Combating Caste Discrimination in the UK: Changing British Equality Law.
Submitting Institution
Manchester Metropolitan UniversityUnit of Assessment
SociologySummary Impact Type
LegalResearch Subject Area(s)
Medical and Health Sciences: Public Health and Health Services
Law and Legal Studies: Law
Summary of the impact
Annapurna Waughray is the first legal scholar to examine the capacity of
British equality law to
address discrimination based on caste. In 2009, Waughray identified the
limitations of existing
discrimination law for capturing caste as a form of discrimination. Her
work contends that existing
religious discrimination and race discrimination provisions are inadequate
to fully cover caste
discrimination, and that if caste discrimination is to be legally
regulated in Britain, an explicit
statutory prohibition should be introduced. Waughray's work has directly
informed governmental,
parliamentary, academic, practitioner, UN and NGO understandings of the
capacity of British
equality law to cover caste discrimination.
Underpinning research
Caste is a system of social organisation based on descent which is
associated primarily with South
Asia but which also exists in South Asian diaspora communities including
those in the UK, while
analogous systems of inherited status based on descent exist worldwide. In
India — the world's
largest caste-affected country — discrimination based on caste affects
around 167 million Dalits,
also known as `Scheduled Castes' in Indian legal and administrative
terminology, formerly known
as `Untouchables'. It is estimated that there are between 50,00 to 200,000
people of Dalit origin in
the UK, possibly more; the exact figure is unknown and is a matter of
controversy. Dalits in the UK
have complained of the practice of caste discrimination within the South
Asian community since
the 1960s. However, until recently Dalits constituted a largely invisible
`minority within a minority'.
Moreover, there was no expressed statutory prohibition of such
discrimination in British law. In the
mid-1990s, Dalit activists in India succeeded in bringing caste
discrimination to the attention of the
United Nations, resulting in its condemnation in 1996 by the UN Committee
for the Elimination of
Racial Discrimination (CERD) as a violation of the UN International
Convention for the Elimination
of all Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD). In 2002 CERD adopted
General Recommendation
29, which affirms that caste discrimination is a form of descent-based
racial discrimination. In 2003,
and in 2011, CERD specifically recommended that the UK introduce
legislative protection against
descent based-discrimination, including discrimination based on caste.
Waughray has worked as a Senior Lecturer in Law at MMU since 2001.
Originally a linguist, she
qualified as a Solicitor (England and Wales) in 1994 and practised as a
litigation lawyer until 2000.
From 1983 to 1989, she worked in the NGO and public sectors in London on
issues such as health
and women's rights, and with migrant and refugee populations. Since 2002
she has been
researching the legal regulation of caste discrimination in India, in the
UK and in international
human rights law.
Prior to Waugray's work, British lawyers had given little thought as to
whether caste discrimination
was covered by UK discrimination law. Caste and the associated phenomenon
of discrimination
based on caste were not on the radar of mainstream society or the UK legal
community. Waughray
challenged the assumption that existing legislation on race and religious
discrimination was
sufficient to cover caste discrimination in 2009 [1]. Waughray
argued that this assumption was
premised on a misunderstanding of caste, and that, at best, race and
religious discrimination
provisions offered only partial and uncertain protection from caste
discrimination. If it was accepted
that caste discrimination was occurring in the UK in fields covered by
British discrimination law,
then an explicit statutory prohibition would be essential.
Waughray's work has sought to address the above concerns by being the
first to address the
question of the legal regulation of caste discrimination in the UK. She is
also one of the first
academic lawyers to address the anomalies in India's legal frameworks for
Scheduled Castes and
minorities [2,3]. Waughray has frequently spoken on the legal
regulation of caste discrimination at
NGO and academic conferences, and in 2006 and 2007 she advised British
NGOs concerned with
caste discrimination on their submissions to the government consultations
on the Equalities
Review and the Discrimination Law Review, which led to the Equality Act
2010. Her advice on the
capture of caste by British discrimination law and international human
rights law was sought by the
government (Labour Minister responsible for the Equality Bill in the
Lords) in 2010 during the
parliamentary debates on the Equality Bill and contributed directly to the
government's decision to
include a provision in the Equality Act 2010 (section 9(5(a)) allowing for
the addition of caste at a
future date to the protected characteristic of race in the Act [3].
Waughray's work highlights the occurrence of caste discrimination both in
spheres covered by
discrimination law and, importantly, in the unregulated private sphere.
She has also highlighted the
psychological nature of caste-related attacks on self-worth and the
potential for domestic
provisions on harassment for addressing this form of discrimination.
Waughray's work on the legal
relationship between caste discrimination and religious identity/religion
in the UK has also been
developed in relation to India [4] in the context of which she
critiques the legal framework for
discrimination against Dalits and the exclusion of Muslim and Christian
Dalits from statutory
protection from caste discrimination and from India's constitutional
affirmative action regime for the
Scheduled Castes. Waughray has made sure that her arguments on caste
discrimination and the
Equality Act 2010 are accessible to a legal practitioner audience [5].
In 2013 Waughray was part of
a multi-institutional, inter-disciplinary team of academics commissioned
by the Equality and Human
Rights Commission to carry out new research on caste in Britain to feed
into the planned
governmental consultation process on the introduction of a statutory
prohibition of caste
discrimination under the Equality Act 2010 [6].
References to the research
[1] Waughray, A (2009) `Caste Discrimination: A Twenty-First
Century Challenge for UK
Discrimination Law?' Modern Law Review, 72 (2) 182-219. DOI:
10.1111/j.1468-
2230.2009.00740.x
[3] Waughray, A, Lord Lester of Herne Hill QC, Keane, D. (2013)
`Amending the Equality Act 2010
to include Caste Discrimination'; 7 May (Paper, available at http://www.odysseustrust.orgD.
[5] Waughray, A (2012) `Has Caste Discrimination Shed its Cloak of
Invisibility?' New Law Journal
6 January.
[6] Waughray, A, Whittle, S., Dhana, M., Mosse, D., Green, R. 2013
Equality & Human Rights
Commission. `Exploring Caste in Britain.'
Details of the impact
The UK is the first European country to pass legislation on caste
discrimination and much of the
specialist knowledge, information and argument on the legal regulation of
caste discrimination is
directly attributable to Waughray's research. In an email to members
concerning the UN Human
Rights Council's examination of the UK on 24 May 2012, the Director of Dalit
Solidarity Network
UK said about Waughray: "Her expertise across the years has been
invaluable" [A]. The UN
Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination referred to
research output [1] during the
oral examination of the UK regarding its 20th periodic report
to CERD. Waughray has been called
upon to advise and to contribute to the debate on the legal regulation of
caste discrimination in the
UK by government, parliamentarians and by NGOs.
The significance of Waughray's contribution to the eradication of caste
discrimination worldwide
was acknowledged in the Dalit Solidarity Network-UK (DSN-UK) Annual Report
2007-8 [A]. Output
[1] has been credited by academics and non-academics alike as
radically altering legal thinking on
caste discrimination in the UK. It provided the basis for the theoretical
and legal arguments in the
first government-commissioned study on caste discrimination and harassment
in Britain, written by
the National Institute for Economic and Social Research (NIESR) (2010).
Drawing on Waughray's
arguments, the NIESR study concluded that caste discrimination would not
be adequately covered
by existing anti-discrimination provisions relating to religion or race.
In December 2009, during the passage of the Equality Bill through
parliament, Waughray drafted
an amendment to the Bill at the request of Jeremy Corbyn MP and Rob Marris
MP allowing for
caste to be added to the list of protected characteristics in clause 4 of
the Bill. This was the first
time an attempt had been made to define caste for legislative purposes in
the UK. "The
subsequent defeat of the amendment was criticised in an article by Dr.
Priyamvada Gopal of the
University of Cambridge, who challenged the objections to the definition
of caste. However the
amendment contributed to a climate in which the later amendment permitting
the addition of caste
to the definition of race became section 9(5)(a) of the Equality Act 2010
was accepted
In February 2010 Waughray was requested by the Minister then responsible
for the Equality Bill in
the Lords [B], to attend a meeting on caste and the Equality Bill
called in order for government to
consider whether to include caste in the Equality Act 2010. Waughray's
role was to outline why
caste was not adequately covered by existing discrimination law and to
propose possible
legislative solutions, which involved providing an explanation of the
difference between — and the
legal, policy and political implications of — the usage in legislation of
the terms `caste', `descent' and
`race'. Waughray was also requested by the Government Equalities Office to
assist with the
drafting of the Explanatory Notes on Caste to the Equality Act 2010.
In January 2011 and November 2012 Waughray was invited [C] to
speak in her capacity as a legal
expert on caste discrimination and British discrimination law at two House
of Lords conferences
attended by NGOs, government and shadow ministers, and other
parliamentarians, to put the legal
arguments for the exercise of the power in section 9(5)(a) to add caste to
the Equality Act 2010.
The second of these conferences led directly to an amendment to the
Enterprise and Regulatory
Reform Bill (ERRB) which mandated the addition of caste to the Equality
Act 2010.
On 24 April 2013 the government, after two Lords' defeats, conceded to
amend the ERRB by
converting into a duty the power in section 9(5)(a) of the
Equality Act 2010 making caste an aspect
of the protected characteristic of race. As a result, the Secretary of
State is now required to bring
forward secondary legislation to include caste as an aspect of race. In
order to inform the
regulations the Equality and Human Rights Commission has commissioned
research on `Caste in
Britain', which brings together a team of experts (including Waughray) to
report inter alia on socio-legal
definitions of caste. The Minister responsible for the Equality Act
in the Lords [B] commented
in an email to Waughray: "Your skills and knowledge will be vital in
coming months with
negotiations about guidance."
On 30 April 2013, Waughray participated in a meeting to discuss some of
the legal implications of
the requirement to add caste as an aspect of race in the Equality Act at
the House of Lords. At that
meeting it was decided to draft a document setting out how caste could be
approached within the
legislation. This document was co-written by Waughray, Lord Lester and Dr.
David Keane of
Middlesex University Law School
http://www.odysseustrust.org/caste/Amending_the_Equality_Act_2010.pdf.
Keith Porteous Wood, executive director of the National Secular Society,
said he was delighted
that the government had committed itself to ensuring that caste would
enjoy the same statutory
protection as other protected characteristics: "Too many British citizens
have suffered caste-based
discrimination. Our equality legislation will now send out a clear signal
that it will no longer be
tolerated, and offers hope to the tens of thousands of British Asians
whose lives are blighted by
such prejudice. This is a victory for the Lords and their emphasis on
protecting human rights."
In August 2013, Waughray was commissioned by the Equality and Human Rights
Commission
(EHRC) as part of a multi-institution, multidisciplinary team of expert
academics to conduct
independent research on caste in Britain including a review of law and
caste. The research will
inform the work of the EHRC and will feed into the consultation on caste
legislation that the
Government Equalities Office is due to undertake in spring 2014.
Waughray's work is listed in the
Equality and Human Rights Commission Key Readings on Race [D].
Waughray's work has had a direct impact on the behaviour and strategies
of NGOP and Advocacy
groups concerned with caste discrimination in Britain, such as Caste Watch
UK [E] and the Anti-Caste
Discrimination Alliance (ACDA) [F]. Dalit NGOs have cited
Waughray's work in shadow
reports submitted to the UN CERD [G]. Waughray was a key speaker
at the Caste Watch UK
conference at the Houses of Parliament in 2007 under the theme of Caste
and Discrimination Law.
The conference addressed the policy implications of caste-based
discrimination for British law and
was attended and supported by parliamentarians, human rights activists,
lawyers, academics and
community leaders. Waughray was an advisor to ACDA on their 2009 study Hidden
Apartheid:
Caste in the Community, which influenced government and
parliamentarians' thinking on the need
for legal regulation of caste discrimination in British law. She is also
named as a key consultant in
the National Institute for Social and Economic Research report on caste
discrimination [H].
Waughray's work has also been disseminated more broadly through media
invitations, including
invitations from the BBC World Service (2009) and BBC Radio 4 Woman's Hour
(January 2010) [I].
Sources to corroborate the impact
[A] Full testimonial on file provided by Director, Dalit
Solidarity Network UK corroborating
Waughray's longstanding contribution to overcoming caste discrimination
through participation in
debates and the communication of research in the UK and abroad.
[B] Full testimonial on file provided by Minister responsible for
the Equality Bill corroborating
Waughray's contribution to the development of the Equality Act 2010.
[C] Full testimonial on file provided by a Peer from the House of
Lords corroborating Waughray's
contribution to the development of the Equality Act 2010.
[D] Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) "Race Reading
List" at
http://www.equalityhumanrights.com/publications/our-research/reading-lists/race-reading-list/
[E] Representative from Caste Watch UK: willing to be contacted by
the panel to corroborate the
impact of Waughray's research on NGOs and advocacy groups
[F] Anti Caste Discrimination Alliance: willing to be contacted by
the panel to corroborate the
impact of Waughray's research on NGOs and advocacy groups
[G]Caste-based discrimination report submitted to the UN citing
Waughray's research
http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/cerd/docs/ngos/IDSN_UK79.pdf
[H] Rolfe, H., & Metcaolfe, H. (2010) National Institute for
Social and Economic Research, `Caste
Discrimination & Harassment in Great Britain' available at:
https://www.gov.uklgovernment/uploads/system/up-loads/attachmentdatra/file/85522/caste-discrimination.pdf8.
[I] BBC Radio 4 Woman's Hour. 5 January 2010. `Caste
Discrimination in the UK: How widely has
caste prejudice been imported to Britain from the Indians sub-continent?'
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/womanshour/04/201001_tue.Shtml