Brahmin first.
DEI programs relying on biased sources like Equality Labs simplify complex caste dynamics into binary oppressor-oppressed narratives, which may potentially lead to the scapegoating of Brahmins, without acknowledging the intra-caste diversity and the nuanced history of caste interactions. OpIndia has earlier reported about Equality Labs founder Thenmozhi Soundararajan spreading hate against Brahmins and Hindu religious practices like Yoga.
While the supposed caste discrimination against so-called ‘lower castes’ is still used as an excuse to villainise modern-day Brahmins, the Aryan Invasion Theory which positions Brahmins as “foreign invaders” who somehow subjugated the indigenous (Moolnivasi) people of India, has been widely weaponised by anti-Brahmin activists to spread hatred against Brahmins and even give calls for their ouster from the nation. Back in December 2022, “Brahmin-Baniya, we are coming for you”, “We will avenge”, “Brahmins Leave the campus”, “Brahmins leave India” and other anti-Brahmin slogans were spray-painted on the walls of Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University allegedly by communists.
DEI programs that rely on biased sources, such as Equality Labs, simplify complex caste dynamics into binary oppressor-oppressed narratives, potentially leading to Brahmin scapegoating. Once the people are convinced that Brahmins deserve all the hate in the world, there is a widened scope of reverse discrimination and the creation of a scenario wherein the ‘oppressors’ can never be ‘oppressed’ thus, no matter what all atrocities are inflicted and discrimination and hatred they face, Brahmins will be the ‘oppressors’. And, any act of violence and discrimination against them will be justified in the name of social justice and other high-sounding terms. While the propagation of anti-Brahmin sentiments has been quite common in the country with the usual suspects even mocking the food preferences of Brahmins, it gets further mainstreamed with added ammunition from Western DEI politics.
A genocide begins with dehumanisation when a community is otherised or projected as evil by nature, parasitic and unworthy of rights. As far as Brahmins are concerned, the accumulated load of historical violence, cultural toxicity and prevalent narratives of oppression would be a heady trigger for such acts. When people are repeatedly exposed to rhetoric that vilifies any caste group, Brahmins in this case, as oppressors or parasites (in the form of imaginative, historical misinterpretations or misuse of DEI rhetoric), the groundwork is laid for more violent forms of persecution. The massacre of Kashmiri pandits and its trivialisation by the Islamic terror apologists masquerading as ‘secular’ politicians, journalists and intellectuals demonstrates how the horrors endured by Brahmins were reduced to minor incidents and their plight dismissed as ‘unimportant’.
Conclusion
The normalisation of anti-Brahmin sentiment, through both historical narratives and modern DEI frameworks, is alarming and needs to be done away with. This is no needless fear-mongering, history has shown us how easily the spread of systematic hatred in a subtle or blatant form can escalate into violence against a community. Whether it was the riots in 1948, the divisive activism of Periyar, or the modern mockery and vilification of Brahmins, all these factors contribute to a sinister narrative. Coupled with the surging animosity some DEI narratives foster, as the Rutgers-NCRI study highlights, this could act as a precursor to something far more dangerous—perhaps even genocide of Brahmins.
