Equality Bill

My Lords, for anyone committed to equality the whole of this Bill is extremely important. Personally, I will be keeping an eye on a range of issues in which I have a concern, including, but not limited to, civil partnerships and the impact of religion generally. In the short time available to me this evening, I will focus on only one issue, which is discrimination on the ground of caste. I and others will table amendments that will add this form of discrimination to discrimination on the grounds of gender, disability, race and so on. Discrimination on the ground of caste is one of the historic evils of humanity, similar in many ways to discrimination on the ground of race. This has been recognised by people from William Wilberforce to the present Pope. The Indian constitution is exemplary in recognising this; indeed, in 2008 the Prime Minister of India, Dr Manmohan Singh, described such discrimination as a "blot on humanity". However, in practice it remains a terrible blight. According to Hindu thought, there are four traditional caste groups, which correspond to the different traditional occupations but which are linked to birth and kinship groups. Outside those groups are what used to be called the "untouchables"—today they are termed Dalits—who are shunned and forced into the most menial tasks. For example, vast numbers of Dalits are manual scavengers, forced to scrape up and collect human excreta with their hands. There is now, I am glad to say, a growing worldwide campaign against this form of discrimination. As we know, many people from India have migrated to this country. Therefore, two questions arise. First, how many Dalits are there in the UK? Secondly, is there evidence that they are discriminated against here, as undoubtedly they are in India? The issue is complicated by the fact that so pernicious is the caste system that it has permeated even those religions that have a strong doctrine of the equality of human beings and in which the caste system has no religious basis, such as, sadly, Christianity, Sikhism and Islam. In this country, for example, according to the 2001 census, there are 336,000 Sikhs, though the true figure is reckoned to be nearer 500,000. Of these, 167,000 are thought to be Dalits. The figures for Hinduism are more difficult to arrive at, but it has been estimated that as many as 1 million people could be adversely affected by the caste system in this country. That is a very significant number of people. One study, which was done by the Hindu Forum and carried out over only two weeks in August, with only 19 respondents, agreed that caste discrimination was present in Britain but said that it was confined to private social practice. However, the Hindu Forum and the Hindu Council do not speak for the Dalit communities, who are regarded as untouchable by those who accept the caste system. I urge the Government to look again at the recent report by the Anti Caste Discrimination Alliance, Hidden Apartheid—Voice of the Community: Caste and Caste Discrimination in the UK. This was a reputable academic study, undertaken by a professor of law and a director of the Centre for Community Research, with outside legal advice; it was a thorough study, involving a lot of people over a long period. The report shows that discrimination has seeped out of the private sphere into issues of employment, education and healthcare. I will give a few examples. In the field of employment, a bus company operating in Southampton had to reorganise its shift system so that a "lower caste" driver would not have to drive with a "higher caste" inspector. Similar issues arose when drivers were being tested. Another person said: ""Caste came up in the college on a daily basis and you would find that people would group together. The name calling happened every day … You think there is something wrong with you—why am I being treated very different?"." At school, there is very strong evidence of children being called "chamar" or "chuhra", which are derogatory terms akin to terms of racial abuse of black or Pakistani people. In the provision of services, a good number of people complained about intrusive questioning about the caste that they belonged to, with the result that when they revealed that they were Dalits they were rejected in some way. For example, a woman in Coventry was not given care in accordance with her care plan because it was due to be given by a "higher caste" woman who refused to help her shower. These are just a few quick examples from a very thorough survey. Of those surveyed, 71 per cent identified themselves as being Dalits; 58 per cent of these said that they had been discriminated against because of their caste and 37 per cent said that this had happened on more than one occasion. In the other place, the Government indicated sympathy for this issue but said that they remained uncertain about the evidence. I suggest that the evidence put forward by the Anti Caste Discrimination Alliance is more than enough to show that discrimination is a reality and needs to be made illegal. The evidence adduced there is certainly as compelling as that which convinced the Government in relation to transgender and transsexual issues. The Anti Caste Discrimination Alliance report, as I mentioned, was a serious study undertaken by academics and it deserves to be given serious weight. In October this year, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, said: ""The time has come to eradicate the shameful concept of caste"." He called on the international community to come together, ""as it did when it helped put an end to apartheid"." There are 270 million Dalits in the world. We in this country can play our part, with the international community, in ensuring that caste discrimination at least has no place at all in our own society. When appropriate amendments are brought forward to ban discrimination on the ground of caste, they will receive support from all sides of the House and I very much hope that the Government will be sympathetic.