Equality Labs publicly calls Hindus Nazis. Now their caste training materials are becoming law in US companies and universities.

Sudha Jagannathan of CoHNA (Coalition of Hindus of North America) details how caste policies — now embedded in HR policies at major tech companies and universities — function by adding “caste” as a protected category in a way that targets Hindu Americans as a uniquely discriminatory group. She documents how Equality Labs’ training materials characterise Hindu festivals like Holi and Diwali as casteist, claim anecdotal “caste violence” from incidents as mundane as untouched party food, and have been used to create a hostile legal environment for the community. CoHNA’s work focuses on getting “Hindu phobia” recognised as a category by law enforcement, alongside fighting caste legislation that singles out one community without evidence of disproportionate discrimination.

About the Speakers:
Sudha Jagannathan is the Director of Government Relations and a board member of the Coalition of Hindus of North America (CoHNA). A Bahujan by background, she advocates for Hindu American rights and has spoken against caste legislation she views as rooted in Hinduphobia. With a background in sales, she brings strong outreach and policy engagement skills to her activism.

Dr. Sufiya Pathan is the Director at Centre for Scientific Social Studies and Assistant Professor at the SDM Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Humanities and Social Sciences. A scholar of caste, communalism, and colonial discourse, she holds a PhD from CSCS, Bengaluru, and was a postdoctoral fellow in the Czech Republic. She is part of the Comparative Science of Cultures program and co-editor of Western Foundations of the Caste System.