In an Orwellian twist, CRD to Administer SB 403: Can the Fox Guard the Hencoop After Framing Iyer & Kompella in Infamous Caste Case?

Unruh’s 1964 or Orwell’s 1984?

As SB 403 races to the finish line, it will land with CRD that framed Iyer& Kompella in the Infamous Caste Case. Can the Fox Guard the Hencoop?

By Richa Gautam

The false implication of Sundar Iyer and Ramana Kompella in the CRD vs. Cisco Caste Discrimination Case has been used significantly to push the Caste Bill (CA Senate Bill 403). A Victory March seems imminent as the bill gets fast tracked, dangerously embedding ethnic profiling into the Civil Rights Act.

Author of the Bill CA Senator Aisha Wahab and the championing organization Equality Labs continue to speak of “Caste discrimination” and large-scale assaults, rapes and murders by Hindu Americans, ignoring that not a single police complaint exists in the USA and despite being fully aware that the Cisco case defendants—Iyer and Kompella—have been exonerated after CRDs director Kevin Kish had his arm twisted by the Motion for Sanctions.

The Socialist reality of SB 403

Silicon Valley is reeling under an anti-business environment and SB 403 is more fodder for litigations and profiling of Indian Americans as already seen in the Cisco Case.

A superfluous law that tampers with the Unruh Civil Rights act of 1964, using rhetoric without evidence, SB 403 will add Caste as a category even though existing law clearly covers Caste under ancestry, ethnic and national origin.

Yet the unnecessary grandstanding appears to have strong backing from the upper echelons of the progressive left Democrats. Why else would the entire Caste discussion be manufactured on three egregious premises viz.

1. A fake and unscientific Equality Labs report
2. The now dismissed and fabricated Cisco Caste Discrimination case.
3. A falsified definition of Hinduism as a religion that sanctifies and promotes “Caste” (which is a Portuguese term and not Hindu)

The California Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH)—which changed its name to the California CRD (Civil Rights Department)—has shown egregious overreach in Silicon Valley as reported in cases against Acitivison, Tela, Riot Games and Oracle. The overly litigious trends at the CRD and recurrent misdemeanors have resulted in the firing of one state prosecutor and the forced resignation of another.

With the Cisco case, CRD has crossed the threshold of corruption with possible fabricated evidence and prosecutorial abuse, indicating that California businesses and employees can become a target of totalitarian laws and socialist anti-business policies.

Orwell’s “1984” or Unruh’s 1964?

1964 heralded the landmark Civil Rights and Labor Law which outlawed segregation and discrimination and became the harbinger of the American Dream for a nation of immigrants. Yet, a dystopian nightmare awaits some immigrants who could face ethnic profiling, more reminiscent of a totalitarian “1984” than the flower power and egalitarianism of 1964.

Such is the nightmare faced by Silicon Valley CEO Sundar Iyer, who was framed in the Cisco caste discrimination case in June 2020, enduring a three-year ordeal which just ended with the case dismissal.

You are guilty sir, your last name is Iyer

Imagine you are an entrepreneur, who is publicly irreligious, working in the U.S., experiencing the fabled American dream as a serial entrepreneur, known for co-founding and providing leadership positions to people of many ethnicities including British, Taiwanese, Australians, Iranians, and white Americans. Then, one day the CRD - Civil Rights Department violates your civil rights, your freedom of religion and beliefs (FORB) and disallows your right to be irreligious, stamps you as a Hindu, force identifies you as a BRAHMIN* (priestly class in India), calls you a caste oppressor and brands you discriminatory against DALITS**(a political classist term, developed in the 1900s during the colonization of India).

All this because you are an Indian American and because your last name is Iyer.

You are guilty sir, Iyers are upper caste Brahmins

Imagine that you have been generous to a fault as a Silicon Valley CEO and given away 100% of your startup equity to your team and awarded several million dollars to a classmate whom you actively solicited and hired. Imagine that same classmate later accuses you of harassment and discrimination. In the second act of this Grecian irony, the state then ignores the millions awarded by you and accuses you of withholding a salary increment of a few thousand dollars from him because of his low-class status as ‘Dalit’!

Dalit vs. Dalit—the opposite of Caste discrimination

Imagine that you value diversity and have been inclusive and hired Americans, Europeans and Asians, and then the state of California comes after you, accusing you of hiring only upper Caste Indians.

Now, imagine the Machiavellian travesty, when the CRD hides critical evidence showing the opposite of Caste Discrimination, because while you did not promote the said Dalit plaintiff, you actually promoted another meritorious Dalit, indicating that caste was not a concern in the promotion.

Trial by media – allegations as facts

Imagine the trauma of hurt and defamation of being framed in a patently false case with your names splashed throughout media and conferences as “those Brahmins” and your pictures as EXHIBIT A for Caste discrimination in America.

Imagine the shock of seeing a press release by the CRD naming and shaming you. The horror is further intensified as it becomes clear that this is an anomaly for Title VII cases, where typically supervisors stay unnamed. The trial by media implicates not just Iyer, Kompella, but with 53,000 plus mentions of caste it drags the entire Indian American community down from their model minority tag, entirely through extrapolation.

Imagine being called a Brahmin supremacist when you have never promoted a Brahmin in the group; and imagine being accused of Dalit discrimination when you have only promoted another Dalit.

Orwellian Big Brother and the cage of rats

This is the true story of Sundar Iyer, a defendant in the now dismissed, infamous Cisco Caste Discrimination Case that has become the basis of the SB 403.

If this story reminds you of the totalitarian Big Brother of 1984, then Caste is the cage of rats and Sundar Iyer is “Winston,” who was targeted even though he lived by American values. The wrongful framing of Iyer & Kompella is a poignant reminder that the values we hold dear are vulnerable in the face of corrupt and unaccountable government agencies.

Thought criminals of 1984 or criminals by birth of 1871?

With the introduction of SB 403, a wider net is being cast to monitor Caste and police “thought criminals” of 1984, as the state decides who is the oppressor group or individual, by their last name.

What makes it worse is its bizarre resemblance to the draconian Criminal Tribes Act of 1871, which was implemented by the British in India, where your last name would lead to manhunt you as criminal at birth.

Multiple articles and speakers have shown that the thought police is coming after Indian Americans with last names like Iyer, Trivedi, Sharma and Mukherjee as notoriously declared in an academic conference held on 9/11/2021 where 45 American universities participated as cosponsors targeting Hindu Americans under the guise of freedom of speech.

Doublethink! Invoking Equality Labs and Goebbels

State Senator Wahab, the author of SB 403, is openly pals with the founder of Equality Labs—Thenmozhi Soundararajan—who pushes for Caste law, and who blatantly spews venom on Hindus, Hindu Scriptures Hindu festivals and has  developed vicious concocted “surveys” to misrepresent Hindus.

As a classic display of doublethink, Equality Labs’ survey data which was deemed inadmissible by the California judiciary, is quoted by California legislators and executive (CRD).

Various reputed surveys that show caste discrimination is a non-issue in US, have been brushed aside.

With the Cisco Caste case, CRD has broken all signs of due process thereby displaying a hook or crook desire to stage a Caste discrimination case. Evidence shows that SB 403 is being fast-tracked and will soon land with the CRD for administration.

In which case, are Indian Americans safe or will we see many more victims like Sundar Iyer and Ramana Kompella? And should Silicon Valley brace itself for a new category of litigations?

Richa Gautam is founder of Castefiles.com and studies the impact of Caste policy on American Business and civil rights. She is a Sr. Researcher with the Center of Indic Studies at Indus University analyzing Caste politics and history.